Epigenetics in Health and Disease

11. Non-coding RNAs across the kingdoms—plants

The phenomenon of posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) was first discovered in 1990, when the attempt to transgenically upregulate pigment production in petunias resulted in the loss of activity from both the endogene and transgene (Napoli et al., 1990). Further analysis showed that the loss of enzyme activity was due to decreased levels of mRNA without decreased levels of transcription. It was suggested that some kind of mRNA degradation process was occurring between transcription and translation, and this phenomenon was called co-suppression. Subsequently, the phenomenon of co-suppression was found to be regulated by small regulatory RNAs.

Since the time of PTGS discovery, many more of various ...