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Published Online June 9, 2005
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1114955

Reports

Submitted on May 17, 2005
Accepted on June 1, 2005

RNA Polymerase II is Required for RNAi-Dependent Heterochromatin Assembly

Hiroaki Kato 1, Derek B. Goto 2, Robert A. Martienssen 2, Takeshi Urano 3, Koichi Furukawa 3, Yota Murakami 1*

1 Department of Viral Oncology, Institute for Virus Research, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8507, Japan.
2 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA.
3 Department of Biochemistry II, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Yota Murakami , E-mail: yota{at}virus.kyoto-u.ac.jp

In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery converts peri-centromeric transcripts into small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), and is required for the assembly of peri-centromeric heterochromatin. Here we describe a mutation in the second largest subunit of RNA polymerase II (RNAPII). Both wild type and mutant RNAPII localized to the peri-centromere. However, the mutation resulted in the loss of heterochromatic histone modifications and in the accumulation of peri-centromeric transcripts, accompanied by the loss of siRNAs. This phenotype resembles mutants in RNAi and suggests that RNAPII couples peri-centromeric transcription with siRNA processing and heterochromatin assembly.


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