Connecting the Dots: Linking Caenorhabditis elegans Small RNA Pathways and Germ Granules.

Germ granules are non-membrane bound, phase-separated organelles, composed of RNAs and proteins. Germ granules are present only within the germ cells of animals, including model systems such as Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila, mice, and zebrafish, where they play critical roles in specifying the germ lineage, the inheritance of epigenetic information, and post-transcriptional gene regulation. Across species, conserved germ granule proteins reflect these essential functions. A significant proportion of proteins that localize to germ granules are components of RNA metabolism and small RNA (sRNA) gene regulatory pathways. Here we synthesize our current knowledge of the roles that germ granules and their components play in sRNA pathway functions, transgenerational inheritance, and fertility in the C. elegans germline.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Trends in Cell Biology

• Publication date

  2021-01-29

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.tcb.2020.12.012PMID 33526340
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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