During the “23rd Ernst Klenk Symposium on Non-Coding RNA” in 30 Sep. 2007 which was held in the Medical Faculty, University of Cologne, I was fascinated by a talk about the RNA silencing networks in plants.
In this talk, Professor David Baulcombe from the Sainsbury Laboratory, UK, explained how siRNAs can be amplified and stimulate further rounds of siRNA production in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. This amplification apparently triggers a cascade or network of gene silencing.
Here some interesting questions arise: How does this regulatory mechanism perform in concert with signaling pathways? Is this cascade limited to the similar genes involved in the same pathway? What are the properties of silencing networks?