Article
- The EMBO Journal (2006) 25, 2768 - 2780
- doi:10.1038/sj.emboj.7601164
Published online: 25 May 2006
Subject Category:
Small RNA binding is a common strategy to suppress RNA silencing by several viral suppressors
Lóránt Lakatos1, Tibor Csorba1, Vitantonio Pantaleo1, Elisabeth J Chapman2, James C Carrington2,3, Yu-Ping Liu2, Valerian V Dolja2,3, Lourdes Fernández Calvino4, Juan José López-Moya5 and József Burgyán1
- Agricultural Biotechnology Center, Plant Biology Institute, Gödöllõ, Hungary
- Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
- Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
- Departamento de Biología de Plantas, CIB, CSIC Ramiro de Maeztu, Madrid, Spain
- Laboratorio de Genetica Molecular Vegetal, Consorcio CSIC-IRTA. IBMB, CSIC. Jordi Girona, Barcelona, Spain
Correspondence to:
József Burgyán, Agricultural Biotechnology Center, Plant Biology Institute, PO Box 411, 2101 Gödöllõ, Hungary. Tel.: +36 28 526 155; Fax: +36 28 526 145; E-mail: burgyan@abc.hu
Received 10 October 2005; Accepted 3 May 2006
Abstract
RNA silencing is an evolutionarily conserved system that functions as an antiviral mechanism in higher plants and insects. To counteract RNA silencing, viruses express silencing suppressors that interfere with both siRNA- and microRNA-guided silencing pathways. We used comparative in vitro and in vivo approaches to analyse the molecular mechanism of suppression by three well-studied silencing suppressors. We found that silencing suppressors p19, p21 and HC-Pro each inhibit the intermediate step of RNA silencing via binding to siRNAs, although the molecular features required for duplex siRNA binding differ among the three proteins. None of the suppressors affected the activity of preassembled RISC complexes. In contrast, each suppressor uniformly inhibited the siRNA-initiated RISC assembly pathway by preventing RNA silencing initiator complex formation.
Keywords:
- RNA silencing,
- small RNA binding,
- viral suppressors
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