Drosophila Gtsf1 is an essential component of the Piwi mediated transcriptional silencing complex
The PIWI interacting RNA pathway is a small RNA silencing system that keeps selfish genetic elements such as transposons under control in animal gonads. Several lines of evidence indicate that nuclear PIWI family proteins guide transcriptional silencing of their targets, yet the composition of the underlying silencing complex is unknown. Here we demonstrate that the double CHHC zinc finger protein Gtsf1 is an essential factor for Piwi mediated transcriptional repression in Drosophila. Cells lacking Gtsf1 contain nuclear Piwi loaded with piRNAs, yet Piwi''s silencing capacity is ablated. Gtsf1 interacts stably with a sub-population of nuclear Piwi and loss of Gtsf1 phenocopies loss of Piwi in terms of deregulation of transposons, loss of H3K9me3 marks at euchromatic transposon insertions and deregulation of genes in proximity to repressed transposons. We propose that only a small fraction of nuclear Piwi interacts productively with a target RNA, resulting in assembly of a silencing complex with Gtsf1 as one core component. Overall design: impact of loss of DmGtsf1 on transcription and H3K9m3 in ovarian somatic cells (OSC)