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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2015 Jun 26;26:87–94. doi: 10.1016/j.pbi.2015.05.033

Figure 1.

Figure 1

sRNA-mediated regulation in plant-pathogen interactions

A) Plant and pathogen sRNAs regulate host immunity and pathogen virulence, respectively, within the individual organism via post-transcriptional and transcriptional gene silencing. In plants, miRNAs and siRNAs acting through AGO1 or AGO2 mediate post-transcriptional gene silencing; and transcriptional gene silencing is mediated by hcsiRNAs acting mostly through AGO4 and AGO6 to induce DNA cytosine methylation or histone modifications. In general, AGO2 is up-regulated, and AGO4/AGO6 are down-regulated by pathogen infection.

B) Plant and pathogen sRNAs trigger cross-kingdom RNAi in plant-pathogen interactions. Plant HIGS siRNAs and likely plant endogenous sRNAs target effector genes and other essential genes in pathogens, whereas pathogen sRNAs translate to host cells, and target host immune-responsive genes through the host AGO-RISC.