RNA Interference (RNAi) and Response of Plant Cells to Double Stranded RNA (dsRNA)

RNA interference (RNAi) mechanism is a natural process occurring in both plants and animals which silence the specific genes before being translated.RNAi is the key biological process in plants and has many different forms including transcriptional gene silencing (TGS) and post transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS).Plants can uptake and process externally applied double stranded RNAs, hairpin RNAs and small interfering RNAs prepared to silence genes of viruses, fungi and insects.The exogenously applied small RNAs move locally and systematically and induce RNAi mediated resistance.Understanding the plant response and processing of small RNAs could result in development of novel biotechnological approaches.In this review we analyze the biogenesis and function of endogenous set of small RNAs, exogenously applied small interfering RNAs and their response in plant cells. K e y w o r d s