Pushing the frontier of fluorescence microscopy requires the design of enhanced fluorophores with finely tuned properties. We recently discovered that incorporation of four-membered azetidine rings into classic fluorophore structures elicits substantial increases in brightness and photostability, resulting in the ‘Janelia Fluor’ (JF) series of dyes. Here, we refine and extend this strategy, showing that incorporation of 3-substituted azetidine groups allows rational tuning of the spectral and chemical properties with unprecedented precision. This strategy yields a palette of new fluorescent and fluorogenic labels with excitation ranging from blue to the far-red with utility in cells, tissue, and animals.

Virus‐induced gene silencing was used to assess the function of random Nicotiana benthamiana cDNAs in disease resistance. Out of 4992 cDNAs tested from a normalized library, there were 79 that suppressed a hypersensitive response (HR) associated with Pto‐mediated resistance against Pseudomonas syringae. However, only six of these clones blocked the Pto‐mediated suppression of P.syringae growth. The three clones giving the strongest loss of Pto resistance had inserts corresponding to HSP90 and also caused loss of Rx‐mediated resistance against potato virus X and N‐mediated tobacco mosaic virus resistance. The role of HSP90 as a cofactor of disease resistance is associated with stabilization of Rx protein levels and could be accounted for in part by SGT1 and other cofactors of disease resistance acting as co‐chaperones. This approach illustrates the potential benefits and limitations of RNA silencing in forward screens of gene function in plants.

In response to infection, invertebrates process replicating viral RNA genomes into siRNAs of discrete sizes to guide virus clearance by RNA interference. Here, we show that viral siRNAs sequenced from fruit fly, mosquito, and nematode cells were all overlapping in sequence, suggesting a possibility of using siRNAs for viral genome assembly and virus discovery. To test this idea, we examined contigs assembled from published small RNA libraries and discovered five previously undescribed viruses from cultured Drosophila cells and adult mosquitoes, including three with a positive-strand RNA genome and two with a dsRNA genome. Notably, four of the identified viruses exhibited only low sequence similarities to known viruses, such that none could be assigned into an existing virus genus. We also report detection of virus-derived PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) in Drosophila melanogaster that have not been previously described in any other host species and demonstrate viral genome assembly from viral piRNAs in the absence of viral siRNAs. Thus, this study provides a powerful culture-independent approach for virus discovery in invertebrates by assembling viral genomes directly from host immune response products without prior virus enrichment or amplification. We propose that invertebrate viruses discovered by this approach may include previously undescribed human and vertebrate viral pathogens that are transmitted by arthropod vectors.arboviruses | piRNAs | siRNAs | viral immunity | massively parallel sequencing T he Dicer family of host immune receptors mediates antiviral immunity in fungi, plants, and invertebrate animals by RNA interference (RNAi) or RNA silencing (1-3). In this immunity, a viral dsRNA is recognized by Dicer and diced into siRNAs. These virus-derived siRNAs are then loaded into an RNA silencing complex to act as specificity determinants and to guide slicing of the target viral RNAs by an Argonaute protein (AGO) present in the complex. Dicer proteins typically contain an RNA helicase domain, a PAZ domain shared with AGOs, and two tandem type III endoribonuclease (RNase III) domains. Dicer cleaves dsRNA with a simple preference toward a terminus of dsRNA, producing duplex small RNA fragments of discrete sizes progressively from the terminus (4).In addition to siRNAs, micro-RNAs (miRNAs) and PIWIinteracting RNAs (piRNAs) guide RNA silencing in similar complexes but with distinct AGOs (4-6). In Drosophila melanogaster, miRNAs and siRNAs are predominantly 22 and 21 nucleotides in length, dependent on Dicer-1 (DCR1) and DCR2 for their biogenesis, and act in silencing complexes containing AGO1 and AGO2 in the AGO subfamily, respectively (4-6). In contrast, ∼24-30-nt piRNAs are Dicer-independent and require AGO3, Aubergine (AUB), and PIWI in the PIWI subfamily for their biogenesis (4-6). Genetic analyses (7-10) have clearly demonstrated a role for D. melanogaster DCR2 in the immunity and biogenesis of viral siRNAs targeting diverse positive-strand (+) RNA viruses, including Flock house virus (FHV), cricket par...

Homologues of the yeast ubiquitin ligase-associated protein SGT1 are required for disease resistance in plants mediated by nucleotide-binding site͞leucine-rich repeat (NBS-LRR) proteins. Here, by silencing SGT1 in Nicotiana benthamiana, we extend these findings and demonstrate that SGT1 has an unexpectedly general role in disease resistance. It is required for resistance responses mediated by NBS-LRR and other R proteins in which pathogen-derived elicitors are recognized either inside or outside the host plant cell. A requirement also exists for SGT1 in nonhost resistance in which all known members of a host species are resistant against every characterized isolate of a pathogen. Our findings show that silencing SGT1 affects diverse types of disease resistance in plants and support the idea that R protein-mediated and nonhost resistance may involve similar mechanisms.

Homology-dependent RNA silencing occurs in many eukaryotic cells. We reported recently that nodaviral infection triggers an RNA silencing-based antiviral response (RSAR) in Drosophila, which is capable of a rapid virus clearance in the absence of expression of a virus-encoded suppressor. Here, we present further evidence to show that the Drosophila RSAR is mediated by the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway, as the viral suppressor of RSAR inhibits experimental RNAi initiated by exogenous double-stranded RNA and RSAR requires the RNAi machinery. We demonstrate that RNAi also functions as a natural antiviral immunity in mosquito cells. We further show that vaccinia virus and human influenza A, B, and C viruses each encode an essential protein that suppresses RSAR in Drosophila. The vaccinia and influenza viral suppressors, E3L and NS1, are distinct double-stranded RNA-binding proteins and essential for pathogenesis by inhibiting the mammalian IFN-regulated innate antiviral response. We found that the double-stranded RNA-binding domain of NS1, implicated in innate immunity suppression, is both essential and sufficient for RSAR suppression. These findings provide evidence that mammalian virus proteins can inhibit RNA silencing, implicating this mechanism as a nucleic acid-based antiviral immunity in mammalian cells. R NA silencing is a unique RNA-guided gene regulatory mechanism that operates in a wide range of eukaryotic organisms from plants to mammals (1). A feature common to all RNA silencing processes is the production of 21-to 26-nt small RNAs from structured or double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) by the endoribonuclease Dicer (2-6). These small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) control the specificity of RNA silencing in a homology-dependent manner by means of an RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), of which Argonaute-2 (AGO2) is an essential protein component (1,7,8). RNA silencing in fungi, plants, and worms involves a cellular RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP); however, the multiple-turnover RISC may mediate RNA silencing in absence of a cellular RdRP in Drosophila and mammalian cells (1, 9-11).We reported recently that infection of cultured Drosophila cells with the plus-strand RNA Nodavirus flock house virus (FHV), triggers specific silencing of FHV RNAs that is associated with accumulation of 22-nt siRNAs (12). Silencing of the replicating viral RNAs is RISC-dependent and sensitive to inhibition by the FHV B2 protein, as shown by the observation that B2 is essential for FHV infection of WT Drosophila cells but dispensable in cells depleted for AGO2 (12). These findings provided an example indicating an antiviral role for RNA silencing in the animal kingdom (12, 13), as has been established in higher plants (14)(15)(16)(17)(18).In this article, we report that specific RNA silencing was induced in mosquito cells in response to viral RNA replication and show that this mosquito antiviral immunity is RISCdependent and sensitive to suppression by the B2 protein encoded by either FHV or nodamura virus (NoV). We demonstrate th...

The worm Caenorhabditis elegans is a model system for studying many aspects of biology, including host responses to bacterial pathogens, but it is not known to support replication of any virus. Plants and insects encode multiple Dicer enzymes that recognize distinct precursors of small RNAs and may act cooperatively. However, it is not known whether the single Dicer of worms and mammals is able to initiate the small RNA-guided RNA interference (RNAi) antiviral immunity as occurs in plants and insects. Here we show complete replication of the Flock house virus (FHV) bipartite, plus-strand RNA genome in C. elegans. We show that FHV replication in C. elegans triggers potent antiviral silencing that requires RDE-1, an Argonaute protein essential for RNAi mediated by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) but not by microRNAs. This immunity system is capable of rapid virus clearance in the absence of FHV B2 protein, which acts as a broad-spectrum RNAi inhibitor upstream of rde-1 by targeting the siRNA precursor. This work establishes a C. elegans model for genetic studies of animal virus-host interactions and indicates that mammals might use a siRNA pathway as an antiviral response.

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We have used multiplexed high-throughput sequencing to characterize changes in small RNA populations that occur during viral infection in animal cells. Small RNA-based mechanisms such as RNA interference (RNAi) have been shown in plant and invertebrate systems to play a key role in host responses to viral infection. Although homologs of the key RNAi effector pathways are present in mammalian cells, and can launch an RNAi-mediated degradation of experimentally targeted mRNAs, any role for such responses in mammalian host-virus interactions remains to be characterized. Six different viruses were examined in 41 experimentally susceptible and resistant host systems. We identified virus-derived small RNAs (vsRNAs) from all six viruses, with total abundance varying from “vanishingly rare” (less than 0.1% of cellular small RNA) to highly abundant (comparable to abundant micro-RNAs “miRNAs”). In addition to the appearance of vsRNAs during infection, we saw a number of specific changes in host miRNA profiles. For several infection models investigated in more detail, the RNAi and Interferon pathways modulated the abundance of vsRNAs. We also found evidence for populations of vsRNAs that exist as duplexed siRNAs with zero to three nucleotide 3′ overhangs. Using populations of cells carrying a Hepatitis C replicon, we observed strand-selective loading of siRNAs onto Argonaute complexes. These experiments define vsRNAs as one possible component of the interplay between animal viruses and their hosts.