Your browser version may not work well with NCBI's Web applications. More information here...
1: Science. 2002 Sep 13;297(5588):1833-7. Epub 2002 Aug 22.Click here to read Links
Comment in:
Science. 2002 Sep 13;297(5588):1818-9.

Regulation of heterochromatic silencing and histone H3 lysine-9 methylation by RNAi.

Volpe TA, Kidner C, Hall IM, Teng G, Grewal SI, Martienssen RA.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Watson School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA.

Eukaryotic heterochromatin is characterized by a high density of repeats and transposons, as well as by modified histones, and influences both gene expression and chromosome segregation. In the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, we deleted the argonaute, dicer, and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene homologs, which encode part of the machinery responsible for RNA interference (RNAi). Deletion results in the aberrant accumulation of complementary transcripts from centromeric heterochromatic repeats. This is accompanied by transcriptional de-repression of transgenes integrated at the centromere, loss of histone H3 lysine-9 methylation, and impairment of centromere function. We propose that double-stranded RNA arising from centromeric repeats targets formation and maintenance of heterochromatin through RNAi.

PMID: 12193640 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]