An Epigenetic Role for Maternally Inherited piRNAs in Transposon Silencing

By J. Brennecke, C. Malone, Alexei Aravin, Ravi Sachidanandam, Alexander Stark, Gregory J. Hannon. Nature reviews genetics, 2008

797 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In plants and mammals, small RNAs indirectly mediate epigenetic inheritance by specifying cytosine methylation. We found that small RNAs themselves serve as vectors for epigenetic information. Crosses between Drosophila strains that differ in the presence of a particular transposon can produce sterile progeny, a phenomenon called hybrid dysgenesis. This phenotype manifests itself only if the transposon is paternally inherited, suggesting maternal transmission of a factor that maintains fertility. In both P- and I-element–mediated hybrid dysgenesis models, daughters show a markedly different content of Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) targeting each element, depending on their parents of origin. Such differences persist from fertilization through adulthood. This indicates that maternally deposited piRNAs are important for mounting an effective silencing response and that a lack of maternal piRNA inheritance underlies hybrid dysgenesis.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aa1af14426133d72fe591104d1e96c1e37373bd2

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Citations in the corpus

Transposition Driven Genomic Heterogeneity in the Drosophila Brain: A Dissertation (2012, neutral): “, 2010) and posttranscriptional mechanisms (Vagin et al., 2006; Yang and Kazazian, 2006; Brennecke et al., 2008; Ghildiyal et al., 2008; Kawamura et al., 2008; Chung et al., 2008; Czech et al., 2008) to suppress the expression and disruptive activity of “parasitic” transposable elements that compris”
Epigenetic reprogramming and small RNA silencing of transposable elements in pollen (2009, neutral): “Furthermore, piRNA-mediated repression of hybrid dysgenesis by non-LTR retrotransposons depends on expression of full-length autonomous elements in nurse cell nuclei adjacent to the oocyte (Brennecke et al., 2008; Chambeyron et al., 2008).”
RNA granules: post-transcriptional and epigenetic modulators of gene expression (2009, background): “; Argonaute-like Piwi proteins and Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) that repress transposon expressio”
Small silencing RNAs: an expanding universe (2009, positive): “Finally, will the increasing number of examples of small RNAs carrying epigenetic information across generation”
The Structure of Human Argonaute-2 in Complex with miR-20a (2012, positive): “For example in Drosophila, Piwi protein-piRNA complexes transmit epigenetic information and likely must remain intact throughout a substantial fraction of the fly life cycle (Brennecke et al., 2008).”
The Genetic Signatures of Noncoding RNAs (2009, background): “These include RNA interference-related phenomena such as cosuppression and transcriptional gene silencing [132,173–176], as well as position effect variegation [177,178], hybrid dysgenesis [179], parental imprinting, X-chromosome dosage compensation and allelic exclusion [180], germ cell reprogrammi”
CPC2: a fast and accurate coding potential calculator based on sequence intrinsic features (2017, background): “Increasing evidences indicate that these ncRNAs play critical roles in numbers of important cellular processes, including transcriptional inhibition mediated by microRNAs (5), epigenetic inheritance by Piwiinteracting RNAs (6), cell-cycle regulation (7) or even acting as structural components in rib”
Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: myths and mechanisms (2014, neutral): “elegans, and Drosophila (Brennecke et al., 2008; Chalker and Yao, 2011; de Vanssay et al., 2012; Shirayama et al., 2012).”
Non‐coding RNAs: regulators of disease (2010, background): “Indeed it appears that RNA signalling is central to all complex genetic phenomena in the eukaryotes, including transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene silencing [13–22], hybrid dysgenesis [15,23], Xchromosome dosage compensation and allelic exclusion [24,25], germ cell reprogramming [26] and p”
Specialized piRNA Pathways Act in Germline and Somatic Tissues of the Drosophila Ovary (2009, methodology): “However, a recent study has also highlighted the importance of maternally inherited piRNA populations (Brennecke et al., 2008).”