Double-stranded RNA-mediated silencing of genomic tandem repeats and transposable elements in the D. melanogaster germline.

By Alexei Aravin, N. Naumova, A. Tulin, Vasily V. Vagin, Y. Rozovsky, V. Gvozdev. Current Biology, 2001

798 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BACKGROUND The injection of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) has been shown to induce a potent sequence-specific inhibition of gene function in diverse invertebrate and vertebrate species. The homology-dependent posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) caused by the introduction of transgenes in plants may be mediated by dsRNA. The analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans mutants impaired with dsRNA-mediated silencing and studies in plants implicate a biological role of dsRNA-mediated silencing as a transposon-repression and antiviral mechanism. RESULTS We investigated the silencing of testis-expressed Stellate genes by paralogous Su(Ste) tandem repeats, which are known to be involved in the maintenance of male fertility in Drosophila melanogaster. We found that both strands of repressor Su(Ste) repeats are transcribed, producing sense and antisense RNA. The Stellate silencing is associated with the presence of short Su(Ste) RNAs. Cotransfection experiments revealed that Su(Ste) dsRNA can target and eliminate Stellate transcripts in Drosophila cell culture. The short fragment of Stellate gene that is homologous to Su(Ste) was shown to be sufficient to confer Su(Ste)-dependent silencing of a reporter construct in testes. We demonstrated that Su(Ste) dsRNA-mediated silencing affects not only Stellate expression but also the level of sense Su(Ste) RNA providing a negative autogenous regulation of Su(Ste) expression. Mutation in the spindle-E gene relieving Stellate silencing also leads to a derepression of the other genomic tandem repeats and retrotransposons in the germline. CONCLUSIONS Homology-dependent gene silencing was shown to be used to inhibit Stellate gene expression in the D. melanogaster germline, ensuring male fertility. dsRNA-mediated silencing may provide a basis for negative autogenous control of gene expression. The related surveillance system is implicated to control expression of retrotransposons in the germline.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d5f4cc024b27f9d9fbb988e8ede67ce9712e42ea

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Citations in the corpus

The small RNA profile during Drosophila melanogaster development. (2003, methodology): “The presence of long siRNAs was however nomes. documented by Northern blotting for Su(Ste) derived siRNAs (Aravin et al., 2001).”
Novel and Stress-Regulated MicroRNAs and Other Small RNAs from Arabidopsis (2004, background): “In addition to PTGS, siRNAs may be involved in transcriptional gene silencing by directing DNA methylation and chromatin modification (Mette et al., 2000; Aufsatz et al., 2002; Gong et al., 2002; Hamilton et al., 2002; Volpe et al., 2002; Zilberman et al., 2003).”
ATP requirements and small interfering RNA structure in the RNA interference pathway. (2001, positive): “(Wu-Scharf et al., 2000; Dalmay et al., 2001), and glucose, ATP levels were reduced ‫-000,5ف‬fold to Յ100 Stellate silencing in flies (Aravin et al., 2001).”
Silencing a cotton bollworm P450 monooxygenase gene by plant-mediated RNAi impairs larval tolerance of gossypol (2007, methodology): “, RNA interference (RNAi) has been developed as an effective tool in plants and animal”
Transposition Driven Genomic Heterogeneity in the Drosophila Brain: A Dissertation (2012, positive): “transcripts are usually degraded by post-transcriptional mechanisms using small complementary RNAs produced from the Suppressor of Stellate, Su[Ste] locus (Aravin et al., 2001; Aravin et al., 2004).”
The role of RNA interference in heterochromatic silencing (2004, background): “Many of the genes required for RNAi in Caenorhabditis elegans , Drosophila and Chlamydomonas are also required for transposon suppressio”
Specialized piRNA Pathways Act in Germline and Somatic Tissues of the Drosophila Ovary (2009, neutral): “…silencing of transposons in the Drosophila germline Cell 137, 522–535, May 1, 2009 ª2009 Elsevier Inc. 529 530 Cell 137, 522–535, May 1, 2009 ª2009 Elsevier Inc. (Aravin et al., 2004; Aravin et al., 2001; Gillespie and Berg, 1995; Kennerdell et al., 2002; Klenov et al., 2007; Vagin et al., 2006).”