RNA elements in precursors instruct directional and processive primary piRNA biogenesis

ABSTRACT: PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are animal gonad-specific small RNAs that control the activity of transposable elements. Long single stranded RNAs from a variety of sources are substrates for the nebulous primary processing pathway that converts these into thousands of 24-30 nucleotide (nt) piRNAs. How these transcripts are selected as precursors is not known. Here we show that targeting a transcript with PIWI slicer activity of cysosolic Ago3 is sufficient to trigger ~30-nt waves of non-overlapping primary piRNAs in the fly ovarian germline. The generated primary piRNAs are almost exclusively loaded into the nuclear PIWI protein, Piwi. In the fly ovarian somatic environment we find that an RNA fragment from the 5? end of a piRNA cluster is able to direct a heterologous sequence into primar

ORGANISM(S): Bombyx mori

SUBMITTER: Ramesh Pillai 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-69102 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress