BACKGROUND Beyond their role in post-transcriptional gene silencing, Dicer and Argonaute, two components of the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery, were shown to be involved in epigenetic regulation of centromeric heterochromatin and transcriptional gene silencing. In particular, RNAi mechanisms appear to play a role in repeat induced silencing and some aspects of Polycomb-mediated gene silencin...

micrornas are tiny, 18-25 nucleotides in length, non-coding rna molecules preserved throughout evolution. these molecules primarily control gene expression at the post-transcriptional and transcriptional levels. micrornas control target gene expression by a phenomenon known as rna interference. rna interference based therapeutics that utilize target gene silencing/degradation by specific micror...

RNA interference (RNAi) is a post-transcriptional gene silencing mechanism that widely exists in eukaryotes. RNAi is initiated by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) or microRNA (miRNA) and degrades specific messenger RNAs (mRNAs) by RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), and then it specifically impairs the expression of target genes [1,2]. Therefore, RNAi has been becoming an effective tool to explore...

A mutation that disrupts post-transcriptional gene silencing in Neurospora crassa has been found to affect the homologue of a plant-encoded RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. This enzyme may produce a specificity determinant of gene silencing and mediate an epigenetic conversion at the RNA level.

one of the most efficient mechanisms by which plants protect themselves from invading virusesis the specific rna-dependent silencing pathway termed post-transcriptional gene silencing(ptgs). in this mechanism, resistance to a virus is engineered through the expression of asegment of the virus genomein transgenic plants. potato virusy (pvy) is one of the mostdamaging viruses of potato, infecting...