Seeing the forest for the trees: a wide perspective on RNA-directed DNA methylation
- 1Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA;
- 2Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China
Abstract
In this issue of Genes & Development, Wierzbicki and colleagues (pp. 1825–1836) examine the current model of RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) by determining genome-wide distributions of RNA polymerase V (Pol V) occupancy, siRNAs, and DNA methylation. Their data support the key role of base-pairing between Pol V transcripts and siRNAs in targeting de novo DNA methylation. Importantly, the study also reveals unexpected complexity and provides a global view of the RdDM pathway.
Keywords
- DNA-dependent RNA polymerase
- gene silencing
- DNA methylation
- epigenetics
- short interfering RNA
- RNA-directed DNA methylation
Footnotes
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↵3 Corresponding author
E-mail jkzhu{at}purdue.edu
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Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.200410.112.
- Copyright © 2012 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
