Epigenetic transmission of piRNAs through the female germline.docVIP

Minireview Epigenetic transmission of piRNAs through the female germline Sergey Shpiz and Alla Kalmykova Address: Institute of Molecular Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Kurchatov Square 2, Moscow 123182, Russia. Correspondence: Alla Kalmykova. Email: allakalm@img.ras.ru Published: 9 February 2009 Genome Biology 2009, 10:208 (doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-2-208) The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2009/10/2/208 ? 2009 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract In Drosophila, small RNAs bound to Piwi proteins are epigenetic factors transmitted from the mother to the progeny germline. This ensures ‘immunization’ of progeny against transposable elements. The silencing of mobile elements in germ cells depends on a distinct class of RNAs, the 24-to-30 nucleotides long, Piwi- interacting RNAs (piRNAs), which are associated with Argonaute proteins of the Piwi subfamily [1,2]. These small RNAs guide the cleavage of complementary RNA, or target DNA for methylation, and protect the germline against mutations caused by active transposons [2-4]. In Drosophila, the three Piwi proteins expressed in the germline are Piwi, Aubergine (Aub) and Argonaute3 (Ago3). Work from the laboratory of Gregory Hannon (Brennecke et al. [5]) pub- lished recently in Science now provides evidence that piRNAs bound to Piwi proteins serve as epigenetic factors that are transmitted through the maternal germline. By piRNA sequencing, Hannon and colleagues show that the maternally deposited piRNAs loaded onto Piwi proteins affect transposon suppression in a heritable fashion, and that these piRNAs can serve as maternal suppressors of hybrid dysgenesis. through the maternal germline. Experimental data suggested that these maternal effects are mediated by RNA [8]. The first evidence for the role of maternally transmitted short RNAs in transposon silencing was obtained in D