Dataset Information

Drosophila Interspecific Hybridization Causes A Deregulation of the piRNA Pathway Genes.

ABSTRACT: Almost all eukaryotes have transposable elements (TEs) against which they have developed defense mechanisms. In the Drosophila germline, the main transposable element (TE) regulation pathway is mediated by specific Piwi-interacting small RNAs (piRNAs). Nonetheless, for unknown reasons, TEs sometimes escape cellular control during interspecific hybridization processes. Because the piRNA pathway genes are involved in piRNA biogenesis and TE control, we sequenced and characterized nine key genes from this pathway in Drosophila buzzatii and Drosophila koepferae species and studied their expression pattern in ovaries of both species and their F1 hybrids. We found that gene structure is, in general, maintained between both species and that two genes-armitage and aubergine-are under positive selection. Three genes-krimper, methyltransferase 2, and zucchini-displayed higher expression values in hybrids than both parental species, while others had RNA levels similar to the parental species with the highest expression. This suggests that the overexpression of some piRNA pathway genes can be a primary response to hybrid stress. Therefore, these results reinforce the hypothesis that TE deregulation may be due to the protein incompatibility caused by the rapid evolution of these genes, leading to a TE silencing failure, rather than to an underexpression of piRNA pathway genes.

SUBMITTER: Gamez-Visairas V

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7073935 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Drosophila Interspecific Hybridization Causes A Deregulation of the piRNA Pathway Genes.

Gámez-Visairas Víctor V Romero-Soriano Valèria V Martí-Carreras Joan J Segarra-Carrillo Eila E García Guerreiro Maria Pilar MP

Genes 20200219 2

Almost all eukaryotes have transposable elements (TEs) against which they have developed defense mechanisms. In the Drosophila germline, the main transposable element (TE) regulation pathway is mediated by specific Piwi-interacting small RNAs (piRNAs). Nonetheless, for unknown reasons, TEs sometimes escape cellular control during interspecific hybridization processes. Because the piRNA pathway genes are involved in piRNA biogenesis and TE control, we sequenced and characterized nine key genes fr ...[more]

PMID: 32092860

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Project description:The Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway defends the germline of animals from the deleterious activity of selfish transposable elements (TEs) through small-RNA mediated silencing. Adaptation to novel invasive TEs is proposed to occur by incorporating their sequences into the piRNA pool that females produce and deposit into their eggs, which then propagates immunity against specific TEs to future generations. In support of this model, the F1 offspring of crosses between strains of the same Drosophila species sometimes suffer from germline derepression of paternally inherited TE families, caused by a failure of the maternal strain to produce the piRNAs necessary for their regulation. However, many protein components of the Drosophila piRNA pathway exhibit signatures of positive selection, suggesting that they also contribute to the evolution of host genome defense. Here we investigate piRNA pathway function and TE regulation in the F1 hybrids of interspecific crosses between D. melanogaster and D. simulans and compare them with intraspecific control crosses of D. melanogaster. We confirm previous reports showing that intraspecific crosses are characterized by derepression of paternally inherited TE families that are rare or absent from the maternal genome and piRNA pool, consistent with the role of maternally deposited piRNAs in shaping TE silencing. In contrast to the intraspecific cross, we discover that interspecific hybrids are characterized by widespread derepression of both maternally and paternally inherited TE families. Furthermore, the pattern of derepression of TE families in interspecific hybrids cannot be attributed to their paucity or absence from the piRNA pool of the maternal species. Rather, we demonstrate that interspecific hybrids closely resemble piRNA effector-protein mutants in both TE misregulation and aberrant piRNA production. We suggest that TE derepression in interspecific hybrids largely reflects adaptive divergence of piRNA pathway genes rather than species-specific differences in TE-derived piRNAs.

Project description:The importance of the Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway for germ cell maintenance, genome integrity, DNA methylation and retrotransposon control raises possible roles of this pathway in cancer. Indeed aberrant expression of human PIWI orthologs and Maelstrom has been observed in various cancers. In this study we explored the expression and function of piRNA pathway genes in human ovarian cancer, based on our recent work, which showed widespread expression of piRNA pathway genes in the mammalian. Our work shows that PIWIL1 and MAEL expression is significantly increased in malignant EOC (n = 25) compared to benign tumor tissues (n = 19) and normal ovarian tissue (n = 8). The expression of PIWIL3 is lower in malignant and benign tissues when compared to normal ovary. Sequencing of PIWIL1 transcript revealed that in many tumors deletion of exon 17 leads to the introduction of a premature stop codon in the PIWI domain, likely due to a splicing error. In situ hybridization on tumor sections revealed that L1, PIWIL1, 2 and MAEL are specifically expressed in epithelial cells (cancerous cells) of EOC. Furthermore, PIWIL2 and MAEL are co-expressed in the stromal cells adjacent to tumor cells. Since PIWIL1 and MAEL are up regulated in malignant EOC and expressed in the epithelial cells, we investigated if these two genes affect invasiveness of ovarian cancer cell lines that do not normally express these genes. PIWIL1 and MAEL were transiently over expressed in the ovarian cancer cell line SKOV3, followed by real-time measurements of cell invasiveness. Surprisingly both PIWIL1 and MAEL over expression decreased the invasiveness of SKOV3 cells. Our findings support a growing body of evidence that shows that genes in this pathway are upregulated in cancer. In ovarian cancer we show for the first time that Piwil1 transcript may often be abnormal result in non functional product. In contrast to what has been observed in other cell types, we found that PIWIL1 and MAEL have a repressive effect on cell invasiveness.

Dataset Information

Drosophila Interspecific Hybridization Causes A Deregulation of the piRNA Pathway Genes.

Publications

Drosophila Interspecific Hybridization Causes A Deregulation of the piRNA Pathway Genes.

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