由小RNA（sRNA）介导的RNA沉默（RNAi）是真核生物调控基因表达的保守机制。RNA途径在真核生物生长发育以及响应生物和非生物胁迫过程中发挥了非常重要的作用。近年来，天然存在的跨界RNAi（trans-kingdom RNAi）现象的发现掀起了RNAi理论与应用研究的新热潮。

JIPB近日在线发表了中科院微生物所郭惠珊课题组题为“RNA silencing: From discovery and elucidation to application and perspectives”的特邀综述。从1928年报道的植物被病毒侵染后产生的“recovery”现象开始，文章系统总结了RNAi发现历史进程的早期及其机制研究的代表性内容；详细分析了动、植物和真菌中RNAi调控基因表达机制的异同；系统归纳了当前发现的跨界RNAi作用机制；透彻阐述了自然界普遍存在的跨界RNAi及其可能产生的效应，包括抑制跨界RNAi的潜在分子机制，及基于跨界RNAi设计植物保护策略的关键因子。最后，文章指出了sRNA作为人类疾病治疗药物的优势，并展望了sRNA药物研究的必要性和潜在价值。

图. RNAi发现历史进程的早期及其机制研究关键代表性工作（因篇幅所限，该领域研究尚有其他重要研究工作未被引用，在此向相关研究科研工作者表示歉意）。

郭惠珊研究员是国际上早期利用RNAi抗病毒研究、病毒抑制RNAi以及植物 miRNA功能研究的科学家之一(Guo and Garcia, 1997; Guo and Ding, 2002; Guo et al., 2005)。回国后，利用其创建的人工miRNA前体研究体系，开展了高效抗病RNAi设计的相关研究 (Duan et al., 2008a; Duan et al., 2008b)；详细解析了首个病毒抑制子CMV-2b抑制植物RNAi的分子机制(Duan et al., 2012; Zahid et al., 2015)和DNA病毒抑制子C2逃逸寄主RNAi抑制的全新机制(Chen et al., 2020)。揭示了植物miR847和miR1885对植物生长发育以及权衡生长和免疫的调控作用(He et al., 2008; Wang and Guo, 2015; Cui et al., 2020)。

近年来郭惠珊课题组在国际上首次报道了自然存在的植物-真菌跨界抗病RNAi；并基于跨界RNAi理论创建了抗黄萎病RNAi棉花培育技术体系(Zhang et al., 2016a; Zhang et al., 2016b)。结合对棉花黄萎病致病真菌-大丽轮枝菌-侵染生物学的研究(Zhou et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2017; Qin et al., 2018; Gao et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2020)，创制了高抗黄萎病的RNAi棉花，是从基础理论到应用研究的最好实践。

这篇综述正是基于作者对RNAi理论的深刻了解和实验经验对RNAi研究工作进行系统总结和透彻分析，对相关领域的研究人员具有极高的参考价值。赵建华博士为论文第一作者，郭惠珊研究员为通讯作者。该研究得到了国家自然科学基金重点项目、国际合作项目和面上基金项目的资助。

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论文链接：https://doi.org/10.1111/jipb.13213