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Comment
. 2016 Dec 15;30(24):2649-2650.
doi: 10.1101/gad.294900.116.

Targeting Argonaute to chromatin

Jered M Wendte  1 , Craig S Pikaard  1   2   3
Affiliations
Comment

Targeting Argonaute to chromatin

Jered M Wendte et al. Genes Dev. .

Abstract

In many eukaryotes, siRNAs bound to Argonaute proteins guide chromatin-modifying enzymes to complementary loci, resulting in transcriptional gene silencing. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that siRNAs base-pair with longer RNAs produced at target loci, but the possibility that siRNAs base-pair directly with DNA remains an attractive hypothesis. In a recent study, Shimada et al. (pp. 2571-2580) conducted experiments that address these alternative hypotheses, yielding additional evidence that fission yeast siRNA-Argonaute silencing complexes are recruited to target loci exclusively via interactions with nascent transcripts.

Keywords: RNAi; epigenetics; heterochromatin; nascent transcript; noncoding RNA.

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References

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