A novel repeat-associated small interfering RNA-mediated silencing pathway downregulates complementary sense gypsy transcripts in somatic cells of the Drosophila ovary.

ABSTRACT: Replication of the gypsy endogenous retrovirus involves contamination of the female germ line by adjacent somatic tissues. This is prevented by flam, an as-yet-uncloned heterochromatic pericentromeric locus, at the level of transcript accumulation in these somatic ovarian tissues. We tested the effect of a presumptive RNA silencing mechanism on the accumulation of RNAs produced by constructs containing various gypsy sequences and report that the efficiency of silencing is indeed correlated with the amount of complementary RNAs, 25 to 30 nucleotides in length, in the ovary. For instance, while these RNAs were found to display a three- to fivefold excess of the antisense strands, only the transcripts that contain the complementary sense gypsy sequences could be repressed, indicating that the

SUBMITTER: Pelisson A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1797544 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature