Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on December 26, 2007
Nucleic Acids Research 2008 36(4):1220-1226; doi:10.1093/nar/gkm1133
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2008, Vol. 36, No. 4 1220-1226
© 2007 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Phytohormone abscisic acid control RNA-dependent RNA polymerase 6 gene expression and post-transcriptional gene silencing in rice cells
1The Basic Science Research Institute, Department of Biological Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746 and 2Division of Biological Science, Chonbuk University, Jeonju City, Jeonbuk 561-756, Korea
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +82 31 290 7004; Fax: +82 31 290 7015; Email: wslee{at}yurim.skku.ac.kr
Received October 19, 2007. Revised November 30, 2007. Accepted December 5, 2007.
RNA-dependent RNA polymerase 6 (RDR6) catalyses dsRNA synthesis for post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS)-associated amplification and the generation of endogeneous siRNAs involved in developmental determinations or stress responses. The functional importance of RDR6 in PTGS led us to examine its connection to the cellular regulatory network by analyzing the hormonal responses of RDR6 gene expression in a cultured cell system. Delivery of dsRNA, prepared in vitro, into cultured rice (Oryza sativa cv. Japonica Dongjin) cells successfully silenced the target isocitrate lyase (ICL) transcripts. Silencing was transient in the absence of abscisic acid (ABA), while it became persistent in the presence of ABA in growth medium. A transcription assay of the OsRDR6 promoter showed that it was positively regulated by ABA. OsRDR6-dependent siRNA(ICL) generation was also significantly up-regulated by ABA. The results showed that, among the five rice OsRDR isogenes, only OsRDR6 was responsible for the observed ABA-mediated amplification and silencing of ICL transcripts. We propose that ABA modulates PTGS through the transcriptional control of the OsRDR6 gene.