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RESEARCH COMMUNICATION

Pimet, the Drosophila homolog of HEN1, mediates 2'-O-methylation of Piwi- interacting RNAs at their 3' ends

¹ Institute for Genome Research, University of Tokushima, Tokushima 770-8503, Japan; ² Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) consist of a germline-specific group of small RNAs derived from distinct intergenic loci in the genome. piRNAs function in silencing selfish transposable elements through binding with the PIWI subfamily proteins of Argonautes. Here we show that piRNAs in Drosophila are 2'-O-methylated at their 3' ends. Loss of Pimet (piRNA methyltransferase), the Drosophila homolog of Arabidopsis HEN1 methyltransferase for microRNAs (miRNAs), results in loss of 2'-O-methylation of fly piRNAs. Recombinant Pimet shows single-stranded small RNA methylation activity in vitro and interacts with the PIWI proteins within Pimet mutant ovary. These results show that Pimet mediates piRNA 2'-O-methylation in Drosophila.

[Keywords: piRNA; 2'-O-methylation; HEN1; Pimet; Drosophila]

Received April 20, 2007; revised version accepted May 24, 2007.

E-MAIL siomim{at}genome.tokushima-u.ac.jp; FAX 81 88 6339451.

Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.

Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1563607

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