Table 3.

S. scabiei genes involved in RNA interference

RNAi pathway gene	Protein function	Databases
		S. scabiei var. hominis	S. scabiei var. suis	S. scabiei var. canis
Exportin	Nuclear export of shRNA and pre-miRNAs. [72]	+	+	+
Drosha	A nuclear RNase III that cleaves primary miRNAs (pri-miRNAs) to release hairpin-shaped pre-miRNAs. These are subsequently cut by the cytoplasmic RNase III Dicer to generate mature miRNAs. [73–75]	+	+	+
Dicer	Cleaves dsRNA and pre-miRNA into siRNA and miRNA, respectively. Facilitates the activation of RISC. [50]	+	+	+
Pasha	Essential cofactor for Drosha playing a central role in binding single-stranded fragments of the pri-mRNA. [74]	+	+	+a
Loquacious	Cofactor of dicer that is important for enabling the incorporation of dsRNA in silencing complexes. It mediates miRNA biogenesis and, thereby, the expression of genes regulated by miRNAs. [76]	+	+	+
Argonaute	Argonaute proteins bind to different classes of small non-cording RNAs (miRNA, siRNA and piRNAs) which leads to mRNA cleavage and subsequent silencing. [77]	+	+	+
RdRP	RNA-dependent RNA polymerase that amplifies miRNAs and small temporal RNAs to produce dsRNA which are then cleaved by the enzyme Dicer to produce siRNAs targeting mRNAs for silencing. [78]	+	+	−
VIG	Argonaute related protein in RISC that has role in RNA binding and nuclease activity. [79]	+	+	−
GW182	Promotes target silencing by repressing translation and enhancing mRNA turnover, precise mechanism of action unknown. [80]	−	+a	−
Piwi	Piwi proteins or piwi domains hydrolyse ssRNA. [81]	−	−	−
C3PO	Endoribonuclease that activates the RISC. [82]	−	−	−
R2D2	Co factor of dicer2 directing strand specific incorporation of the siRNA. [53, 83]	−	−	−

Key: +, denotes genes that were identified in the respective S. scabiei database; −, denotes genes that were not detected in the respective S. scabiei database

^aIncomplete gene sequence was identified