Heterochromatic siRNAs regulate transcriptional gene silencing by inducing DNA methylation and histone H3K9 dimethylation.Recent advances have revealed the distinct phases involved in siRNA mediated silencing pathway,although the precise functions of a number of factors remain undesignated,putative mechanisms for the con-nection between DNA and histone methylation have been investigated,and much effort has been invested to understand the biological functions of siRNA-mediated epigenetic modifi cation.In this review,we summarize the mechanism of siRNA-mediated epigenetic modification,which involves the production of siRNA and the recruit-ments of DNA and histone methytransferases to the target sequences assisted by complementary pairing between 24-nt siRNAs and nascent scaffold RNAs,the roles of siRNA-mediated epigenetic modifi cation in maintaining genome stability and regulating gene expression have been dis-cussed,newly identified players of the siRNA mediated silencing pathway have also been introduced.
