piRNA-guided co-transcriptional silencing coopts nuclear export factors
- University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Abstract
The PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway is a small RNA-based immune system that controls the expression of transposons and maintains genome integrity in animal gonads. In Drosophila, piRNA-guided silencing is achieved, in part, via co-transcriptional repression of transposons by Piwi. This depends on Panoramix (Panx); however, precisely how an RNA binding event silences transcription remains to be determined. Here we show that Nuclear Export Factor 2 (Nxf2) and its co-factor, Nxt1, form a complex with Panx and are required for co-transcriptional silencing of transposons in somatic and germline cells of the ovary. Tethering of Nxf2 or Nxt1 to RNA results in silencing of target loci and the concomitant accumulation of repressive chromatin marks. Nxf2 and Panx proteins are mutually required for proper localization and stability. We mapped the protein domains crucial for the Nxf2/Panx complex formation and show that the amino-terminal portion of Panx is sufficient to induce transcriptional silencing.
Data availability
Sequencing data reported in this paper has been deposited in GEO under accession number GSE121661. Mass Spectrometry data has been deposited to the PRIDE Archive (accession number PXD011415)
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piRNA-guided co-transcriptional silencing coopts nuclear export factorsNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE121661.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Wellcome (Investigator award 110161/Z/15/Z)
- Gregory J Hannon
Cancer Research UK
- Gregory J Hannon
European Molecular Biology Organization (Long-Term Fellowship ALTF 1015-2017)
- Filippo Ciabrelli
Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (PhD fellowship)
- Marzia Munafò
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Fabry et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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piRNA-guided co-transcriptional silencing coopts nuclear export factors
eLife 8:e47999.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.47999
Further reading
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- Cell Biology
- Chromosomes and Gene Expression
During oncogene-induced senescence there are striking changes in the organisation of heterochromatin in the nucleus. This is accompanied by activation of a pro-inflammatory gene expression programme – the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) – driven by transcription factors such as NF-κB. The relationship between heterochromatin re-organisation and the SASP has been unclear. Here, we show that TPR, a protein of the nuclear pore complex basket required for heterochromatin re-organisation during senescence, is also required for the very early activation of NF-κB signalling during the stress-response phase of oncogene-induced senescence. This is prior to activation of the SASP and occurs without affecting NF-κB nuclear import. We show that TPR is required for the activation of innate immune signalling at these early stages of senescence and we link this to the formation of heterochromatin-enriched cytoplasmic chromatin fragments thought to bleb off from the nuclear periphery. We show that HMGA1 is also required for cytoplasmic chromatin fragment formation. Together these data suggest that re-organisation of heterochromatin is involved in altered structural integrity of the nuclear periphery during senescence, and that this can lead to activation of cytoplasmic nucleic acid sensing, NF-κB signalling, and activation of the SASP.
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- Chromosomes and Gene Expression
- Evolutionary Biology
Gene regulation is essential for life and controlled by regulatory DNA. Mutations can modify the activity of regulatory DNA, and also create new regulatory DNA, a process called regulatory emergence. Non-regulatory and regulatory DNA contain motifs to which transcription factors may bind. In prokaryotes, gene expression requires a stretch of DNA called a promoter, which contains two motifs called –10 and –35 boxes. However, these motifs may occur in both promoters and non-promoter DNA in multiple copies. They have been implicated in some studies to improve promoter activity, and in others to repress it. Here, we ask whether the presence of such motifs in different genetic sequences influences promoter evolution and emergence. To understand whether and how promoter motifs influence promoter emergence and evolution, we start from 50 ‘promoter islands’, DNA sequences enriched with –10 and –35 boxes. We mutagenize these starting ‘parent’ sequences, and measure gene expression driven by 240,000 of the resulting mutants. We find that the probability that mutations create an active promoter varies more than 200-fold, and is not correlated with the number of promoter motifs. For parent sequences without promoter activity, mutations created over 1500 new –10 and –35 boxes at unique positions in the library, but only ~0.3% of these resulted in de-novo promoter activity. Only ~13% of all –10 and –35 boxes contribute to de-novo promoter activity. For parent sequences with promoter activity, mutations created new –10 and –35 boxes in 11 specific positions that partially overlap with preexisting ones to modulate expression. We also find that –10 and –35 boxes do not repress promoter activity. Overall, our work demonstrates how promoter motifs influence promoter emergence and evolution. It has implications for predicting and understanding regulatory evolution, de novo genes, and phenotypic evolution.
