It has been over a decade since the first observation that small non-coding RNAs can functionally modulate epigenetic states in human cells to achieve functional transcriptional gene silencing (TGS). TGS is mechanistically distinct from the RNA interference (RNAi) gene-silencing pathway. TGS can result in long-term stable epigenetic modifications to gene expression that can be passed on to daug...

Diatoms are a major but poorly understood phytoplankton group. The recent completion of two whole genome sequences has revealed that they contain unique combinations of genes, likely recruited during their history as secondary endosymbionts, as well as by horizontal gene transfer from bacteria. A major limitation for the study of diatom biology and gene function is the lack of tools to generate...

The past decade has seen intense scientific interest in non-coding RNAs. In particular, the discovery and subsequent exploitation of gene silencing via RNA interference (RNAi) has revolutionized the way in which gene expression is now studied and understood. It is now well established that post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) by the microRNA (miRNA) and other RNAi-associated pathways repr...

MicroRNAs are responsible for post-transcriptional gene silencing as part of critical cellular pathways and intercellular coordination, for example during embryonic development. Yet, the basic mechanism by which this silencing is accomplished is still not understood. For example, it is not known to what extent and through what process does the suppression of protein accumulation accompany a red...

RNA interference (RNAi), the double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) triggered post-transcriptional gene silencing, is becoming a powerful tool for reverse genetics studies. Stable RNAi, induced by the expression of inverted repeat (IR) transgenes, has been achieved in protozoa, algae, fungi, plants, and metazoans. However, the level of gene silencing is often quite variable, depending on the type of const...

Somatic cells are equipped with different silencing mechanisms that protect the genome against retrotransposons. In Drosophila melanogaster, a silencing pathway implicating the argonaute protein PIWI represses retrotransposons in cells surrounding the oocyte, whereas a PIWI-independent pathway is involved in other somatic tissues. Here, we show that these two silencing mechanisms result in dist...

Small RNAs mediate a diverse pot-pourri of post-transcriptional silencing mechanisms, ranging from 'classical' RNA interference (RNAi), to gene repression by microRNAs (miRNAs), to maintenance of genomic stability by repeat-associated small RNAs. Here, we review recent findings on the function of miR-155, particularly its roles in mammalian innate and adaptive immunity, viral infection and onco...

RNA interference (RNAi) is a gene silencing mechanism that acts at both the posttranscriptional and transcriptional levels. We have recently identified an RNA-containing complex, named RNA-induced transcriptional silencing (RITS), that directly links RNAi to transcriptional gene silencing in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Here we review the affinity purification methods we use to isolate RITS and d...

RNA interference (RNAi) is the phenomenon that double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) induces post-transcriptional sequence-specific gene silencing in eukaryote."2] During the process of RNAi, long dsRNA is cleaved into -21 nt small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), and the siRNAs then guide sequencespecific mRNA degradation. Since the discovery in Caenorhabditis etegans,3] RNAi has been shown to eccur in many e...