A genetic link between co-suppression and RNA interference in C. elegans

René F. Ketting and Ronald H. A. Plasterk ()
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René F. Ketting: The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Centre for Biomedical Genetics
Ronald H. A. Plasterk: The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Centre for Biomedical Genetics

Nature, 2000, vol. 404, issue 6775, 296-298

Abstract: Abstract Originally discovered in plants1,2, the phenomenon of co-suppression by transgenic DNA has since been observed in many organisms from fungi3 to animals4,5,6,7: introduction of transgenic copies of a gene results in reduced expression of the transgene as well as the endogenous gene. The effect depends on sequence identity between transgene and endogenous gene. Some cases of co-suppression resemble RNA interference (the experimental silencing of genes by the introduction of double-stranded RNA)8, as RNA seems to be both an important initiator and a target in these processes9,10,11,12,13. Here we show that co-suppression in Caenorhabditis elegans is also probably mediated by RNA molecules. Both RNA interference14,15 and co-suppression16 have been implicated in the silencing of transposons. We now report that mutants of C. elegans that are defective in transposon silencing and RNA interference (mut-2, mut-7, mut-8 and mut-9) are in addition resistant to co-suppression. This indicates that RNA interference and co-suppression in C. elegans may be mediated at least in part by the same molecular machinery, possibly through RNA-guided degradation of messenger RNA molecules.

Date: 2000
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DOI: 10.1038/35005113

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