The Argonaute family: tentacles that reach into RNAi, developmental control, stem cell maintenance, and tumorigenesis.

By M. Carmell, Zhenyu Xuan, Michael Q. Zhang, Gregory J. Hannon. Genes & Development, 2002

931 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In conclusion, Argonaute proteins comprise a highly conserved protein family that is involved in a variety of RNA silencing phenomena in a diverse set of organisms. Perhaps through RNAi-related pathways or possibly also through distinct mechanisms, Argonaute family members have a variety of biological roles. These include regulation of development and determination of stem-cell character. Through an ever-advancing understanding of the biochemistry and genetics of the Argonaute family, we may ultimately reveal the reach of these pathways into the basic biological mechanisms that underlie a variety of human diseases.

Subfields: Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/866229a7fe4399a6581ef15db2d7c0045d679e9c

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Citations in the corpus

Specialized piRNA Pathways Act in Germline and Somatic Tissues of the Drosophila Ovary (2009, background): “Like other members of the Argonaute family, Piwi proteins use bound small RNAs as guides for substrate recognition and target cleavage (Carmell et al., 2002).”
Genetic and Functional Diversification of Small RNA Pathways in Plants (2004, background): “Given that AGO proteins are components of RISCs that catalyze sequence-specific RNA degradation (Carmell et al. 2002) and that different AGO proteins have DNA- or RNA-binding activities (Lingel et al. 2003; Song et al. 2003; Yan et al. 2003), it seems reasonable to speculate that AGO4 engages a…”
piRNAs Can Trigger a Multigenerational Epigenetic Memory in the Germline of C. elegans (2012, background): “In eukaryotes, 20–30 nucleotide (nt) RNAs bound to Argonaute (AGO) protein cofactors are the effectors of a number of gene regulation pathways (Carmell et al., 2002).”
MicroRNAS and their regulatory roles in plants. (2006, background): “Argonaute proteins, which have been implicated in a broad range of RNAi-related mechanisms, contain two conserved regions, the PAZ and Piwi domains (25).”
Analysis of the C. elegans Argonaute family reveals that distinct Argonautes act sequentially during RNAi. (2006, background): “AGO proteins have also been implicated in gene silencing in fungi, plants, protozoans, and metazoans including humans (reviewed in Carmell et al., 2002).”
Specific association of Piwi with rasiRNAs derived from retrotransposon and heterochromatic regions in the Drosophila genome. (2006, background): “The hub functions in the maintenance of GSC identity and influences its behavior (Ohlstein et al. 2004), while Piwi is required for the asymmetric division of GSCs to produce and maintain a daughter GSC but is not essential for further differentiation of committed daughter cells (Cox et al. 1998).”
Identification and characterization of two novel classes of small RNAs in the mouse germline: retrotransposon-derived siRNAs in oocytes and germline small RNAs in testes. (2006, methodology): “Based on the amino acid sequence alignments, the Argonaute protein family has been subdivided into two subfamilies, referred to as the Argonaute and Piwi families (Carmell et al. 2002).”