The Mechanism of RNA Interference and the Transposon Silencing in Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

All isolates of C. elegans contain multiple transposable elements in their genome. These elements jump around freely in somatic cells, but transposition is fully silenced in the germline. In investigating the mechanism of transposon silencing, we found that it was mechanistically linked to another phenomenon: RNAi or RNA interference. This is the experimental silencing of gene expression by administration of double-stranded RNA