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First published online November 9, 2007
doi: 10.1242/10.1242/dev.009159

Development 134, 4265-4272 (2007)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2007
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Argonaute 1 regulates the fate of germline stem cells in Drosophila

Lele Yang1,*, Dongsheng Chen1,2,*, Ranhui Duan3,*, Laixin Xia1,2, Jun Wang1, Abrar Qurashi3, Peng Jin3,{dagger} and Dahua Chen1,{dagger}

1 State Key Laboratory of Biomembrane and Membrane Biotechnology, Institute of Zoology
2 Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
3 Department of Human Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA.

{dagger} Authors for correspondence (e-mails: pjin{at}genetics.emory.edu)

Accepted 5 September 2007

The Argonaute-family proteins play crucial roles in small-RNA-mediated gene regulation. In Drosophila, previous studies have demonstrated that Piwi, one member of the PIWI subfamily of Argonaute proteins, plays an essential role in regulating the fate of germline stem cells (GSCs). However, whether other Argonaute proteins also play similar roles remains elusive. Here, we show that overexpression of Argonaute 1 (AGO1) protein, another subfamily (AGO) of the Argonaute proteins, leads to GSC overproliferation, whereas loss of Ago1 results in the loss of GSCs. Combined with germline clonal analyses of Ago1, these findings strongly support the argument that Ago1 plays an essential and intrinsic role in the maintenance of GSCs. In contrast to previous observations of Piwi function in the maintenance of GSCs, we show that AGO1 is not required for bag of marbles (bam) silencing and probably acts downstream or parallel of bam in the regulation of GSC fate. Given that AGO1 serves as a key component of the miRNA pathway, we propose that an AGO1-dependent miRNA pathway probably plays an instructive role in repressing GSC/cystoblast differentiation.

Key words: Argonaute protein, Ago1, miRNA, GSC self-renewal, Drosophila


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Argonaute 1 regulates the fate of germline stem cells in Drosophila
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