Diversification of the core RNA interference machinery in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and the role of DCL1 in transposon silencing.

ABSTRACT: Small RNA-guided gene silencing is an evolutionarily conserved process that operates by a variety of molecular mechanisms. In multicellular eukaryotes, the core components of RNA-mediated silencing have significantly expanded and diversified, resulting in partly distinct pathways for the epigenetic control of gene expression and genomic parasites. In contrast, many unicellular organisms with small nuclear genomes seem to have lost entirely the RNA-silencing machinery or have retained only a basic set of components. We report here that Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a unicellular eukaryote with a relatively large nuclear genome, has undergone extensive duplication of Dicer and Argonaute polypeptides after the divergence of the green algae and land plant lineages. Chlamydomonas encodes three Dic

SUBMITTER: Casas-Mollano JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2390644 | biostudies-literature | 2008 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature