The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The evolution of RNAi as a defence against viruses and transposable elements
Open accessAbstract
RNA interference (RNAi) is an important defence against viruses and transposable elements (TEs). RNAi not only protects against viruses by degrading viral RNA, but hosts and viruses can also use RNAi to manipulate each other's gene expression, and hosts can encode microRNAs that target viral sequences. In response, viruses have evolved a myriad of adaptations to suppress and evade RNAi. RNAi can also protect cells against TEs, both by degrading TE transcripts and by preventing TE expression through heterochromatin formation. The aim of our review is to summarize and evaluate the current data on the evolution of these RNAi defence mechanisms. To this end, we also extend a previous analysis of the evolution of genes of the RNAi pathways. Strikingly, we find that antiviral RNAi genes, anti-TE RNAi genes and viral suppressors of RNAi all evolve rapidly, suggestive of an evolutionary arms race between hosts and parasites. Over longer time scales, key RNAi genes are repeatedly duplicated or lost across the metazoan phylogeny, with important implications for RNAi as an immune defence.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Bartel (2004) · doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(04)00045-5 · Cited by 34,714
Taganov, K. D., Boldin, M. P., Chang, K.-J., & Baltimore, D. (2006) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0605298103 · Cited by 4,317
Innate Immunity: The Virtues of a Nonclonal System of Recognition
Medzhitov, R., & Janeway, C. A. (1997) · Cell · doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(00)80412-2 · Cited by 2,434
Control of translation and mRNA degradation by miRNAs and siRNAs: Table 1.
Valencia-Sanchez, M. A., Liu, J., Hannon, G. J., & Parker, R. (2006) · Genes & Development · doi:10.1101/gad.1399806 · Cited by 2,060
Transposable elements and the epigenetic regulation of the genome
Slotkin, R. K., & Martienssen, R. (2007) · Nature Reviews Genetics · doi:10.1038/nrg2072 · Cited by 2,044
Viruses and interferon: a fight for supremacy
Katze, M. G., He, Y., & Gale, M. (2002) · Nature Reviews Immunology · doi:10.1038/nri888 · Cited by 1,419
Mao, Y.-B., Cai, W.-J., Wang, J.-W., Hong, G.-J., Tao, X.-Y., Wang, L.-J., Huang, Y.-P., & Chen, X.-Y. (2007) · Nature Biotechnology · doi:10.1038/nbt1352 · Cited by 1,358 · cited 1×
“For example, if RNAi is used experimentally to knock down gene expression, it can result in systemic silencing in moths and beetles (Baum et al. 2007; Mao et al. 2007), while in flies, which have no SID-1-like genes, transgene silencing has only a localized effect.”
The Piwi-piRNA Pathway Provides an Adaptive Defense in the Transposon Arms Race
Aravin, A. A., Hannon, G. J., & Brennecke, J. (2007) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1146484 · Cited by 1,096
Endogenous siRNAs Derived from Transposons and mRNAs in Drosophila Somatic Cells
Ghildiyal, M., Seitz, H., Horwich, M. D., Li, C., Du, T., Lee, S., Xu, J., Kittler, E. L. W., Zapp, M. L., Weng, Z., et al. (2008) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1157396 · Cited by 645
Roger, A. J., & Hug, L. A. (2006) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2006.1845 · Cited by 180
Cited by
RNA-guided genetic silencing systems in bacteria and archaea
Wiedenheft, B., Sternberg, S. H., & Doudna, J. A. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature10886 · Cited by 1,851
Restricting retrotransposons: a review
Goodier, J. L. (2016) · Mobile DNA · doi:10.1186/s13100-016-0070-z · Cited by 436
Molecular mechanisms influencing efficiency of RNA interference in insects
Cooper, A. M., Silver, K., Zhang, J., Park, Y., & Zhu, K. Y. (2019) · Pest Management Science · doi:10.1002/ps.5126 · Cited by 435
Virus-Encoded microRNAs: An Overview and a Look to the Future
Kincaid, R. P., & Sullivan, C. S. (2012) · PLoS Pathogens · doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1003018 · Cited by 396
Revisiting the Relationship between Transposable Elements and the Eukaryotic Stress Response
Horváth, V., Merenciano, M., & González, J. (2017) · Trends in Genetics · doi:10.1016/j.tig.2017.08.007 · Cited by 219
Metadata
- Authors
- Obbard, D. J., Gordon, K. H. J., Buck, A. H., & Jiggins, F. M.
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2008-10-16
- Volume
- 364
- Issue
- 1513
- Pages
- 99-115
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- OpenAlex
- W2096246936
- Cited by
- 516
- References
- 12
- FWCI
- 32.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The evolution of RNAi as a defence against viruses and transposable elements. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1098/rstb.2008.0168
- The paper
- Obbard, D. J., Gordon, K. H. J., Buck, A. H., & Jiggins, F. M. (2009). The evolution of RNAi as a defence against viruses and transposable elements. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0168
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.