RNAi [he/him]

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Cake day: July 26th, 2020

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  • RNAi [he/him]@hexbear.nettochapotraphouse@hexbear.netThe History of RNAi
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    11 months ago

    Cuz an automatic system plants cells have where if there’s something producing a LOT of RNA inside the cell, especially a lot of the exact same RNA, the cell say “this gotta be a virus”, so it takes a copy/negative of that hypercopied-RNA and use that to recognize all the copies and destroys them before they get translated or whatever that RNA does (some RNA is translated into proteins, some control the expression of other genes, some is viral genome, some are ribozymes, it doesn’t matter).

    Oh, also, besides destroying the RNA copies, the plant cell can also find where the fuck is the DNA from where all those copies are coming and shut’s that thing down methylating the shit out of it, which renders that stretch of DNA innaccessible to the proteins that produce RNA from it. (I think sometimes there aint no DNA cuz it can be an RNA virus which produces RNA copies from RNA as template but it’s a very tiny percent of cases OK? )

    So yes, it’s bassically plant adaptative “immune system”

    Anyways, you don’t need several copies of a gene for the plant to silence it, but just a strong promoter (the part of the gene that tells the plant when, where, and how much the gene should express ie make RNA copies of it). Plant virus have strong promoters. So that’s what people used to use when making transgenic plants, but oops sometimes the plant had the transgene yet it didn’t express, turns out thanks to RNAis