Vince and Gen’s Journal Club

I found an interesting introduction to the RNAi pathway on wikipedia and in the introduction of a nature review article (both attached below).

What is RNAi?

RNAi refers (as far as I can tell) to two dominant pathways:
1) The processing of dsRNA into small ~20 nucleotide bits called siRNA (small-interfering RNA)
2) The processing of imperfect RNA hairpins into miRNA (micro RNA).

In both pathways, the processing of the precursor RNA is done by an RNaseIII enzyme known as dicer. The processed siRNAs or miRNAs then associate into a RISC (RNA-induced silencing complex). The RISC then binds to a target mRNA transcript through sequence complementarity provided by the incorporated siRNA or miRNA. At this point, argonaute, a core component of the RISC, acts to cut up the mRNA transcript, destroying it and preventing expression of the gene during translation.

Picture: Overview of the RNAi pathway. Taken from Wikipedia

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