Saumet Anne, Lecellier Charles-Henri
CNRS UPR2357, Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes, 12, rue du Général Zimmer, 67084 Strasbourg Cedex, France.
Retrovirology. 2006 Jan 12;3:3. doi: 10.1186/1742-4690-3-3.
The anti-viral function of RNA silencing was first discovered in plants as a natural manifestation of the artificial 'co-suppression', which refers to the extinction of endogenous gene induced by homologous transgene. Because silencing components are conserved among most, if not all, eukaryotes, the question rapidly arose as to determine whether this process fulfils anti-viral functions in animals, such as insects and mammals. It appears that, whereas the anti-viral process seems to be similarly conserved from plants to insects, even in worms, RNA silencing does influence the replication of mammalian viruses but in a particular mode: micro(mi)RNAs, endogenous small RNAs naturally implicated in translational control, rather than virus-derived small interfering (si)RNAs like in other organisms, are involved. In fact, these recent studies even suggest that RNA silencing may be beneficial for viral replication. Accordingly, several large DNA mammalian viruses have been shown to encode their own miRNAs. Here, we summarize the seminal studies that have implicated RNA silencing in viral infection and compare the different eukaryotic responses.
RNA沉默的抗病毒功能最初是在植物中作为人工“共抑制”的自然表现被发现的，“共抑制”是指同源转基因诱导的内源基因的沉默。由于沉默成分在大多数（如果不是全部）真核生物中是保守的，因此很快就出现了一个问题，即确定这个过程是否在动物（如昆虫和哺乳动物）中发挥抗病毒功能。似乎，虽然从植物到昆虫，甚至在蠕虫中，抗病毒过程似乎同样保守，但RNA沉默确实会影响哺乳动物病毒的复制，不过是以一种特殊的方式：微小（mi）RNA，天然参与翻译控制的内源性小RNA，而不是像在其他生物体中那样的病毒衍生的小干扰（si）RNA，参与其中。事实上，这些最新研究甚至表明RNA沉默可能对病毒复制有益。因此，已经证明几种大型DNA哺乳动物病毒会编码它们自己的miRNA。在这里，我们总结了涉及RNA沉默与病毒感染的开创性研究，并比较了不同的真核生物反应。
