ARGONAUTE9-dependent silencing of transposable elements in pericentromeric regions of Arabidopsis
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Inducible, Cell Type-Specific Expression in Arabidopsis thaliana Through LhGR-Mediated Trans-Activation
Published on: April 19, 2019
Noé Durán-Figueroa1, Jean-Philippe Vielle-Calzada
1Grupo de Desarrollo Reproductivo y Apomixis, Laboratorio Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad y Departamento de Ingeniería Genética de Plantas, Cinvestav Irapuato, México.
Abstract:
Recent evidence indicates that the establishment of the haploid phase of the plant life cycle requires epigenetic mechanisms that control reproductive cell fate. We previously showed that in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) mutations in ARGONAUTE9 (AGO9) result in defective cell specification during megasporogenesis. AGO9 preferentially interacts with 24 nucleotide (nt) small RNAs (sRNAs) derived from transposable elements (TEs), and its sporophytic activity is required to silence TEs in the female gametophyte. Here we show that AGO9 can bind in vitro to 24 nt sRNAs corresponding to Athila retrotransposons expressed in the ovule prior to pollination. We also show that AGO9 is necessary to inactivate a significant proportion of long terminal repeat retrotransposons (LTRs) in the ovule, and that its predominant TE targets are located in the pericentromeric regions of all 5 chromosomes, suggesting a link between the AGO9-dependent sRNA pathway and heterochromatin formation. Our extended results point towards the existence of a tissue-specific mechanism of sRNA-dependent TE silencing in the ovule.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
piRNA - Piwi-interacting RNAs
Eukaryotic Transcription Inhibitors
Eukaryotic transcription inhibitors usually contain two distinct domains, a DNA...
siRNA - Small Interfering RNAs
In the cytoplasm, siRNA is processed from a double-stranded RNA, which comes from either endogenous DNA transcription or exogenous sources like a virus. This double-stranded RNA is then cleaved by the ATP-dependent...
Overview of Transposition and Recombination
Experimental RNAi
Inheritance of Chromatin Structures

