MicroRNA Maturation and MicroRNA Target Gene Expression Regulation Are Severely Disrupted in Soybean dicer-like1 Double Mutants.

ABSTRACT: Small nonprotein-coding microRNAs (miRNAs) are present in most eukaryotes and are central effectors of RNA silencing-mediated mechanisms for gene expression regulation. In plants, DICER-LIKE1 (DCL1) is the founding member of a highly conserved family of RNase III-like endonucleases that function as core machinery proteins to process hairpin-like precursor transcripts into mature miRNAs, small regulatory RNAs, 21-22 nucleotides in length. Zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) were used to generate single and double-mutants of putative soybean DCL1 homologs, DCL1a and DCL1b, to confirm their functional role(s) in the soybean miRNA pathway. Neither DCL1 single mutant, dcl1a or dcl1b plants, exhibited a pronounced morphological or molecular phenotype. However, the dcl1a/dcl1b double mutant expressed a

SUBMITTER: Curtin SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4751560 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature