eCLIP of mouse Asterix/Gtsf1 transfected in mouse P19 embryonal teratoma cells
Asterix/Gtsf1 has been previously been shown to be involved in the silencing of retrotransposons in animal germ cells through the piRNA pathway. Using eCLIP and a custom informatic pipeline, we found that Asterix/Gtsf1 binds directly to RNAs and preferentially interacts with tRNAs as a class. Given the role of tRNAs as primers for Long Terminal Repeat (LTR) transposons, this work implicates Asterix/Gtsf1 as exploiting tRNA dependence to identify transposon transcripts and promote piRNA silencing. Overall design: eCLIP of mouse Asterix/Gtsf1 transfected in mouse P19 embryonal teratoma cells. The protein was expressed with a C-terminal TEV-Strep tag from the vector pEF under the control of the EF-1alpha promoter.