Plant Gene Silencing is Described

U.S. biologists report a major breakthrough in understanding the pathway that plant cells take to silence unwanted or extra genes by using short bits of RNA.

The University of Washington scientists say they’ve made it possible to see where and how the events in the pathway unfold within the cell.

Biology Professor Craig Pikaard and colleagues have described the roles that eight proteins in Arabidopsis plants play in a pathway that brings about DNA methylation — an epigenetic function that involves a chemical modification of cytosine, one of the four chemical subunits of DNA.

Without proper DNA methylation, higher organisms from plants to humans have a host of developmental problems — including dwarfing in plants, tumors in humans and death in mice.

Pikaard and his co-researchers detail their discovery in the July 14 issue of the journal Cell.