ABSTRACT
All animals and plants utilize small RNA molecules to control protein expression during different developmental stages and in response to viral infection. The multiple plant proteins involved in RNAi may be subdivided into the main and auxiliary proteins. The main proteins involved in the plant siRNA pathways, including RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RDRs), dsRNA-binding proteins (DRBs), DCLs and AGOs, are members of large protein families (Vazquez et al. 2010, Hiraguri et al. 2005, Wassenegger and Krezal 2006). Auxiliary proteins such as a JmjC domain-containing protein (Searle et al. 2010), GW repeat proteins (Jin and Zhu 2010), silencing defective 5 (SDE5) (Hernandez-Pinzon et al. 20007), SNF2 domain-containing proteins (Smith et al. 2007), Aly or Hin19 protein (Uhrig et al. 2004, Park et al. 2004, Canto et al. 2006, Hsieh et al. 2009) modify VIGS and TIGS development. Identifi cation of novel additional host proteins associated with RNAi would be helpful for understanding their contribution to gene silencing as a part of host defense mechanism.
