Abstract
The Blind Men and the Piwi Elephant—Opening a Can of Worms
Highlights
Different Argonautes bind subtly different small RNAs; those favored by Piwi are called Piwiinteracting RNAs, and they direct Piwi to silence transposons
There are some differences in the way that they are made and in the exact downstream consequences of their activity, but essentially the Piwiinteracting RNAs (piRNAs) are always made from snippets of transposon complementary RNAs, they bind Piwi, and they silence the transposon from which they were derived
Worms from the other clades had neither 21U-RNAs nor the slightly longer piRNAs found in some non-nematode animals
Summary
Different Argonautes bind subtly different small RNAs; those favored by Piwi are called Piwiinteracting RNAs (piRNAs), and they direct Piwi to silence transposons. There are some differences in the way that they are made and in the exact downstream consequences of their activity, but essentially the piRNAs are always made from snippets of transposon complementary RNAs, they bind Piwi, and they silence the transposon from which they were derived.
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