TY - JOUR TI - Antagonistic control of Caenorhabditis elegans germline stem cell proliferation and differentiation by PUF proteins FBF-1 and FBF-2 AU - Wang, Xiaobo AU - Ellenbecker, Mary AU - Hickey, Benjamin AU - Day, Nicholas J AU - Osterli, Emily AU - Terzo, Mikaya AU - Voronina, Ekaterina A2 - Yamashita, Yukiko M A2 - Bronner, Marianne E VL - 9 PY - 2020 DA - 2020/08/17 SP - e52788 C1 - eLife 2020;9:e52788 DO - 10.7554/eLife.52788 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.52788 AB - Stem cells support tissue maintenance, but the mechanisms that coordinate the rate of stem cell self-renewal with differentiation at a population level remain uncharacterized. We find that two PUF family RNA-binding proteins FBF-1 and FBF-2 have opposite effects on Caenorhabditis elegans germline stem cell dynamics: FBF-1 restricts the rate of meiotic entry, while FBF-2 promotes both cell division and meiotic entry rates. Antagonistic effects of FBFs are mediated by their distinct activities toward the shared set of target mRNAs, where FBF-1-mediated post-transcriptional control requires the activity of CCR4-NOT deadenylase, while FBF-2 is deadenylase-independent and might protect the targets from deadenylation. These regulatory differences depend on protein sequences outside of the conserved PUF family RNA-binding domain. We propose that the opposing FBF-1 and FBF-2 activities serve to modulate stem cell division rate simultaneously with the rate of meiotic entry. KW - germline KW - PUF KW - CCR4-NOT KW - deadenylase KW - stem cells KW - cell cycle JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -