User talk:Sirozha/RNAi

Различия между организмами


Организмы отличаются по способности воспринимать чужеродные двуцепочечные РНК и использовать их в процессе РНК-интерференции. Эффекты РНК-интерференции у растений и C. elegans (но не у дрозофилы и млекопитающих) могут наследоваться, а могут быть системными. У растений система РНК-интерференции может распространять малые интерферирующие РНК по плазмодесмам (каналам в клеточных стенках, осуществляющих коммуникацию и транспорт). Наследование обеспечивается метилированием промоторов, измененный паттерн метилирования передается в результате деления дочерним клеткам. A broad general distinction between plants and animals lies in the targeting of endogenously produced miRNAs; in plants, miRNAs are usually perfectly or nearly perfectly complementary to their target genes and induce direct mRNA cleavage by RISC, while animals' miRNAs tend to be more divergent in sequence and induce translational repression. This translational effect may be produced by inhibiting the interactions of translation initiation factors with the messenger RNA’s polyadenine tail.

Some eukaryotic protozoa such as Leishmania major and Trypanosoma cruzi lack the RNAi pathway entirely. Most or all of the components are also missing in some fungi, most notably the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A recent study however reveals the presence of RNAi in other budding yeast species such as Saccharomyces castellii and Candida albicans, further demonstrating that inducing two RNAi-related proteins from S. castellii facilitates RNAi in S. cerevisiae. That certain ascomycetes and basidiomycetes are missing RNA interference pathways indicates that proteins required for RNA silencing have been lost independently from many fungal lineages, possibly due to the evolution of a novel pathway with similar function, or to the lack of selective advantage in certain niches.

Related prokaryotic systems
Gene expression in prokaryotes is influenced by an RNA-based system similar in some respects to RNAi. Here, RNA-encoding genes control mRNA abundance or translation by producing a complementary RNA that binds to an mRNA by base pairing. However these regulatory RNAs are not generally considered to be analogous to miRNAs because the dicer enzyme is not involved. It has been suggested that CRISPR systems in prokaryotes are analogous to eukaryotic RNA interference systems, although none of the protein components are orthologous.

Иммунитет
RNA interference is a vital part of the immune response to viruses and other foreign genetic material, especially in plants where it may also prevent self-propagation by transposons. Plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana express multiple dicer homologs that are specialized to react differently when the plant is exposed to different types of viruses. Even before the RNAi pathway was fully understood, it was known that induced gene silencing in plants could spread throughout the plant in a systemic effect, and could be transferred from stock to scion plants via grafting. This phenomenon has since been recognized as a feature of the plant adaptive immune system, and allows the entire plant to respond to a virus after an initial localized encounter. In response, many plant viruses have evolved elaborate mechanisms that suppress the RNAi response in plant cells. These include viral proteins that bind short double-stranded RNA fragments with single-stranded overhang ends, such as those produced by the action of dicer. Some plant genomes also express endogenous siRNAs in response to infection by specific types of bacteria. These effects may be part of a generalized response to pathogens that downregulates any metabolic processes in the host that aid the infection process.

Although animals generally express fewer variants of the dicer enzyme than plants, RNAi in some animals has also been shown to produce an antiviral response. In both juvenile and adult Drosophila, RNA interference is important in antiviral innate immunity and is active against pathogens such as Drosophila X virus. A similar role in immunity may operate in C. elegans, as argonaute proteins are upregulated in response to viruses and worms that overexpress components of the RNAi pathway are resistant to viral infection.

The role of RNA interference in mammalian innate immunity is poorly understood, and relatively little data is available. However, the existence of viruses that encode genes able to suppress the RNAi response in mammalian cells may be evidence in favour of an RNAi-dependent mammalian immune response. However, this hypothesis of RNAi-mediated immunity in mammals has been challenged as poorly substantiated. Alternative functions for RNAi in mammalian viruses also exist, such as miRNAs expressed by the herpes virus that may act as heterochromatin organization triggers to mediate viral latency.

Downregulation of genes
Endogenously expressed miRNAs, including both intronic and intergenic miRNAs, are most important in translational repression and in the regulation of development, especially on the timing of morphogenesis and the maintenance of undifferentiated or incompletely differentiated cell types such as stem cells. The role of endogenously expressed miRNA in downregulating gene expression was first described in C. elegans in 1993. In plants this function was discovered when the "JAW microRNA" of Arabidopsis was shown to be involved in the regulation of several genes that control plant shape. In plants, the majority of genes regulated by miRNAs are transcription factors; thus miRNA activity is particularly wide-ranging and regulates entire gene networks during development by modulating the expression of key regulatory genes, including transcription factors as well as F-box proteins. In many organisms, including humans, miRNAs have also been linked to the formation of tumors and dysregulation of the cell cycle. Here, miRNAs can function as both oncogenes and tumor suppressors.

Upregulation of genes
RNA sequences (siRNA and miRNA) that are complementary to parts of a promoter can increase gene transcription, a phenomenon dubbed RNA activation. Part of the mechanism for how these RNA upregulate genes is known: dicer and argonaute are involved, and there is histone demethylation.

Эволюция
Based on parsimony-based phylogenetic analysis, the most recent common ancestor of all eukaryotes most likely already possessed an early RNA interference pathway; the absence of the pathway in certain eukaryotes is thought to be a derived characteristic. This ancestral RNAi system probably contained at least one dicer-like protein, one argonaute, one PIWI protein, and an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase that may have also played other cellular roles. A large-scale comparative genomics study likewise indicates that the eukaryotic crown group already possessed these components, which may then have had closer functional associations with generalized RNA degradation systems such as the exosome. This study also suggests that the RNA-binding argonaute protein family, which is shared among eukaryotes, most archaea, and at least some bacteria (such as Aquifex aeolicus), is homologous to and originally evolved from components of the translation initiation system.

The ancestral function of the RNAi system is generally agreed to have been immune defense against exogenous genetic elements such as transposons and viral genomes. Related functions such as histone modification may have already been present in the ancestor of modern eukaryotes, although other functions such as regulation of development by miRNA are thought to have evolved later.

RNA interference genes, as components of the antiviral innate immune system in many eukaryotes, are involved in an evolutionary arms race with viral genes. Some viruses have evolved mechanisms for suppressing the RNAi response in their host cells, an effect that has been noted particularly for plant viruses. Studies of evolutionary rates in Drosophila have shown that genes in the RNAi pathway are subject to strong directional selection and are among the fastest-evolving genes in the Drosophila genome.

Выключение генов
The RNA interference pathway is often exploited in experimental biology to study the function of genes in cell culture and in vivo in model organisms. Double-stranded RNA is synthesized with a sequence complementary to a gene of interest and introduced into a cell or organism, where it is recognized as exogenous genetic material and activates the RNAi pathway. Using this mechanism, researchers can cause a drastic decrease in the expression of a targeted gene. Studying the effects of this decrease can show the physiological role of the gene product. Since RNAi may not totally abolish expression of the gene, this technique is sometimes referred as a "knockdown", to distinguish it from "knockout" procedures in which expression of a gene is entirely eliminated.

Extensive efforts in computational biology have been directed toward the design of successful dsRNA reagents that maximize gene knockdown but minimize "off-target" effects. Off-target effects arise when an introduced RNA has a base sequence that can pair with and thus reduce the expression of multiple genes at a time. Such problems occur more frequently when the dsRNA contains repetitive sequences. It has been estimated from studying the genomes of H. sapiens, C. elegans, and S. pombe that about 10% of possible siRNAs will have substantial off-target effects. A multitude of software tools have been developed implementing algorithms for the design of general, mammal-specific, and virus-specific siRNAs that are automatically checked for possible cross-reactivity.

Depending on the organism and experimental system, the exogenous RNA may be a long strand designed to be cleaved by dicer, or short RNAs designed to serve as siRNA substrates. In most mammalian cells, shorter RNAs are used because long double-stranded RNA molecules induce the mammalian interferon response, a form of innate immunity that reacts nonspecifically to foreign genetic material. Mouse oocytes and cells from early mouse embryos lack this reaction to exogenous dsRNA and are therefore a common model system for studying gene-knockdown effects in mammals. Specialized laboratory techniques have also been developed to improve the utility of RNAi in mammalian systems by avoiding the direct introduction of siRNA, for example, by stable transfection with a plasmid encoding the appropriate sequence from which siRNAs can be transcribed, or by more elaborate lentiviral vector systems allowing the inducible activation or deactivation of transcription, known as conditional RNAi.

Функциональная геномика
Most functional genomics applications of RNAi in animals have used C. elegans and Drosophila, as these are the common model organisms in which RNAi is most effective. C. elegans is particularly useful for RNAi research for two reasons: firstly, the effects of the gene silencing are generally heritable, and secondly because delivery of the dsRNA is extremely simple. Through a mechanism whose details are poorly understood, bacteria such as E. coli that carry the desired dsRNA can be fed to the worms and will transfer their RNA payload to the worm via the intestinal tract. This "delivery by feeding" is just as effective at inducing gene silencing as more costly and time-consuming delivery methods, such as soaking the worms in dsRNA solution and injecting dsRNA into the gonads. Although delivery is more difficult in most other organisms, efforts are also underway to undertake large-scale genomic screening applications in cell culture with mammalian cells.

Approaches to the design of genome-wide RNAi libraries can require more sophistication than the design of a single siRNA for a defined set of experimental conditions. Artificial neural networks are frequently used to design siRNA libraries and to predict their likely efficiency at gene knockdown. Mass genomic screening is widely seen as a promising method for genome annotation and has triggered the development of high-throughput screening methods based on microarrays. However, the utility of these screens and the ability of techniques developed on model organisms to generalize to even closely related species has been questioned, for example from C. elegans to related parasitic nematodes.

Functional genomics using RNAi is a particularly attractive technique for genomic mapping and annotation in plants because many plants are polyploid, which presents substantial challenges for more traditional genetic engineering methods. For example, RNAi has been successfully used for functional genomics studies in bread wheat (which is hexaploid) as well as more common plant model systems Arabidopsis and maize.

Медицина
It may be possible to exploit RNA interference in therapy. Although it is difficult to introduce long dsRNA strands into mammalian cells due to the interferon response, the use of short interfering RNA mimics has been more successful. Among the first applications to reach clinical trials were in the treatment of macular degeneration and respiratory syncytial virus, RNAi has also been shown to be effective in the reversal of induced liver failure in mouse models.

Other proposed clinical uses center on antiviral therapies, including topical microbicide treatments that use RNAi to treat infection (at Harvard University Medical School; in mice, so far) by herpes simplex virus type 2 and the inhibition of viral gene expression in cancerous cells, knockdown of host receptors and coreceptors for HIV, the silencing of hepatitis A and hepatitis B genes, silencing of influenza gene expression, and inhibition of measles viral replication. Potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases have also been proposed, with particular attention being paid to the polyglutamine diseases such as Huntington's disease. RNA interference is also often seen as a promising way to treat cancer by silencing genes differentially upregulated in tumor cells or genes involved in cell division. A key area of research in the use of RNAi for clinical applications is the development of a safe delivery method, which to date has involved mainly viral vector systems similar to those suggested for gene therapy.

Despite the proliferation of promising cell culture studies for RNAi-based drugs, some concern has been raised regarding the safety of RNA interference, especially the potential for "off-target" effects in which a gene with a coincidentally similar sequence to the targeted gene is also repressed. A computational genomics study estimated that the error rate of off-target interactions is about 10%. One major study of liver disease in mice led to high death rates in the experimental animals, suggested by researchers to be the result of "oversaturation" of the dsRNA pathway, due to the use of shRNAs that have to be processed in the nucleus and exported to the cytoplasm using an active mechanism. All these are considerations that are under active investigation, to reduce their impact in the potential therapeutic applications for RNAi.

Биотехнология
RNA interference has been used for applications in biotechnology, particularly in the engineering of food plants that produce lower levels of natural plant toxins. Such techniques take advantage of the stable and heritable RNAi phenotype in plant stocks. For example, cotton seeds are rich in dietary protein but naturally contain the toxic terpenoid product gossypol, making them unsuitable for human consumption. RNAi has been used to produce cotton stocks whose seeds contain reduced levels of delta-cadinene synthase, a key enzyme in gossypol production, without affecting the enzyme's production in other parts of the plant, where gossypol is important in preventing damage from plant pests. Similar efforts have been directed toward the reduction of the cyanogenic natural product linamarin in cassava plants.

Although no plant products that use RNAi-based genetic engineering have yet passed the experimental stage, development efforts have successfully reduced the levels of allergens in tomato plants and decreased the precursors of likely carcinogens in tobacco plants. Other plant traits that have been engineered in the laboratory include the production of non-narcotic natural products by the opium poppy, resistance to common plant viruses, and fortification of plants such as tomatoes with dietary antioxidants. Previous commercial products, including the Flavr Savr tomato and two cultivars of ringspot-resistant papaya, were originally developed using antisense technology but likely exploited the RNAi pathway.

История
The discovery of RNAi was preceded first by observations of transcriptional inhibition by antisense RNA expressed in transgenic plants, and more directly by reports of unexpected outcomes in experiments performed by plant scientists in the U.S. and The Netherlands in the early 1990s. In an attempt to alter flower colors in petunias, researchers introduced additional copies of a gene encoding chalcone synthase, a key enzyme for flower pigmentation into petunia plants of normally pink or violet flower color. The overexpressed gene was expected to result in darker flowers, but instead produced less pigmented, fully or partially white flowers, indicating that the activity of chalcone synthase had been substantially decreased; in fact, both the endogenous genes and the transgenes were downregulated in the white flowers. Soon after, a related event termed quelling was noted in the fungus Neurospora crassa, although it was not immediately recognized as related. Further investigation of the phenomenon in plants indicated that the downregulation was due to post-transcriptional inhibition of gene expression via an increased rate of mRNA degradation. This phenomenon was called co-suppression of gene expression, but the molecular mechanism remained unknown.

Not long after, plant virologists working on improving plant resistance to viral diseases observed a similar unexpected phenomenon. While it was known that plants expressing virus-specific proteins showed enhanced tolerance or resistance to viral infection, it was not expected that plants carrying only short, non-coding regions of viral RNA sequences would show similar levels of protection. Researchers believed that viral RNA produced by transgenes could also inhibit viral replication. The reverse experiment, in which short sequences of plant genes were introduced into viruses, showed that the targeted gene was suppressed in an infected plant. This phenomenon was labeled "virus-induced gene silencing" (VIGS), and the set of such phenomena were collectively called post transcriptional gene silencing.

After these initial observations in plants, many laboratories around the world searched for the occurrence of this phenomenon in other organisms. Craig C. Mello and Andrew Fire's 1998 Nature paper reported a potent gene silencing effect after injecting double stranded RNA into C. elegans. In investigating the regulation of muscle protein production, they observed that neither mRNA nor antisense RNA injections had an effect on protein production, but double-stranded RNA successfully silenced the targeted gene. As a result of this work, they coined the term RNAi. Fire and Mello's discovery was particularly notable because it represented the first identification of the causative agent for the phenomenon. Fire and Mello were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006 for their work.

Внешние ссылки

 * Overview of the RNAi process, from Cambridge University's The Naked Scientists
 * Animation of the RNAi process, from Nature
 * NOVA scienceNOW explains RNAi – A 15 minute video of the Nova broadcast that aired on PBS, July 26, 2005
 * Silencing Genomes RNA interference (RNAi) experiments and bioinformatics in C. elegans for education. From the Dolan DNA Learning Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
 * RNAi screens in C. elegans in a 96-well liquid format and their application to the systematic identification of genetic interactions (a protocol)
 * 2 American ‘Worm People’ Win Nobel for RNA Work, from NY Times''
 * Molecular Therapy web focus: "The development of RNAi as a therapeutic strategy", a collection of free articles about RNAi as a therapeutic strategy.