Recently, Trends in Plant Science, a top review journal of the world plant science research area published an opinion review article by Prof. ZHAO Xiaobo’s Group in collaborating with Prof.Joanne Chory’s group, entitled“Unraveling the Linkage between Retrograde Signaling and RNA Metabolism in Plants”.
The communication between chloroplasts and nucleus is important for the coordinated expression of chloroplast and nuclear genes, in which the signal transduction from chloroplast to the nucleus is called retrograde signaling. Common RNA metabolism processes in plants include RNA synthesis, RNA editing, and alternative splicing. This article reviews a series of important recent research advances which revealing the novel linkages between retrograde signaling and RNA metabolism in plants, including i: chloroplast retrograde signaling regulates the alternative splicing of nuclear genes through effecting the elongation rate of RNA polymerase II; ii: retrograde signaling and RNA editing in chloroplasts can modulate each other; iii: chloroplast retrograde signaling can affect nuclear microRNA biogenesis.The paper also elaborated on the future research trend in the relevant field, pointed out that these findings are helpful for the generation and development of new research fields. It also has significance in guiding in-depth researches on organelle-to-nucleus communications.
Figure 1. Current linkages between retrograde signaling and RNA metabolism (From Zhao et al., Trends in Plant Science, 2020).
Prof. ZHAO Xiaobo from the Institute of Nuclear-Agricultural Sciences of CAB, ZJU contributed as the Co-first author and Co-corresponding author. Dr. Jianyan Huang and Prof. Joanne Chory from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Salk Institute for Biological Studies contributed as the Co-first author and Co-corresponding author, respectively. The work by Prof. ZHAO Xiaobo was supported by the Hundred-Talent Program of Zhejiang University.
Article link：https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385(19)30278-X