Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Jul 14:9:681188.
doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.681188. eCollection 2021.

Knockout Gene-Based Evidence for PIWI-Interacting RNA Pathway in Mammals

Yinuo Li  1 , Yue Zhang  2 , Mingxi Liu  1
Affiliations
Review

Knockout Gene-Based Evidence for PIWI-Interacting RNA Pathway in Mammals

Yinuo Li et al. Front Cell Dev Biol. .

Abstract

The PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway mainly consists of evolutionarily conserved protein factors. Intriguingly, many mutations of piRNA pathway factors lead to meiotic arrest during spermatogenesis. The majority of piRNA factor-knockout animals show arrested meiosis in spermatogenesis, and only a few show post-meiosis male germ cell arrest. It is still unclear whether the majority of piRNA factors expressed in spermatids are involved in long interspersed nuclear element-1 repression after meiosis, but future conditional knockout research is expected to resolve this. In addition, recent hamster knockout studies showed that a piRNA factor is necessary for oocytes-in complete contrast to the findings in mice. This species discrepancy allows researchers to reexamine the function of piRNA in female germ cells. This mini-review focuses on the current knowledge of protein factors derived from mammalian knockout studies and summarizes their roles in the biogenesis and function of piRNAs.

Keywords: RBPs; RNA binding proteins; male infertility; meiosis; piRNA.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Ping-pong cycle and MIWI2-piRNA-guided chromatin remodeling.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ancelin K., Lange U. C., Hajkova P., Schneider R., Bannister A. J., Kouzarides T., et al. (2006). Blimp1 associates with Prmt5 and directs histone arginine methylation in mouse germ cells. Nat. Cell Biol. 8 623–630. 10.1038/ncb1413 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Aravin A., Gaidatzis D., Pfeffer S., Lagos-Quintana M., Landgraf P., Iovino N., et al. (2006). A novel class of small RNAs bind to MILI protein in mouse testes. Nature 442 203–207. 10.1038/nature04916 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Aravin A. A., Klenov M. S., Vagin V. V., Bantignies F., Cavalli G., Gvozdev V. A. (2004). Dissection of a natural RNA silencing process in the Drosophila melanogaster germ line. Mol. Cell Biol. 24 6742–6750. 10.1128/mcb.24.15.6742-6750.2004 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Aravin A. A., Sachidanandam R., Bourc’his D., Schaefer C., Pezic D., Toth K. F., et al. (2008). A piRNA pathway primed by individual transposons is linked to de novo DNA methylation in mice. Mol. Cell. 31 785–799. 10.1016/j.molcel.2008.09.003 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Aravin A. A., Sachidanandam R., Girard A., Fejes-Toth K., Hannon G. J. (2007). Developmentally regulated piRNA clusters implicate MILI in transposon control. Science 316 744–747. 10.1126/science.1142612 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources