Letter abstract
Nature Genetics 41, 488 - 493 (2009)
Published online: 22 March 2009 | doi:10.1038/ng.338
Many X-linked microRNAs escape meiotic sex chromosome inactivation
Rui Song1,3, Seungil Ro1,3, Jason D Michaels1, Chanjae Park1, John R McCarrey2 & Wei Yan1
Meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI) during spermatogenesis is characterized by transcriptional silencing of genes on both the X and Y chromosomes in mid-to-late pachytene spermatocytes1. MSCI is believed to result from meiotic silencing of unpaired DNA because the X and Y chromosomes remain largely unpaired throughout first meiotic prophase2. However, unlike X-chromosome inactivation in female embryonic cells, where 25–30% of X-linked structural genes have been reported to escape inactivation3, previous microarray4- and RT-PCR5–based studies of expression of >364 X-linked mRNA-encoding genes during spermatogenesis have failed to reveal any X-linked gene that escapes the silencing effects of MSCI in primary spermatocytes. Here we show that many X-linked miRNAs are transcribed and processed in pachytene spermatocytes. This unprecedented escape from MSCI by these X-linked miRNAs suggests that they may participate in a critical function at this stage of spermatogenesis, including the possibility that they contribute to the process of MSCI itself, or that they may be essential for post-transcriptional regulation of autosomal mRNAs during the late meiotic and early postmeiotic stages of spermatogenesis.
- Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno, Nevada, USA.
- Department of Biology, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
- These authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence to: Wei Yan1 e-mail: wyan@unr.edu
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