Candida albicans Dicer (CaDcr1) is required for efficient ribosomal and spliceosomal RNA maturation
Name
Bernstein-2012-C. albicans Dicer (Dcr1) is required for efficient ribosomal and.pdf
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1.06 MB
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Author(s)
Bartel, David
Weinberg, David E.
Fink, Gerald R
Date Issued
January 2012
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Bernstein, D. A. et al. “Candida Albicans Dicer (CaDcr1) Is Required for Efficient Ribosomal and Spliceosomal RNA Maturation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.2 (2012): 523–528. Copyright ©2012 by the National Academy of Sciences
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The generation of mature functional RNAs from nascent transcripts requires the precise and coordinated action of numerous RNAs and proteins. One such protein family, the ribonuclease III (RNase III) endonucleases, includes Rnt1, which functions in fungal ribosome and spliceosome biogenesis, and Dicer, which generates the siRNAs of the RNAi pathway. The recent discovery of small RNAs in Candida albicans led us to investigate the function of C. albicans Dicer (CaDcr1). CaDcr1 is capable of generating siRNAs in vitro and is required for siRNA generation in vivo. In addition, CaDCR1 complements a Dicer knockout in Saccharomyces castellii, restoring RNAi-mediated gene repression. Unexpectedly, deletion of the C. albicans CaDCR1 results in a severe slow-growth phenotype, whereas deletion of another core component of the RNAi pathway (CaAGO1) has little effect on growth, suggesting that CaDCR1 may have an essential function in addition to producing siRNAs. Indeed CaDcr1, the sole functional RNase III enzyme in C. albicans, has additional functions: it is required for cleavage of the 3′ external transcribed spacer from unprocessed pre-rRNA and for processing the 3′ tail of snRNA U4. Our results suggest two models whereby the RNase III enzymes of a fungal ancestor, containing both a canonical Dicer and Rnt1, evolved through a series of gene-duplication and gene-loss events to generate the variety of RNase III enzymes found in modern-day budding yeasts.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118859109
