DRP006779
strand specific RNA sequence of BmAgo2 or Siwi depleted BmN4 cells
To determine which small RNA pathway mainly contributes to silencing of BmMLV RNA during persistent infection, we utilized the CRISPR/Cas9 system to generate Ago2 or Siwi knockout (KO) BmN-4 cells. We confirmed that 58% and 50% of the alleles contained the loss-of-function mutations in Ago2 and Siwi KO cells, respectively. Strand-specific RNA-seq revealed that BmMLV RNA-derived reads had a very strong sense-strand bias, and few were mapped to the antisense strand.