RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 E. coli OxyS non-coding RNA does not trigger RNAi in C. elegans
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 013029
DO 10.1101/013029
A1 Alper Akay
A1 Peter Sarkies
A1 Eric A. Miska
YR 2014
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/12/19/013029.abstract
AB The discovery of RNA interference (RNAi) in C. elegans has had a major impact on scientific research, led to the rapid development of RNAi tools and has inspired RNA-based therapeutics. Astonishingly, nematodes, planaria and many insects take up double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) from their environment to elicit RNAi; the biological function of this mechanism is unclear. Recently, the E. coli OxyS non-coding RNA was shown to regulate gene expression in C. elegans when E. coli is offered as food. This was surprising given that C. elegans is unlikely to encounter E. coli in nature. To directly test the hypothesis that the E. coli OxyS non-coding RNA triggers the C. elegans RNAi pathway, we sequenced small RNAs from C. elegans after feeding with bacteria. We clearly demonstrate that the OxyS non-coding RNA does not trigger an RNAi response in C. elegans. We conclude that the biology of environmental RNAi remains to be discovered.