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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: Wiley Interdiscip Rev RNA. 2011 May 2;2(5):748–760. doi: 10.1002/wrna.90

Figure 2. Mechanism for RNAa.

Figure 2

An exogenously introduced or naturally occurring saRNA/agRNA is loaded into an Ago protein (e.g. Ago2) where the passenger strand is cleaved and discarded, resulting in an active Ago-RNA complex. This complex gains access to the nuclear compartment by either passive transport when the nuclear envelope disappears during mitosis or active transport mechanisms. The complex may then bind to (A) complementary DNA sequences or (B) nascent cognate transcripts in promoters or 3′ flanking regions and further recruit histone modifiers, leading to an open chromatin structure and active transcription.