Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 27, 2026
07:14
The Plant Infection Test: Spray and Wound-Mediated Inoculation with the Plant Pathogen Magnaporthe Grisea
Published on: August 4, 2018
Alternative Polyadenylation Dynamics During the Rice Blast Immune Response
Dewei Yang1,2, Xinyi Li3, Haohua He3
1Rice Research Institute, Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Fuzhou, Fujian, China.
Molecular Plant Pathology
|June 26, 2026
Summary
Alternative polyadenylation (APA) shortens gene transcripts during rice blast infection, potentially evading miRNA repression. This regulation offers new strategies for controlling rice diseases.
Area of Science:
- Plant pathology
- Molecular biology
- Genomics
Background:
- Alternative polyadenylation (APA) is a key post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism controlling 3' untranslated region (UTR) lengths.
- Understanding APA dynamics during plant-pathogen interactions is crucial for disease resistance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate genome-wide APA profile changes in rice during Magnaporthe oryzae infection.
- To explore the relationship between APA, gene expression, and microRNA (miRNA) regulation in rice blast.
- To functionally characterize APA dynamics in rice-pathogen interactions.
Main Methods:
- Poly(A)-tag sequencing (PAT-seq) was employed to profile APA dynamics.
- Gene expression and miRNA expression levels were analyzed.
- CRISPR/Cas9 was used for functional characterization of a candidate gene.
Main Results:
- Widespread APA-driven transcript shortening was observed during M. oryzae infection, particularly in stress-response genes.
- 3' UTR shortening correlated negatively with gene expression and may facilitate immune gene evasion of miRNA repression.
- Functional analysis of Os05g0509500 revealed its positive role in rice blast susceptibility.
Conclusions:
- APA is a tightly regulated process during rice blast, influencing gene expression and miRNA interactions.
- Transcriptome-wide APA site selection and its interplay with miRNAs offer novel insights into rice disease resistance.
- Understanding APA mechanisms provides a basis for developing new strategies to control rice blast.
Related Concept Videos
02:23RNA Editing
RNA editing is a post-transcriptional modification where a precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) nucleotide sequence is changed by base insertion, deletion, or modification. The extent of RNA editing varies from a few hundred bases, in mitochondrial DNA of trypanosomes, to a just single base, in nuclear genes of mammals. Even a single base change in the pre-mRNA can convert a codon for one amino acid into the codon for another amino acid or a stop codon. This type of re-coding can significantly affect the...
02:15Experimental RNAi
RNA interference (RNAi) is a cellular mechanism that inhibits gene expression by suppressing its transcription or activating the RNA degradation process. The mechanism was discovered by Andrew Fire and Craig Mello in 1998 in plants. Today, it is observed in almost all eukaryotes, including protozoa, flies, nematodes, insects, parasites, and mammals. This precise cellular mechanism of gene silencing has been developed into a technique that provides an efficient way to identify and determine the...
02:28Leaky Scanning
During most eukaryotic translation processes, the small 40S ribosome subunit scans an mRNA from its 5' end until it encounters the first start AUG codon. The large 60S ribosomal subunit then joins the smaller one to initiate protein synthesis. The location of the translation initiation is largely determined by the nucleotides near the start codon as there may be multiple translation initiation sites present on the mRNA. Marilyn Kozak discovered that the sequence RCCAUGG (where R stands for...
01:23RNA Interference
RNA interference (RNAi) is a process in which a small non-coding RNA molecule blocks the post-transcriptional expression of a gene by binding to its messenger RNA (mRNA) and preventing the protein from being translated.
This process occurs naturally in cells, often through the activity of genomically-encoded microRNAs. Researchers can take advantage of this mechanism by introducing synthetic RNAs to deactivate specific genes for research or therapeutic purposes. For example, RNAi could be used...
This process occurs naturally in cells, often through the activity of genomically-encoded microRNAs. Researchers can take advantage of this mechanism by introducing synthetic RNAs to deactivate specific genes for research or therapeutic purposes. For example, RNAi could be used...
01:23RNA Interference
RNA interference (RNAi) is a process in which a small non-coding RNA molecule blocks the post-transcriptional expression of a gene by binding to its messenger RNA (mRNA) and preventing the protein from being translated.
This process occurs naturally in cells, often through the activity of genomically-encoded microRNAs. Researchers can take advantage of this mechanism by introducing synthetic RNAs to deactivate specific genes for research or therapeutic purposes. For example, RNAi could be used...
This process occurs naturally in cells, often through the activity of genomically-encoded microRNAs. Researchers can take advantage of this mechanism by introducing synthetic RNAs to deactivate specific genes for research or therapeutic purposes. For example, RNAi could be used...
01:32RNA Splicing
Splicing is the process by which eukaryotic RNA is edited before its translation into protein. The RNA strand transcribed from eukaryotic DNA is called the primary transcript. The primary transcripts that become mRNAs are called precursor messenger RNAs (pre-mRNAs). Eukaryotic pre-mRNA contains alternating sequences of exons and introns. Exons are nucleotide sequences that code for proteins, whereas introns are the non-coding regions. In RNA splicing, introns are removed and exons are bonded...