Poster abstracts
Poster number 27 submitted by Adriana Coke
Role of Exonucleases in RNA Polymerase V Transcript Degradation
Adriana N. Coke (University of Michigan), Masayuki Tsuzuki (University of Tokyo), M. Hafiz Rothi (Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Michigan), Andrzej Wierzbicki (Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Michigan)
Abstract:
In Arabidopsis thaliana, RNA-directed DNA Methylation (RdDM) is the primary mechanism whereby de novo DNA methylation is added to silence transposable elements. RdDM relies on the transcriptional activity of a plant-specific RNA Polymerase, RNA Polymerase V (Pol V). Pol V transcribes long non-coding RNA which acts as a scaffold for other proteins in the RdDM pathway to bind, leading to de novo DNA methylation at the site of Pol V transcription. Despite the importance of Pol V transcripts for transcriptional gene silencing in plants, it is unknown how Pol V transcripts are degraded and whether this degradation plays a role in the regulation of RdDM. We conducted RT-qPCR experiments to detect changes in Pol V transcript levels across several RNA exonuclease mutants, and the results suggest that some exonucleases may degrade Pol V transcripts in a locus-specific manner. Our research aims to understand whether and how this locus-specific degradation is involved in the regulation of RdDM.
Keywords: RdDM, Exonucleases, long non-coding RNA