Regulation of Transgenerational Toxicity by Germline Small RNAs and RNAi-Associated Signaling
摘要
Regulatory RNAs represent an important form of epigenetic regulation of gene expression. In Caenorhabditis elegans, certain germline microRNAs (miRNAs) and germline long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) showed transgenerational response to pollutant exposure. In the germline, transgenerational response of miRNAs (such as mir-38 and mir-240) regulated transgenerational pollutant toxicity by targeting certain downstream targets, such as NDK-1, NHL-3, WRT-3, and RAB-5. Transgenerational response of germline lncRNAs (such as linc-7) controlled transgenerational pollutant toxicity by targeting certain downstream targets, such as transcriptional factor DAF-12. Moreover, exposure to stresses could reset the transgenerational endogenously derived heritable small RNA silencing, which was under the control of Argonaute protein HRDE-1.