title: RNA silencing movement in plants.
abstract: Multicellular organisms, like higher plants, need to coordinate their growth and development and to cope with environmental cues. To achieve this, various signal molecules are transported between neighboring cells and distant organs to control the fate of the recipient cells and organs. RNA silencing produces cell non-autonomous signal molecules that can move over short or long distances leading to the sequence specific silencing of a target gene in a well defined area of cells or throughout the entire plant, respectively. The nature of these signal molecules, the route of silencing spread, and the genes involved in their production, movement and reception are discussed in this review. Additionally, a short section on features of silencing spread in animal models is presented at the end of this review.
authors: Department of Biology, University of Crete, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors: Glykeria
authors: G
authors: Mermigka
authors: Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Foundation for Research and Technology, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors: Frédéric
authors: F
authors: Verret
authors: Department of Biology, University of Crete, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.|Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Foundation for Research and Technology, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors: Kriton
authors: K
authors: Kalantidis
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017343:Genes, Plant; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D034622:RNA Interference; D034443:RNA Transport; D015398:Signal Transduction
keywords: Cell non-autonomous; RNA interference; plant RNA silencing; post-transcriptional gene silencing; short range silencing spread; systemic silencing; transcriptional gene silencing