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RNA interference

A feast of knowledge

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 6, pages 358–359 (2005)Cite this article

First, the authors generated a so-called C. elegans 'RNAi sensor' strain, which expresses both a hairpin gfp double stranded (ds)RNA as well as a gfp reporter gene in epithelial cells. In the wild-type RNAi sensor strain, the gfp dsRNA causes the degradation of gfp mRNA, and the worms are non-fluorescent. However, if the worms are fed a bacterial clone that expresses an interfering dsRNA, and if the knocked-down target gene is crucial to the RNAi process, the gfp mRNA is translated and the worm fluoresces. By feeding the worms individual bacterial clones that expressed specific dsRNAs, the authors were able to knock down most of the genes in the C. elegans genome, and could identify those genes that were integral to the RNAi pathway.

Besides genes that are known to be involved in RNAi and that encode proteins with RNA-interaction domains, a link with downstream RNA processing was uncovered — RNAi-related genes encode many factors that bind to and process pre-mRNA and that mediate nonsense-mediated decay (a process that destroys mRNAs with premature termination codons).

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Kim, J. K. et al. Functional genomic analysis of RNA interference in Caenorhabditis elegans. Science 24 Mar 2005 (10.1126/science.1109267)

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Authors
  1. Shannon Amoils
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Amoils, S. A feast of knowledge. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 6, 358–359 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm1651

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