Summary: Piwi domain
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Argonaute Edit Wikipedia article

Argonaute proteins are the catalytic components of the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), the protein complex responsible for the gene silencing phenomenon known as RNA interference (RNAi). Argonaute proteins bind small interfering RNA (siRNA) fragments and have endonuclease activity directed against messenger RNA (mRNA) strands that are complementary to their bound siRNA fragment. The proteins are also responsible for selection of the guide strand and destruction of the passenger strand of the siRNA substrate.[1]
The proteins have been identified in high concentrations in regions of the cell's cytoplasm known as cytoplasmic bodies, to which mRNA decay is also localized.[2]
References
This page is based on a Wikipedia article. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
This is the Wikipedia entry entitled "Piwi". More...
Piwi Edit Wikipedia article

The piwi (sometimes also PIWI) class of genes was originally identified as encoding regulatory proteins responsible for maintaining incomplete differentiation in stem cells and maintaining the stability of cell division rates in germ line cells.[1] Piwi proteins are highly conserved across evolutionary lineages and are present in both plants and animals.[2] One of the major human homologs, whose upregulation is implicated in the formation of tumors such as seminomas, is called hiwi.[3]
The piwi domain is a protein domain homologous to piwi proteins and present in a large number of nucleic acid-binding proteins, especially those that bind and cleave RNA. The best-studied such family of proteins is the argonaute family; argonautes are RNase H-like enzymes that carry out the catalytic functions of the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). In the well-known cellular process of RNA interference, the argonaute protein in the RISC complex binds siRNA or miRNA molecules generated by the ribonuclease dicer, and cleaves complementary base pairing messenger RNA, destroying it and preventing its translation into a protein. Crystallized piwi domains have a conserved basic binding site for the 5' end of bound RNA; in the case of argonaute proteins binding siRNA strands, the last unpaired nucleotide base of the siRNA is also stabilized by base stacking interactions between the base and neighboring tyrosine residues.[4]
References
- ^ Cox DN, Chao A, Lin H. (2000). piwi encodes a nucleoplasmic factor whose activity modulates the number and division rate of germline stem cells. Development 127(3):503-14. PMID 10631171
- ^ Cox DN, Chao A, Baker J, Chang L, Qiao D, Lin H. (1998). A novel class of evolutionarily conserved genes defined by piwi are essential for stem cell self-renewal. Genes Dev 12(23):3715-27. PMID 9851978
- ^ Qiao D, Zeeman AM, Deng W, Looijenga LH, Lin H. (2002). Molecular characterization of hiwi, a human member of the piwi gene family whose overexpression is correlated to seminomas. Oncogene 21(25):3988-99. PMID 12037681
- ^ Ma J, Yuan Y, Meister G, Pei Y, Tuschl T, Patel D (2005). "Structural basis for 5'-end-specific recognition of guide RNA by the A. fulgidus Piwi protein". Nature 434 (7033): 666-70. PMID 15800629
External links
This page is based on a Wikipedia article. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
This tab holds the annotation information that is stored in the Pfam database. As we move to using Wikipedia as our main source of annotation, the contents of this tab will be gradually replaced by the Wikipedia tab.
Piwi domain Provide feedback
This domain is found in the protein Piwi and its relatives. The function of this domain is the dsRNA guided hydrolysis of ssRNA. Determination of the crystal structure of Argonaute reveals that PIWI is an RNase H domain, and identifies Argonaute as Slicer, the enzyme that cleaves mRNA in the RNAi RISC complex [2]. In addition, Mg+2 dependence and production of 3'-OH and 5' phosphate products are shared characteristics of RNaseH and RISC. The PIWI domain core has a tertiary structure belonging to the RNase H family of enzymes. RNase H fold proteins all have a five-stranded mixed beta-sheet surrounded by helices. By analogy to RNase H enzymes which cleave single-stranded RNA guided by the DNA strand in an RNA/DNA hybrid, the PIWI domain can be inferred to cleave single-stranded RNA, for example mRNA, guided by double stranded siRNA.
Literature references
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Cerutti L, Mian N, Bateman A; , Trends Biochem Sci 2000;25:481-482.: Domains in gene silencing and cell differentiation proteins: the novel PAZ domain and redefinition of the Piwi domain. PUBMED:11050429 EPMC:11050429
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Song JJ, Smith SK, Hannon GJ, Joshua-Tor L; , Science 2004;305:1434-1437.: Crystal structure of Argonaute and its implications for RISC slicer activity. PUBMED:15284453 EPMC:15284453
Internal database links
SCOOP: | ArgoMid |
This tab holds annotation information from the InterPro database.
InterPro entry IPR003165
The piwi domain [ PUBMED:11050429 ] is a protein domain found in piwi proteins and a large number of related nucleic acid-binding proteins, especially those that bind and cleave RNA. The function of the domain is double stranded-RNA-guided hydrolysis of single stranded-RNA, as has been determined in the argonaute family of related proteins [ PUBMED:15284453 ].
Gene Ontology
The mapping between Pfam and Gene Ontology is provided by InterPro. If you use this data please cite InterPro.
Molecular function | nucleic acid binding (GO:0003676) |
Domain organisation
Below is a listing of the unique domain organisations or architectures in which this domain is found. More...
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Pfam Clan
This family is a member of clan RNase_H (CL0219), which has the following description:
This clan includes a diverse set of nucleases that share a similar structure to Ribonuclease H.
The clan contains the following 70 members:
Arena_ncap_C CAF1 DDE_1 DDE_2 DDE_3 DDE_5 DDE_Tnp_1 DDE_Tnp_1_2 DDE_Tnp_1_3 DDE_Tnp_1_4 DDE_Tnp_1_5 DDE_Tnp_1_6 DDE_Tnp_1_7 DDE_Tnp_2 DDE_Tnp_4 DDE_Tnp_IS1 DDE_Tnp_IS1595 DDE_Tnp_IS240 DDE_Tnp_IS66 DDE_Tnp_ISAZ013 DDE_Tnp_ISL3 DDE_Tnp_Tn3 Dimer_Tnp_Tn5 DNA_pol_A_exo1 DNA_pol_B_exo1 DNA_pol_B_exo2 DNA_pol_P_Exo DUF1258 DUF2779 DUF3882 DUF3892 DUF4152 DUF99 Endonuclease_5 KDZ Maelstrom Methyltransf_1N MGMT_N MULE NurA OrfB_IS605 Piwi Plant_tran Plavaka Pox_A22 Ribosomal_S30AE RNase_H RNase_H_2 RNase_HII RNase_T RNaseH_like RT_RNaseH RT_RNaseH_2 RuvC RuvC_1 Rv2179c-like rve rve_2 rve_3 RVT_3 Taq-exonuc TerL_nuclease Terminase_3C Terminase_6C Transposase_1 Transposase_21 Transposase_mut UPF0236 UvrC_RNaseH_dom Ydc2-catalytAlignments
We store a range of different sequence alignments for families. As well as the seed alignment from which the family is built, we provide the full alignment, generated by searching the sequence database (reference proteomes) using the family HMM. We also generate alignments using four representative proteomes (RP) sets and the UniProtKB sequence database. More...
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Seed (15) |
Full (14038) |
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RP15 (2628) |
RP35 (6003) |
RP55 (11131) |
RP75 (14647) |
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PP/heatmap | 1 |
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Seed (15) |
Full (14038) |
Representative proteomes | UniProt (22300) |
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RP15 (2628) |
RP35 (6003) |
RP55 (11131) |
RP75 (14647) |
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Raw Stockholm | |||||||
Gzipped |
You can also download a FASTA format file containing the full-length sequences for all sequences in the full alignment.
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Curation and family details
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Curation
Seed source: | Bateman A |
Previous IDs: | none |
Type: | Family |
Sequence Ontology: | SO:0100021 |
Author: |
Bateman A |
Number in seed: | 15 |
Number in full: | 14038 |
Average length of the domain: | 265.1 aa |
Average identity of full alignment: | 37 % |
Average coverage of the sequence by the domain: | 34.14 % |
HMM information
HMM build commands: |
build method: hmmbuild -o /dev/null HMM SEED
search method: hmmsearch -Z 61295632 -E 1000 --cpu 4 HMM pfamseq
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Model details: |
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Model length: | 302 | ||||||||||||
Family (HMM) version: | 20 | ||||||||||||
Download: | download the raw HMM for this family |
Species distribution
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Structures
For those sequences which have a structure in the Protein DataBank, we use the mapping between UniProt, PDB and Pfam coordinate systems from the PDBe group, to allow us to map Pfam domains onto UniProt sequences and three-dimensional protein structures. The table below shows the structures on which the Piwi domain has been found. There are 169 instances of this domain found in the PDB. Note that there may be multiple copies of the domain in a single PDB structure, since many structures contain multiple copies of the same protein sequence.
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AlphaFold Structure Predictions
The list of proteins below match this family and have AlphaFold predicted structures. Click on the protein accession to view the predicted structure.