RNA Interference Between Kingdoms

Plants and fungi can use conserved RNA interference machinery to regulate each other’s gene expression—and scientists think they can make use of this phenomenon to create a new generation of pesticides.

Kerry Grens

| 12 min read

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Plants, silent as they are to our ears, are in constant conversation with their environment. As scientists have developed ever-more-sensitive tools to eavesdrop on this molecular chatter, they’ve discovered not only dialogue among the cells of an individual plant and with the plant’s immediate surroundings, but between different individuals, sometimes of different species and even different kingdoms. The alphabet of this lingua franca is A, C, G, and U.

Noncoding RNAs are well known for their ability to control gene expression in cells. And as scientists have demonstrated repeatedly, protein production can be affected not just by RNAs made in the same individual, but by RNAs from altogether different organisms. In recent years, researchers have taken advantage of the ability to traffic RNA between distantly ...

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Meet the Author

Kerry Grens
Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.
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