Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 348, Issue 6236, Pages 817-821Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa1264
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [HG007000, GM62862, GM65236]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) protect the animal germ line by silencing transposons. Primary piRNAs, generated from transcripts of genomic transposon junkyards (piRNA clusters), are amplified by the ping-pong pathway, yielding secondary piRNAs. We report that secondary piRNAs, bound to the PIWI protein Ago3, can initiate primary piRNA production from cleaved transposon RNAs. The first similar to 26 nucleotides (nt) of each cleaved RNA becomes a secondary piRNA, but the subsequent similar to 26 nt become the first in a series of phased primary piRNAs that bind Piwi, allowing piRNAs to spread beyond the site of RNA cleavage. The ping-pong pathway increases only the abundance of piRNAs, whereas production of phased primary piRNAs from cleaved transposon RNAs adds sequence diversity to the piRNA pool, allowing adaptation to changes in transposon sequence.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available