Article abstract


Nature Structural & Molecular Biology 15, 1015 - 1023 (2008)
Published online: 7 September 2008 | doi:10.1038/nsmb.1481

TRAMP-mediated RNA surveillance prevents spurious entry of RNAs into the Schizosaccharomyces pombe siRNA pathway

Marc Bühler1,3,4, Noah Spies2,4, David P Bartel2 & Danesh Moazed1


In the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery is required to generate small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) that mediate heterochromatic gene silencing. Efficient silencing also requires the TRAMP complex, which contains the noncanonical Cid14 poly(A) polymerase and targets aberrant RNAs for degradation. Here we use high-throughput sequencing to analyze Argonaute-associated small RNAs (sRNAs) in both the presence and absence of Cid14. Most sRNAs in fission yeast start with a 5' uracil, and we argue these are loaded most efficiently into Argonaute. In wild-type cells most sRNAs match to repeated regions of the genome, whereas in cid14Delta cells the sRNA profile changes to include major new classes of sRNAs originating from ribosomal RNAs and a tRNA. Thus, Cid14 prevents certain abundant RNAs from becoming substrates for the RNAi machinery, thereby freeing the RNAi machinery to act on its proper targets.

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  1. Department of Cell Biology, 240 Longwood Avenue, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115 USA.
  2. Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, 9 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
  3. Present address: Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Maulbeerstrasse 66, 4058 Basel, Switzerland.
  4. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Correspondence to: David P Bartel2 e-mail: dbartel@wi.mit.edu

Correspondence to: Danesh Moazed1 e-mail: danesh@hms.harvard.edu



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