Pseudogene-derived small interference RNAs regulate gene expression in African Trypanosoma brucei
- aCenter for Parasitic Organisms, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences and Key Laboratory of Tropical Diseases and Control of the Ministry of Education, Zhongshan Medical School, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China;
- bState Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China; and
- cDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697
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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.
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