RISC activation and catalysis of RNA

The active components of an RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) are endonucleases called argonaute proteins, which cleave the target mRNA strand complementary to their bound siRNA. As the fragments produced by dicer are double-stranded, they could each in theory produce a functional siRNA. However, only one of the two strands, which is known as the guide strand, binds the argonaute protein and directs gene silencing. The other anti-guide strand or passenger strand is degraded during RISC activation. Although it was first believed that an ATP-dependent helicase separated these two strands,[ the process is actually ATP-independent and performed directly by the protein components of RISC. The strand selected as the guide tends to be the one whose 5' end is least paired to its complement,but strand selection is unaffected by the direction in which dicer cleaves the dsRNA before RISC incorporation. Instead, the R2D2 protein may serve as the differentiating factor by binding the less-stable 5' end of the passenger strand.
The structural basis for binding of RNA to the argonaute protein was examined by X-ray crystallography of the binding domain of an RNA-bound argonaute protein. Here, the phosphorylated 5' end of the RNA strand enters a conserved basic surface pocket and makes contacts through a divalent cation (an atom with two positive charges) such as magnesium and by aromatic stacking (a process that allows more than one atom to share an electron by passing it back and forth) between the 5' nucleotide in the siRNA and a conserved tyrosine residue. This site is thought to form a nucleation site for the binding of the siRNA to its mRNA target.It is not understood how the activated RISC complex locates complementary mRNAs within the cell. Although the cleavage process has been proposed to be linked to translation, translation of the mRNA target is not essential for RNAi-mediated degradation.Indeed, RNAi may be more effective against mRNA targets that are not translated Argonaute proteins, the catalytic components of RISC, are localized to specific regions in the cytoplasm called P-bodies (also cytoplasmic bodies or GW bodies), which are regions with high rates of mRNA decay; miRNA activity is also clustered in P-bodies. The disruption of P bodies in cells decreases the efficiency of RNA interference, suggesting that they are the site of a critical step in the RNAi process.