Reis Rodrigo Siqueira, Poirier Yves
Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Trends Plant Sci. 2021 Nov;26(11):1104-1115. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2021.07.004. Epub 2021 Jul 21.
In plants, thousands of genes are associated with antisense transcription, which often produces noncoding RNAs. Although widespread, sense-antisense pairs have been implicated in a limited variety of functions in plants and are often thought to form extensive dsRNA stretches triggering gene silencing. In this opinion, we show that evidence does not support gene silencing as a major role for antisense transcription. In fact, it is more likely that antisense transcripts play diverse functions in gene regulation. We propose a general framework for the initial functional dissection of antisense transcripts, suggesting testable hypotheses relying on an experiment-based decision tree. By moving beyond the gene silencing paradigm, we argue that a broad and diverse role for natural antisense transcription will emerge.
在植物中，数千个基因与反义转录相关，反义转录通常产生非编码RNA。虽然反义转录广泛存在，但正义-反义基因对在植物中的功能种类有限，人们通常认为它们会形成广泛的双链RNA片段从而触发基因沉默。在本观点文章中，我们表明证据并不支持基因沉默是反义转录的主要作用。事实上，反义转录本更有可能在基因调控中发挥多种功能。我们提出了一个用于反义转录本初步功能剖析的通用框架，提出了基于实验决策树的可检验假设。通过超越基因沉默范式，我们认为自然反义转录将展现出广泛多样的作用。
