Asymmetric bulges within hairpin RNA transgenes influence small RNA size, secondary siRNA production and viral defence.

ABSTRACT: Small RNAs (sRNAs) are essential for normal plant development and range in size classes of 21-24 nucleotides. The 22nt small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and miRNAs are processed by Dicer-like 2 (DCL2) and DCL1 respectively and can initiate secondary siRNA production from the target transcript. 22nt siRNAs are under-represented due to competition between DCL2 and DCL4, while only a small number of 22nt miRNAs exist. Here we produce abundant 22nt siRNAs and other siRNA size classes using long hairpin RNA (hpRNA) transgenes. By introducing asymmetric bulges into the antisense strand of hpRNA, we shifted the dominant siRNA size class from 21nt of the traditional hpRNA to 22, 23 and 24nt of the asymmetric hpRNAs. The asymmetric hpRNAs effectively silenced a β-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter transgen

SUBMITTER: Zhang D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11381321 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature