GSE69102
RNA elements in precursors instruct directional and processive primary piRNA biogenesis
PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are animal gonad-specific small RNAs that control the activity of transposable elements. Long single stranded RNAs from a variety of sources are substrates for the nebulous primary processing pathway that converts these into thousands of 24-30 nucleotide (nt) piRNAs. How these transcripts are selected as precursors is not known. Here we show that targeting a transcript with PIWI slicer activity of cysosolic Ago3 is sufficient to trigger ~30-nt waves of non-overlapping primary piRNAs in the fly ovarian germline. The generated primary piRNAs are almost exclusively loaded into the nuclear PIWI protein, Piwi. In the fly ovarian somatic environment we find that an RNA fragment from the 5' end of a piRNA cluster is able to direct a heterologous sequence into primary processing. This piRNA trigger sequence (PTS) element drives generation of overlapping piRNAs from the transcript. Both mechanisms proceed with general 5'-3' directionality. We propose that the former pathway serves to link cytoplasmic silencing of a target to nuclear transcriptional repression, while the latter extracts silencing information from a wide variety of genomic sources including piRNA clusters, select protein coding and transposon transcripts. Overall design: Total or immunoprecipitated small RNAs were purified from transfected BmN4 cells, Drosophila ovarian somatic cells (OSC) and from fly ovaries and high-throughput sequencing libraries were prepared. The mouse testicular RNAs were purified after ribozero treatment.