Endogenous siRNAs Derived from Transposons and mRNAs in Drosophila Somatic Cells
Abstract
Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) direct RNA interference (RNAi) in eukaryotes. In flies, somatic cells produce siRNAs from exogenous double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) as a defense against viral infection. We identified endogenous siRNAs (endo-siRNAs), 21 nucleotides in length, that correspond to transposons and heterochromatic sequences in the somatic cells of Drosophila melanogaster. We also detected endo-siRNAs complementary to messenger RNAs (mRNAs); these siRNAs disproportionately mapped to the complementary regions of overlapping mRNAs predicted to form double-stranded RNA in vivo. Normal accumulation of somatic endo-siRNAs requires the siRNA-generating ribonuclease Dicer-2 and the RNAi effector protein Argonaute2 (Ago2). We propose that endo-siRNAs generated by the fly RNAi pathway silence selfish genetic elements in the soma, much as Piwi-interacting RNAs do in the germ line.
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We thank A. Boucher and S. Ma for technical assistance; G. Farley for encouragement, support, and technical assistance; and Roche Applied Science for high-throughput sequencing. P.D.Z. is a W. M. Keck Foundation Young Scholar in Medical Research. Supported by NIH grants GM62862 and GM65236 (P.D.Z.), GM080625 (J.X. and Z.W.), and HG003367 (S.L.); EMBO long-term (ALTF 910-2004) and Human Frontier Science Program (LT00575/2005-L) fellowships (H.S.); and a National Research Service Award predoctoral MD/PhD fellowship from the National Institute on Aging (F30AG030283) (M.D.H.). NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus accession numbers for sequence and abundance data are GSE9389 and GSE11019, respectively.
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Science
Volume 320 | Issue 5879
23 May 2008
23 May 2008
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American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Received: 5 March 2008
Accepted: 31 March 2008
Published in print: 23 May 2008
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- Megha Ghildiyal et al.
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