The C-terminal dsRNA-binding domain of Drosophila Dicer-2 is crucial for efficient and high-fidelity production of siRNA and loading of siRNA to Argonaute2

N-terminal helicase domain and C-terminal dsRBD of Dicer-2 are important for efficient RNA silencing in vivo. (A) Images of the eyes of the female wild-type and mutant Dicer-2 rescue transgenic flies in the background of the endogenous dicer-2^null or dicer-2^G31R in the presence of white inverted repeat (wIR). (Top) wIR; dicer-2^null, Act5C-Gal4/dicer-2^null; UAST-HA-Dicer-2 (wild-type or mutant)/+. (Bottom) wIR; dicer-2^null, Act5C-Gal4/dicer-2^G31R; UAST-HA-Dicer-2 (wild-type or mutant)/+. Control flies are wIR; dicer-2^null, Act5C-Gal4/CyO; +. (B) Measurement of eye pigment chemically extracted from hand-dissected fly eyes. Of note, 480-nm absorbance normalized to mean of CantonS samples was shown. Data are mean ± SD (n = 5). (*) P-value <0.05. (C) Levels of white mRNA normalized by rp49 in the flies with dicer-2^null or dicer-2^G31R background relative to the mean of the control flies, determined by qRT-PCR. Data are mean ± SD (n = 3). (*) P-value <0.05. Data for the control, dicer-2^null, and wild-type rescue are from Kandasamy and Fukunaga (2016).