title: The RNase PARN-1 Trims piRNA 3' Ends to Promote Transcriptome Surveillance in C. elegans.
abstract: Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) engage Piwi proteins to suppress transposons and are essential for fertility in diverse organisms. An interesting feature of piRNAs is that, while piRNA lengths are stereotypical within a species, they can differ widely between species. For example, piRNAs are mainly 29 and 30 nucleotides in humans, 24 to 30 nucleotides in D. melanogaster, and uniformly 21 nucleotides in C. elegans. However, how piRNA length is determined and whether length impacts function remains unknown. Here, we show that C. elegans deficient for PARN-1, a conserved RNase, accumulate untrimmed piRNAs with 3' extensions. Surprisingly, these longer piRNAs are stable and associate with the Piwi protein PRG-1 but fail to robustly recruit downstream silencing factors. Our findings identify PARN-1 as a key regulator of piRNA length in C. elegans and suggest that length is regulated to promote efficient transcriptome surveillance.
authors.affiliation: RNA Therapeutics Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.
authors.forename: Wen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.
authors.forename: Shikui
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.affiliation: RNA Therapeutics Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.
authors.forename: Heng-Chi
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.
authors.forename: Zhiping
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Weng
authors.affiliation: RNA Therapeutics Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Electronic address: craig.mello@umassmed.edu.
authors.forename: Craig C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Mello
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D060565:Argonaute Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000378:metabolism*; D029742:Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D005095:Exoribonucleases / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009154:Mutation; D012323:RNA Processing, Post-Transcriptional; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D060565:Argonaute Proteins; D029742:Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins; D005095:Exoribonucleases; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering; C530363:PRG-1 protein, C elegans