Construction of a set of vectors allowing inducible production of siRNA in Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

RNA interference (RNAi) is a sequence-specific gene silencing mechanism. It is induced by the formation of dsRNA that are recognised by the Dicer complex and processed into 21-23 long oligonucleotides called siRNA (short interfering RNA). Subsequently, RISC (RNA-Inducing Silencing Complex) binds siRNA that targets the complex towards its homologous mRNA (DYKXHOORN et al., 2003) which is eventually degraded.
In contrast to budding yeast, the entire pathway is conserved in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, making it a valuable organism to both study physiological RNAi and to use it as a inducible gene knock-down tool.
In an attempt to apply this method in the fission yeast, we are using three different approaches to produce siRNA. In each case, a vector containing a regulatable promoter activated in presence of tetracycline (tTA') (GOSSEN et al., 1995) is generated and the ura4 marker required for growth on medium lacking uracil serves as reporter. First, a vector expressing the full lenght antisens RNA of ura4 (800 nucleotides) (RAPONI and ARNDT, 2003) is used. Second, we are trying to generate much shorter dsRNA where both strands are linked by either a short hairpin of 25 nucleotides (BRUMMELKAMP et al., 2002) or a longer one of 350 nucleotides (SCHRAMKE and ALLSHIRE, 2003). The ability of these different dsRNA to induce silencing of ura4 will be presented.