| Budget Amount *help |
¥23,530,000 (Direct Cost: ¥18,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥5,430,000)
Fiscal Year 2016: ¥9,360,000 (Direct Cost: ¥7,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥2,160,000)
Fiscal Year 2015: ¥14,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥10,900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥3,270,000)
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
piRNAs in Drosophila ovarian somatic cells (OSCs) are generated only through the primary processing pathway and are loaded onto Piwi, a member of PIWI proteins. piRNAs arise mainly from intergenic repetitive elements including transposable elements (TEs) and their remnants. Besides TEs, a subset of mRNAs gives rise to ‘genic piRNAs’, mainly from their 3’ UTR, including Traffic jam (Tj) mRNA. Recently, we have identified a cis-acting 100-nt fragment in the Tj 3' UTR that is sufficient for producing artificial piRNAs from unintegrated DNA. SHAPE analysis showed that the Tj-cis element formed a specific structure. We found that point mutations within the cis element, which disrupted the proper structure, caused a failure of piRNA biogenesis from the downstream region. These results indicate that the piRNA cis element is characterized by RNA secondary structures.
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