Course description: This half-year graduate course aims to introduce basic gene silencing concepts and research techniques available to address gene silencing questions in plant as well as other organisms. Students are expected to develop the ability to critically evaluate and interpret published research articles. They will also learn to extract information from international conferences by listening to experts of each field introducing their research.
Outline:
1. Introduction - overview
2. Sense co-suppression in plant
3. Transgene co-suppression in animals
4. Plant virus resistance vs. co-suppression
5. Transcriptional gene silencing (TGS)
6. Post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS)
7. Virus-induce gene silencing (VIGS)
8. Silencing signal transportation
9. Small RNA
10. siRNA pathway
11. miRNA pathway
12. Function of DICER
13. Function of RNA-induce silencing complex (RISC)
14. Functions of DICER-like proteins (DCLs) in plant
15. DCL1 vs. miRNA biogenesis
16. Function of DCL2 and nat-siRNA
17. Function of DCL3 and DNA methylation
18. Function of DCL4 and trans-siRNA
19. Argonature family
20. Suppression of gene silencing
21. RNAi technology
22. miRNA technology