title: Silencing of transposable elements in plants.
abstract: Plant genomes contain many transposable elements, most of which are inactivated or 'silenced'. Recent studies have brought significant new insights into the regulation of transposable elements. In Caenorhabditis elegans, they are silenced post-transcriptionally, whereas transposable elements in Arabidopsis are silenced by a chromatin-remodelling factor, one of the components of transcriptional gene silencing. These observations provide the functional correlation between gene silencing and the suppression of transposable elements, and have major implications for our understanding of the maintenance of genomic integrity.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Genetics Dept, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Ibaraki 305-8602, Tsukuba, Japan. hokamoto@nias.affrc.go.jp
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Okamoto
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hirochika
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements / Q000235:genetics*; D004330:Drosophila / Q000235:genetics; D017353:Gene Deletion; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D020868:Gene Silencing; D008322:Mammals / Q000235:genetics; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics*; D012323:RNA Processing, Post-Transcriptional; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements