The influences of PRG-1 on the expression of small RNAs and mRNAs

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Shunmin He¹  Peng Zhang¹  Tengfei Xiao²  Runsheng Chen²  Xubin Sun³  Jia-Jia Wang³  Da-Wei Huang³  Dong-Ya Cui⁴ 

[1] Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101, Beijing, People’s Republic of China;Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Noncoding RNA, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101, Beijing, People’s Republic of China;School of Life Science, Hebei University, 071002, Hebei, People’s Republic of China;Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101, Beijing, People’s Republic of China;School of Life Science, Hebei University, 071002, Hebei, People’s Republic of China;Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101, Beijing, People’s Republic of China;College of Life Science, Yuncheng University, 044000, Yuncheng, Shanxi, People’s Republic of China;

关键词: C. elegans;    miRNAs;    21U-RNAs;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-15-321

 received in 2014-01-30, accepted in 2014-04-24,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIn metazoans, Piwi-related Argonaute proteins play important roles in maintaining germline integrity and fertility and have been linked to a class of germline-enriched small RNAs termed piRNAs. Caenorhabditis elegans encodes two Piwi family proteins called PRG-1 and PRG-2, and PRG-1 interacts with the C. elegans piRNAs (21U-RNAs). Previous studies found that mutation of prg-1 causes a marked reduction in the expression of 21U-RNAs, temperature-sensitive defects in fertility and other phenotypic defects.ResultsIn this study, we wanted to systematically demonstrate the function of PRG-1 in the regulation of small RNAs and their targets. By analyzing small RNAs and mRNAs with and without a mutation in prg-1 during C. elegans development, we demonstrated that (1) mutation of prg-1 leads to a decrease in the expression of 21U-RNAs, and causes 35 ~ 40% of miRNAs to be down-regulated; (2) in C. elegans, approximately 3% (6% in L4) of protein-coding genes are differentially expressed after mutating prg-1, and 60 ~ 70% of these substantially altered protein-coding genes are up-regulated; (3) the target genes of the down-regulated miRNAs and the candidate target genes of the down-regulated 21U-RNAs are enriched in the up-regulated protein-coding genes; and (4) PRG-1 regulates protein-coding genes by down-regulating small RNAs (miRNAs and 21U-RNAs) that target genes that participate in the development of C. elegans.ConclusionsIn prg-1-mutated C. elegans, the expression of miRNAs and 21U-RNAs was reduced, and the protein-coding targets, which were associated with the development of C. elegans, were up-regulated. This may be the mechanism underlying PRG-1 function.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Wang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.