Cosuppression of I transposon activity in Drosophila by I-containing sense and antisense transgenes.

We have previously shown that the activity of functional I elements introduced into Drosophila devoid of such elements can be repressed by transgenes containing an internal nontranslatable part of the I element itself and that this repressing effect presents features characteristic of homology-dependent gene silencing or cosuppression. Here we show that transgenes containing a fragment of the I element in antisense orientation induce I-element silencing with the same characteristic features as the corresponding sense construct: namely, repression takes several generations to be fully established, with similar rates for sense and antisense constructs, and it is only maternally transmitted, with reversal of the effect through paternal transmission. We also show that transcription of the transgenes is necessary to produce the silencing effect and that repression can be maintained for at least one generation following elimination of the transgenes, thus strongly suggesting that a transgene product and not the transgene per se is the essential intermediate in the silencing effect. The data presented strongly support models in which the repressing effect of antisense transcripts involves the same mechanisms as cosuppression by sense constructs and emphasize the role of symmetrically acting nucleic acid structures in mediating repression.