The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 0QN, UK.
Biochem Soc Trans. 2013 Aug;41(4):876-80. doi: 10.1042/BST20130021.
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans was the first animal for which RNAi (RNA interference) in response to exogenous triggers was shown experimentally and subsequently the molecular components of the RNAi pathway have been characterized in some detail. However, the function of RNAi in the life cycle of nematodes in the wild is still unclear. In the present article, we argue that RNAi could be used in nematodes as a mechanism to sense and respond to foreign RNA that the animal might be exposed to either through viral infection or through ingestion of food sources. This could be of potential importance to the life cycle of parasitic nematodes as they ingest RNA from different hosts at different points during their life cycle. We postulate that RNA ingested from the host could be used by the parasite to regulate its own genes, through the amplification mechanism intrinsic to the nematode RNAi pathway.
秀丽隐杆线虫是第一种被证明对外源触发物产生 RNAi（RNA 干扰）的动物，随后 RNAi 途径的分子成分已被详细描述。然而，RNAi 在野生线虫生命周期中的功能仍不清楚。在本文中，我们认为 RNAi 可以被线虫用作一种感知和响应外来 RNA 的机制，这些 RNA 可能是通过病毒感染或摄入食物来源而暴露给动物的。这对于寄生线虫的生命周期可能非常重要，因为它们在生命周期的不同阶段从不同的宿主中摄取 RNA。我们推测，寄生虫可以通过线虫 RNAi 途径固有的扩增机制，利用从宿主中摄取的 RNA 来调节自身的基因。
