Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Mar 20:3:17036.
doi: 10.1038/nplants.2017.36.

The poly(A) tail blocks RDR6 from converting self mRNAs into substrates for gene silencing

Kyungmin Baeg  1   2 , Hiro-Oki Iwakawa  1   2 , Yukihide Tomari  1   2
Affiliations

The poly(A) tail blocks RDR6 from converting self mRNAs into substrates for gene silencing

Kyungmin Baeg et al. Nat Plants. .

Abstract

It remains unclear how post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) in plants discriminates aberrant RNAs from canonical messenger RNAs (mRNAs). The key step of plant PTGS is the conversion of aberrant RNAs into double-stranded RNAs by RNA-DEPENDENT RNA POLYMERASE6 (RDR6). Here, we show that RDR6 itself selects aberrant poly(A)-less mRNAs over canonical polyadenylated mRNAs as templates at the initiation step of complementary strand synthesis. This mechanism can be viewed as an innate safeguard against 'self-attack' by PTGS.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

MeSH terms