Identification of novel siRNA pathways involved in plant environmental stress responses

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Arabidopsis transcriptome analysis under drought, cold, high-salinity stress and ABA treatment conditions, using tiling array, showed that approximately 6,000 novel transcripts existed in the antisense strand of the AGI code genes and they were induced under abiotic stress. To study the biogenesis mechanism of the antisense RNAs, accumulation of RD29A antisense RNA was analyzed, using RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RDR) mutant series. Finally, we found that rdr1/2/6 mutation decreased accumulation of RD29A antisense RNA. RNase protection and RNA decay analyses showed that RD29A antisense RNA formed double stranded RNA and promoted degradation of RD29A mRNA. However, RNA-seq analysis did not detect siRNA accumulation in this locus. These results show that antisense RNAs are produced by RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RDR) 1/2/6 without involving siRNA generation.