Spreading gossip around the water cooler is OK, but some news just has to be shouted from the mountaintops. These days, that means it’ll be posted to our blog, Twitter feed, and Facebook status box.
Researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Institut des Sciences du Végétal, and Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes report that plants have similar options using their diverse small RNA repertoires. Whereas miRNAs’ effects are limited to one or a few cells, tasiRNAs have a much wider audience.
The evidence:
- An ARF-regulating tasiRNA precursor was found only in certain cell layers in the upper sides of leaves,
- but ARF3 protein built up throughout leaves when tasiRNA binding sites were mutated in ARF3,
- and reporter protein levels declined throughout leaf primordia when ARF-regulating tasiRNA sites were added to a “sensor” transgene.
tasiRNAs appear to have a long reach, but researchers are quick to add that they don’t yet know whether tasiRNAs or other factors actually leave cells to spread the word.
Read all about it at PLoS One, June 2009.