Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

Graduate School of Advanced Interdisciplinary Science

A flexible strategy to suppress rogue transposons in the genome: Another role of the piRNA amplification pathway

March 19, 2025

Suppressing the "rogue" transposons in the genome
Flexible Strategy
--Another role of the piRNA amplification pathway--

Key points of the announcement

  • We discovered that the sequence pattern of piRNAs that suppress transposons is not completely fixed, but can vary stochastically.
  • We found that piRNA sequence patterns are automatically optimized through competition between reproducing piRNAs.
  • This could deepen our understanding of transposon control mechanisms and lead to applications in genetic engineering and biomedical fields.
Magazine cover: This artwork was inspired by the Chinese proverb "hit the snake, hit the seven inches (to get something done, you have to hit the weak spot)" and depicts the importance of automatically optimizing piRNA sequence patterns.

For more details, please see below.

プレスリリース（PDF：368.7KB）


Related links (opens in new window)

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology Shoji Keisuke Associate Professor Researcher Profile
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology Keisuke Shoji Associate Professor Laboratory Website
Keisuke Shoji Associate Professor belongs to Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology Faculty of Agriculture Department of Applied Biological Science

 

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