Poster Presentation 45th Lorne Genome Conference 2024

Novel mechanism of transposon silencing in Drosophila eugracilis (#253)

Rippei Hayashi 1 2 3 , Shashank Chary 1 2 , Shashwat Kaushal 1 2
  1. The Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia
  2. John Curtin School of Medical Research, The Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia
  3. The Shine-Dalgarno Centre for RNA Innovation, Acton, ACT, Australia

Transposons threaten genomes by making new insertions. Because of this, every organism has acquired a defence mechanism to suppress their expression. One such mechanism is a small RNA-guided silencing pathway called the piRNA pathway. piRNAs are made from RNA transcribed from distinct genomic regions called piRNA clusters that consist of transposon remnants. Once they are transcribed and exported to the cytoplasm, pathway-specific RNA helicases and nucleases recognise the precursor RNA to make mature piRNAs. The mechanism of how transposon-rich sequences are selected for piRNA production is not fully understood. However, a mechanism known as ping-pong utilises sense and antisense sequence complementary to specifically enrich for transposon piRNAs. This mechanism is highly conserved from Drosophila to mouse to Hydra. However, we discovered that one Drosophila species, Drosophila eugracilis completely lacks the ping-pong mechanism yet abundantly produces transposon piRNAs. In this presentation, we explore mechanisms through which transposon RNA is selected for piRNA production in Drosophila eugracilis. We discuss an alternative yet potentially more universal logic of self-nonself recognition.