Caenorhabditis elegans SID-2 is required for environmental RNA interference

doi:10.1073/pnas.0611282104

Caenorhabditis elegans SID-2 is required for environmental RNA interference

Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138

Edited by Iva S. Greenwald, Columbia University, New York, NY, and approved March 6, 2007 (received for review December 19, 2006)

Abstract

In plants and in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, an RNAi signal can trigger gene silencing in cells distant from the site where silencing is initiated. In plants, this signal is known to be a form of dsRNA, and the signal is most likely a form of dsRNA in C. elegans as well. Furthermore, in C. elegans, dsRNA present in the environment or expressed in ingested bacteria is sufficient to trigger RNAi (environmental RNAi). Ingestion and soaking delivery of dsRNA has also been described for other invertebrates. Here we report the identification and characterization of SID-2, an intestinal luminal transmembrane protein required for environmental RNAi in C. elegans. SID-2, when expressed in the environmental RNAi defective species Caenorhabditis briggsae, confers environmental RNAi.

Footnotes

^¶To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hunter{at}mcb.harvard.edu
Author contributions: W.M.W., M.S., E.H.F., and C.P.H. designed research; W.M.W., M.S., A.J.W., and E.H.F. performed research; W.M.W., M.S., A.J.W., E.H.F., and C.P.H. analyzed data; and W.M.W. and C.P.H. wrote the paper.
↵*Present address: AVEO Pharmaceuticals, 75 Sidney Street, 4th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139.
↵ ^†Present address: Helicos Biosciences Corporation, One Kendall Square, Building 700, Third Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139.
↵ ^‡Present address: Section of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California at San Diego, 5135 Muir Biology, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116.
↵ ^§Present address: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: The sequence reported in this paper has been deposited in the GenBank database (accession no. AY466439).
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0611282104/DC1.
Abbreviation:

cDNA,

complementary DNA.