RNA-binding proteins contribute to small RNA loading in plant extracellular vesicles
Plants use extracellular vesicles (EVs) to transport small RNAs (sRNAs) into their fungal pathogens and silence fungal virulence-related genes through a phenomenon called ‘cross-kingdom RNAi’. It remains unknown, however, how sRNAs are selectively loaded into EVs. Here, we identified several RNA-bin...
Saved in:
Published in | Nature plants Vol. 7; no. 3; pp. 342 - 352 |
---|---|
Main Authors | , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group UK
01.03.2021
Nature Publishing Group |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
Cover
Loading…
Summary: | Plants use extracellular vesicles (EVs) to transport small RNAs (sRNAs) into their fungal pathogens and silence fungal virulence-related genes through a phenomenon called ‘cross-kingdom RNAi’. It remains unknown, however, how sRNAs are selectively loaded into EVs. Here, we identified several RNA-binding proteins in
Arabidopsis
, including Argonaute 1 (AGO1), RNA helicases (RHs) and annexins (ANNs), which are secreted by exosome-like EVs. AGO1, RH11 and RH37 selectively bind to EV-enriched sRNAs but not to non-EV-associated sRNAs, suggesting that they contribute to the selective loading of sRNAs into EVs. Conversely, ANN1 and ANN2 bind to sRNAs non-specifically. The
ago1, rh11
rh37
and
ann1
ann2
mutants showed reduced secretion of sRNAs in EVs, demonstrating that these RNA-binding proteins play an important role in sRNA loading and/or stabilization in EVs. Furthermore,
rh11
rh37
and
ann1
ann2
showed increased susceptibility to
Botrytis cinerea
, suggesting that RH11, RH37, ANN1 and ANN2 positively regulate plant immunity against
B. cinerea
.
Plants use extracellular vesicles to deliver small RNAs that could silence fungal virulence genes to their fungal pathogens. In this study, the authors profile the components of these extracellular vesicles and investigate regulators contributing to the specific RNA loading and stabilization. |
---|---|
Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 H.J. conceived the idea and supervised the project. B.H, Q.C. and H.J. designed the experiments. B.H. and Q.C. performed most of the experiments and analyzed data. L.Q., and T.H. contributed to the functional analysis of the EV-associated RBPs. S.W. generated ANN2-CFP line, C.H. generated rh11rh37 double mutant. W. M. and Y.W. performed Mass spectrometry and conducted bioinformatics analysis. B.H., Q.C., and H.J. wrote the manuscript. Author Contributions |
ISSN: | 2055-0278 2055-0278 |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41477-021-00863-8 |