Catherine Bellini

TL;DR: An allelic series of the novel argonaute mutant (ago1‐1 to ago1‐6) of the herbaceous plant Arabidopsis thaliana has been isolated and encodes a putative 115 kDa protein with sequence similarity to translation products of a novel gene family present in nematodes as well as humans.

TL;DR: Evidence is presented indicating that no gene can act as a universal reference, implying the need for a systematic validation of reference genes.

TL;DR: Seven allelic recessive Arabidopsis mutants, designated superroot, are isolated, displaying several abnormalities reminiscent of auxin effects, including small and epinastic cotyledons, an elongated hypocotyl, the development of excess adventitious and lateral roots, a reduced number of leaves, and the absence of an inflorescence.

TL;DR: The isolation of Arabidopsis mutants impaired in PTGS and Sequencing of ago1 mutants revealed one amino acid essential for PTGS that is also present in QDE-2 and RDE-1 in a highly conserved motif confirm the hypothesis that these processes derive from a common ancestral mechanism that controls expression of invading nucleic acid molecules at the post-transcriptional level.

TL;DR: The concept of normalization in transcript quantification is introduced here in an attempt to convince molecular biologists, and non-specialists, that systematic validation of reference genes is essential for producing accurate, reliable data in qRT-PCR analyses, and thus should be an integral component of them.