RNA interference as a mobile silencer

55:06paramutation that we observed? Well, it's a combination of the genetic regulation with the epigenetic um silencing. Okay. Right. >> Right. Here's what's happening. There's something called RNA interference. What that is is tiny little bits of RNA that act like mobile silencers. A part of the DNA makes this RNA interference thingy. It's a little piece of RNA that goes and like attaches to DNA elsewhere. And because this thing is small enough, it can just move around the nucleus. Okay? And what it does is

55:49recruit DNA methylation machinery to come in and put those methyl groups in the C's. Okay. So now what's going to happen? What's going to happen is I've got my purple um I've got my purple trait and I've got the green trait. They both actually have the gene for purple. What's different is that the green one has a mechanism to create this small tiny thingy of RNA to go and silence that purple gene. Right? >> Okay. Right. >> The purple one doesn't have that. >> But now when I cross it, >> I'm going to get one one of the chromatins is going to have that thing

56:30that makes the little tiny RNA, the RNA interference. But that RNA interference is going to go do it for both. >> Right. Right. because it's not it's not um it is not limited by it is free is able to free flow through the nucleus and do what it did previously to get the green. >> Yeah. >> And so regardless of the fact that both have this dominant purple uh this sort of secondary >> Yeah. >> functional process is free to move despite the genetic code and instruction. >> Exactly. Yeah. And because now the RNA interference is on both the chromatins. Now when I take that and and I subsequently breed it with another true breeding purple again all the offspring are >> that makes sense, right? >> Because the RNA interference is kind of

57:11like this little mini molecular virus type thing, right? >> Just because you have the instructions doesn't mean your body is going to execute on them. >> Yeah. Yeah. You if you've got an agent that's just like like erasing it, >> right? or like you know putting like a paper on top of the instructions or whatever. >> That's a really interesting note. It it that again going back to this idea that there is there is sort of a a few layers between the instruction and the completed production of the protein. >> Yeah.