Plant Sciences Division, Research School of Biology, Australian National University Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Front Plant Sci. 2013 Apr 16;4:96. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2013.00096. eCollection 2013.
Plant and animal microRNA (miRNA) pathways share many analogous components, the ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins being foremost among them. We sought to ascertain the degree of functional conservation shared by Homo sapiens ARGONAUTE 2 (HsAGO2) and Arabidopsis thaliana ARGONAUTE 1 (AtAGO1), which are the predominant AGO family members involved with miRNA activity in their respective species. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants expressing HsAGO2 were indistinguishable from counterparts over-expressing AtAGO1, each group exhibiting the morphological and molecular hallmarks of miRNA-pathway loss-of-function alleles. However, unlike AtAGO1, HsAGO2 was unable to rescue the ago1-27 allele. We conclude that, despite the evolutionary gulf between them, HsAGO2 is likely capable of interacting with some component/s of the Arabidopsis miRNA pathway, thereby perturbing its operation, although differences have arisen such that HsAGO2 alone is insufficient to confer efficient silencing of miRNA targets in planta.
动植物 microRNA (miRNA) 通路共享许多类似的成分,其中 ARGONAUTE (AGO) 蛋白是最重要的成分之一。我们试图确定人类 ARGONAUTE 2 (HsAGO2) 和拟南芥 ARGONAUTE 1 (AtAGO1) 之间共享的功能保守程度,这两种蛋白是各自物种中与 miRNA 活性相关的主要 AGO 家族成员。表达 HsAGO2 的转基因拟南芥植物与过度表达 AtAGO1 的植物没有区别,每组都表现出 miRNA 通路功能丧失等位基因的形态和分子特征。然而,与 AtAGO1 不同,HsAGO2 无法拯救 ago1-27 等位基因。我们的结论是,尽管它们之间存在进化差距,但 HsAGO2 可能能够与拟南芥 miRNA 通路的某些成分相互作用,从而扰乱其运作,尽管已经出现了差异,使得 HsAGO2 本身不足以在植物体内有效地沉默 miRNA 靶标。