Despite the prominent role of endo-siRNAs in transposon silencing, their expression is not limited to these “nonself” DNA elements. Transcripts of protein-coding genes (“self” DNA) in some cases also produce endo-siRNAs in yeast, plants, and animals (Piatek and Werner 2014). How cells distinguish these two populations of siRNAs to prevent unwanted silencing of active genes in animals is not well understood. To address this question, we inserted various self-gene or gfp fragments into an LTR retrotransposon that produces abundant siRNAs and examined the propensity of these gene fragments to produce ectopic siRNAs in C. elegans germline. We found that fragments of germline genes are generally protected from production of ectopic siRNAs. This phenomenon, which we termed “target-directed suppression of siRNA production” (or siRNA suppression), is dependent on the germline expression of target mRNA and requires germline P-granule components. We found that siRNA suppression can also occur to naturally produced endo-siRNAs. We suggest that siRNA suppression plays an important role in regulating siRNA expression and preventing self-genes from aberrant epigenetic silencing.
Target-dependent suppression of siRNA production modulates the levels of endogenous siRNAs in C. elegans germline
Present address: Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, NYU Langone Health, New York, NY 10010, USA.
Present address: Genetics and Epigenetics Program, The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Present address: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
These authors contributed equally to this work
- Award Group:
- Funder(s): Office of Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health
- Award Id(s): R01GM111752
- Funder(s):
Currently Viewing Accepted Manuscript - Newer Version Available
Zoran Gajic, Diljeet Kaur, Julie Ni, Zhaorong Zhu, Anna Zhebrun, Maria Gajic, Matthew Kim, Julia Hong, Monika Priyadarshini, Christian Frøkjær-Jensen, Sam Gu; Target-dependent suppression of siRNA production modulates the levels of endogenous siRNAs in C. elegans germline. Development 2022; dev.200692. doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.200692
Download citation file:
Advertisement
Call for papers: Uncovering Developmental Diversity
Development invites you to submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue: Uncovering Developmental Diversity. This issue will be coordinated by our academic Editor Cassandra Extavour (Harvard University, USA) alongside two Guest Editors: Liam Dolan (Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austria) and Karen Sears (University of California Los Angeles, USA).
Choose Development in 2024
In this Editorial, Development Editor-in-Chief James Briscoe and Executive Editor Katherine Brown explain how you support your community by publishing in Development and how the journal champions serious science, community connections and progressive publishing.
Journal Meeting: From Stem Cells to Human Development
Register now for the 2024 Development Journal Meeting From Stem Cells to Human Development. Early-bird registration deadline: 3 May. Abstract submission deadline: 21 June.
Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology
This collaborative Perspective, the result of a workshop held in 2023, proposes a set of community actions to increase the visibility of the developmental biology field. The authors make recommendations for new funding streams, frameworks for collaborations and mechanisms by which members of the community can promote themselves and their research.
Read & Publish Open Access publishing: what authors say
We have had great feedback from authors who have benefitted from our Read & Publish agreement with their institution and have been able to publish Open Access with us without paying an APC. Read what they had to say.