Mighty Piwis Defend the Germline Against Genome Intruders

Overview

Journal Cell

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Cell Biology

Date 2007 Apr 10

PMID 17418784

Citations 126

Authors

Kathryn A ODonnell

Jef D Boeke

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Piwis are a germline-specific subclass of the Argonaute family of RNA interference (RNAi) effector proteins that are associated with a recently discovered group of small RNAs (piRNAs). Recent studies in Drosophila and zebrafish directly implicate Piwi proteins in piRNA biogenesis to maintain transposon silencing in the germline genome (Brennecke et al., 2007; Gunawardane et al., 2007; Houwing et al., 2007). This function may be conserved in mice as loss of Miwi2, a mouse Piwi homolog, leads to germline stem cell and meiotic defects correlated with increased transposon activity (Carmell et al., 2007).

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