Rna interference

Developmental dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects reading ability caused by genetic and non-genetic factors. Amongst the susceptibility genes identified to date, KIAA0319 is a prime candidate. RNA-interference experiments in rats suggested its involvement in cortical migration but we could not confirm these findings in Kiaa0319-mutant mice. Given its homologous gene Kiaa0319L (AU040320) has also been proposed to play a role in neuronal migration, we interrogated whether absence of AU040320 alone or together with KIAA0319 affects migration in the developing brain...

RNA interference is a powerful tool against corn rootworm. Adults and neonates of southern corn rootworm, Diabrotica undecimpunctata howardi Barber (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), were exposed to the LC50 of vATPase-A and Snf7 double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs), and the effects on female fecundity, egg viability, male fitness as measured by sperm viability and mating capacity, larval recovery along with dry weight, and instar determination 10 d after exposure to dsRNA, were determined. Significant reductions were observed for a number of parameters in dsRNA-exposed rootworms relative to control treatments...

The phytohormone gibberellin (GA) plays essential roles in plant growth and development. Here, we report that OsINO80, a conserved ATP-dependent chromatin-remodeling factor in rice (Oryza sativa), functions in diverse biological processes and GA biosynthesis. OsINO80-knockdown mutants, derived from either T-DNA insertion or RNA interference, display typical GA-deficient phenotypes, including dwarfism, reduced cell length, late flowering, retarded seed germination and impaired reproductive development. Consistently, transcriptome analyses reveal that OsINO80 knockdown results in down-regulation by more than two-fold of over 1000 genes, including the GA biosynthesis genes CPS1 and GA3ox2, and the dwarf phenotype of OsINO80-knockdown mutants can be rescued by the application of exogenous GA3...

Aquaporin-1 (AQP1) is a proangiogenic water channel protein promoting endothelial cell migration. We previously reported that AQP1 silencing by RNA interference reduces angiogenesis-dependent primary tumour growth in a mouse model of melanoma. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that AQP1 inhibition also affects animal survival and lung nodule formation. Melanoma was induced by injecting B16F10 cells into the back of C57BL6J mice. Intratumoural injection of AQP1 siRNA and CTRL siRNA was performed 10 days after tumour cell implantation...

Tectonic family member 1 (TCTN1) is one of the tectonic family members, and a regulator of the hedgehog signaling pathway, which has been studied in various cancer types, including prostate and pancreatic cancer. However, its function in thyroid cancer has not been well documented. Therefore, the present study investigated the function of TCTN1 in thyroid cancer using a loss-of-function assay. Lentivirus-mediated RNA interference was applied to downregulate TCTN1 in the thyroid cancer cell lines, CAL62 and 8305C...

Diapause is a physiological adaptation that allows an organism to survive adverse environmental conditions. Diapause occurs at a specific developmental stage in each species. There are few reports regarding the molecular regulatory mechanism of nymphal diapause in Laodelphax striatellus, which is an important graminaceous crop pest. Our previous studies identified the conditions for nymphal diapause in this species. Here, we combined RNA sequencing transcriptomics and quantitative proteomic analyses to identify nymphal diapause-related genes and proteins...

RNA interference defends against RNA viruses and retro-elements within an organism's genome. It is triggered by duplex siRNAs, of which one strand is selected to confer sequence-specificity to the RNA induced silencing complex (RISC). In Drosophila, Dicer-2 (Dcr-2) and the double-stranded RNA binding domain (dsRBD) protein R2D2 form the RISC loading complex (RLC) and select one strand of exogenous siRNAs according to the relative thermodynamic stability of base-pairing at either end. Through genome editing we demonstrate that Loqs-PD, the Drosophila homolog of human TAR RNA binding protein (TRBP) and a paralog of R2D2, forms an alternative RLC with Dcr-2 that is required for strand choice of endogenous siRNAs in S2 cells...

RNA interference (RNAi) controls arbovirus infections in mosquitoes. Two different RNAi pathways are involved in antiviral responses: the PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA) and exogenous short interfering RNA (exo-siRNA) pathways, which are characterized by the production of virus-derived small RNAs of 25-29 and 21 nucleotides, respectively. The exo-siRNA pathway is considered to be the key mosquito antiviral response mechanism. In Aedes aegypti-derived cells, Zika virus (ZIKV)-specific siRNAs were produced and loaded into the exo-siRNA pathway effector protein Argonaute 2 (Ago2); although the knockdown of Ago2 did not enhance virus replication...

Leaf senescence is an important physiological process involving the degradation of a number of metabolites and their remobilization to new reproductive and storage organs. NAC (NAM, ATAF, and CUC) transcription factors are reported as important regulators of the senescence process. Here, we describe the identification and functional characterization of the NAC transcription factor gene, OsY37 (Oryza sativa Yellow37, ONAC011) obtained from Oryza sativa cv. indica, and japonica. We created transgenic plants expressing the OsY37 gene under the control of a strong and constitutive CaMV35S promoter...

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus and has historically been reported to cause mild symptomatic diseases during human infections. More recently, the explosion of microcephaly among infants born to ZIKV-infected women has made ZIKV a global public health concern. While ZIKV causes acute human diseases, infections of vector mosquitoes are basically non-pathogenic, allowing persistent infections and conferring lifelong ability to transmit the virus. Recent studies have revealed that DNA forms of arboviral RNA genomes play a significant role in viral persistence in mosquitoes...

Contemporary research has focused on the function of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in carcinogenesis. However, the involvement of the lncRNA, steroid receptor RNA activator (SRA), in cervical carcinogenesis remains to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the bio-functional consequences of lncRNA SRA knockdown in vitro. To verify the role of lncRNA SRA in cell proliferation, migration, and invasion, lncRNA RNA interference was utilized to knock down lncRNA SRA expression in cervical cancer cell lines, resulting in our discovery that lncRNA SRA knockdown inhibited cell proliferation, cell migration and tumor invasion in the cervical cancer cell lines...

Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most common malignant diseases worldwide. Although significant progress has been made in the early detection and treatment of GC over the past decades, the prognosis is still not satisfactory and the underlying mechanisms of carcinogenesis remain unknown. Long non-coding RNA MIAT has been established as a key player in the regulation of various biological and pathological processes including chronic lymphocytic leukemias, acute myocardial infarction and neuroendocrine prostate cancer...

Previous studies have indicated that cellular senescence is a critical underlying mechanism of intervertebral disc degeneration. However, the precise mechanism by which cellular senescence accelerates disc degeneration has not been fully elucidated. Caveolin‑1 has recently emerged as an important regulator of cellular senescence. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether caveolin‑1 is involved in nucleus pulposus (NP) cellular senescence during oxidative stress. PCR was used to detect caveolin‑1 mRNA expression and protein expression was detected by western blotting...

Apoptosis is considered to serve an important role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis. The aim of the present study was to construct Bcl-2-short hairpin (sh)RNA expression vectors and transfect them into human synovial sarcoma SW982 cells, in order to screen for an effective interference sequence and analyze the effects of this interference on the expression levels of Bcl-2 and other molecules associated with the mitochondrial apoptosis pathway. Three different shRNAs (Bcl-2-sh1, 2 and 3) were designed according to the human Bcl-2 mRNA target sequence and were transformed into competent DH5α Escherichia coli cells following the construction of an expression vector, which was then transfected into SW982 cells...

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are rare cells, which housed in the adult bone marrow. They maintain all types of differentiated blood cells throughout life. Due to limited availability of HSCs for transplantation, treatment of various inherited bone marrow disorders and anemia requires the development of HSC expansion and gene editing technologies. To this end, various studies addressed the use of cytokines and growth factors for HSC expansion. Major hurdle with these studies was found to be spontaneous differentiation of HSCs into different lineages during ex vivo procedure...

The transactivating response element (TAR) structure of the nascent HIV-1 transcript is critically involved in the recruitment of inactive positive transcription elongation factor b (P-TEFb) to the promoter proximal paused RNA polymerase II. The viral transactivator Tat is responsible for subsequent P-TEFb activation in order to start efficient viral transcription elongation. In the absence of the viral transactivator of transcription (Tat), e.g., during latency or in early stages of HIV transcription, TAR mediates an interaction of P-TEFb with its inhibitor hexamethylene bis-acetamide-inducible proteins 1 (HEXIM1), keeping P-TEFb in its inactive form...

To avoid negative effects of transposable element (TE) proliferation, plants epigenetically silence TEs using a number of mechanisms, including RNA-directed DNA methylation. These epigenetic modifications can extend outside the boundaries of TE insertions and lead to silencing of nearby genes, resulting in a trade-off between TE silencing and interference with nearby gene regulation. Therefore, purifying selection is expected to remove silenced TE insertions near genes more efficiently and prevent their accumulation within a population...

After infection or invasion is recognized, biochemical mediators act in signaling insect immune functions. These include biogenic amines, insect cytokines, eicosanoids, and nitric oxide (NO). Treating insects or isolated hemocyte populations with different mediators often leads to similar results. Separate treatments with an insect cytokine, 2 biogenic amines, and an eicosanoid lead to a single result, hemocyte spreading, understood in terms of intracellular cross-talk among these signaling systems. This study focuses on the cross-talk between NO and eicosanoid signaling in our model insect, Spodoptera exigua...

As the most common primary central nervous system tumor, glioma is characterized by high levels of mortality and migration. Unclear boundary with normal brain tissue results in poor treatment. The mammalian diaphanous-related formin 1 (Diaph1) which belongs to formin-homology protein family, is a target of RhoA and involved in a number of actin-related biological processes, which abnormally expressed in pathological conditions in a number of tumors. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that Diaph1 was overexpressed in glioma tissues compared with normal human brain tissue...

Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies have led to a massive accumulation of genomic and transcriptomic data from patients and healthy individuals. The major challenge ahead is to understand the functional significance of the elements of the human genome and transcriptome, and implications for diagnosis and treatment. Genetic screens in mammalian cells are a powerful approach to systematically elucidate gene function in health and disease states. In particular, recently developed CRISPR/Cas9-based screening approaches have enormous potential to uncover mechanisms and therapeutic strategies for human diseases...