Germ granule compartments coordinate specialized small RNA production

Xiangyang Chen, Ke Wang, Farees Ud Din Mufti, Demin Xu, Chengming Zhu, Xinya Huang, Chenming Zeng, Qile Jin, Xiaona Huang, Yong-hong Yan, Meng-qiu Dong, Xuezhu Feng (), Yunyu Shi (), Scott Kennedy () and Shouhong Guang ()
Additional contact information
Xiangyang Chen: University of Science and Technology of China
Ke Wang: University of Science and Technology of China
Farees Ud Din Mufti: University of Science and Technology of China
Demin Xu: University of Science and Technology of China
Chengming Zhu: University of Science and Technology of China
Xinya Huang: University of Science and Technology of China
Chenming Zeng: University of Science and Technology of China
Qile Jin: University of Science and Technology of China
Xiaona Huang: University of Science and Technology of China
Yong-hong Yan: National Institute of Biological Sciences
Meng-qiu Dong: National Institute of Biological Sciences
Xuezhu Feng: Anhui Medical University
Yunyu Shi: University of Science and Technology of China
Scott Kennedy: Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School
Shouhong Guang: University of Science and Technology of China

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: Abstract Germ granules are biomolecular condensates present in most animal germ cells. One function of germ granules is to help maintain germ cell totipotency by organizing mRNA regulatory machinery, including small RNA-based gene regulatory pathways. The C. elegans germ granule is compartmentalized into multiple subcompartments whose biological functions are largely unknown. Here, we identify an uncharted subcompartment of the C. elegans germ granule, which we term the E granule. The E granule is nonrandomly positioned within the germ granule. We identify five proteins that localize to the E granule, including the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) EGO-1, the Dicer-related helicase DRH-3, the Tudor domain-containing protein EKL-1, and two intrinsically disordered proteins, EGC-1 and ELLI-1. Localization of EGO-1 to the E granule enables synthesis of a specialized class of 22G RNAs, which derive exclusively from 5’ regions of a subset of germline-expressed mRNAs. Defects in E granule assembly elicit disordered production of endogenous siRNAs, which disturbs fertility and the RNAi response. Our results define a distinct subcompartment of the C. elegans germ granule and suggest that one function of germ granule compartmentalization is to facilitate the localized production of specialized classes of small regulatory RNAs.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50027-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-50027-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50027-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().