Better explicating the strengths and shortcomings of these models will help refine projections and improve transparency in the years ahead.
Image credit: Witsawat.S.
Contributed by Francisco J. Ayala, March 16, 2011 (sent for review February 1, 2011)
Abstract
Pseudogenes have been shown to acquire unique regulatory roles from more and more organisms. We report the observation of a cluster of siRNAs derived from pseudogenes of African Trypanosoma brucei using high through-put analysis. We show that these pseudogene-derived siRNAs suppress gene expression through RNA interference. The discovery that siRNAs may originate from pseudogenes and regulate gene expression in a unicellular eukaryote provides insights into the functional roles of pseudogenes and into the origin of noncoding small RNAs.
Footnotes
↵1Y.-Z.W. and L.-L.Z. contributed equally to this work.
- ↵2To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: fjayala{at}uci.edu, lssqlh{at}mail.sysu.edu.cn, or lsslzr{at}mail.sysu.edu.cn.
Author contributions: Y.-Z.W., L.-L.Z., L.-H.Q., F.J.A., and Z.-R.L. designed research; Y.-Z.W., L.-L.Z., M.-H.W., and Y.W. performed research; X.-M.G. and L.-H.Q. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Y.-Z.W., L.-L.Z., J.-Y.L., L.-H.Q., and Z.-R.L. analyzed data; and Y.-Z.W., L.-L.Z., F.J.A., and Z.-R.L. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1103894108/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Pseudogene-derived small interference RNAs regulate gene expression in African Trypanosoma brucei
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