Key protein providing defense against 'jumping genes' identified

International researchers revealed the crucial function of the protein HP1a for piRNA biogenesis, which is important for transposon silencing. Transposons are DNA sequences that have the potential to move to new positions within the genome, causing infertility and diseases. Knockdown of the gene HP1a in the fruit fly model revealed HP1a predominantly functions to repress transposons located at pericentmeric and telomeric regions by repressing splicing of precursor transcripts arising from those regions.

from Health & Medicine News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2tGAZ2C