{"doi":"10.1016/j.celrep.2021.108914","title":"Asterix/Gtsf1 links tRNAs and piRNA silencing of retrotransposons","abstract":"The Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway safeguards genomic integrity by silencing transposable elements (transposons) in the germline. While Piwi is the central piRNA factor, others including Asterix/Gtsf1 have also been demonstrated to be critical for effective silencing. Here, using enhanced crosslinking and immunoprecipitation (eCLIP) with a custom informatic pipeline, we show that Asterix/Gtsf1 specifically binds tRNAs in cellular contexts. We determined the structure of mouse Gtsf1 by NMR spectroscopy and identified the RNA-binding interface on the protein's first zinc finger, which was corroborated by biochemical analysis as well as cryo-EM structures of Gtsf1 in complex with co-purifying tRNA. Consistent with the known dependence of long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons on tRNA primers, we demonstrate that LTR retrotransposons are, in fact, preferentially de-repressed in Asterix mutants. Together, these findings link Asterix/Gtsf1, tRNAs, and LTR retrotransposon silencing and suggest that Asterix exploits tRNA dependence to identify transposon transcripts and promote piRNA silencing.","journal":"Cell Reports","year":2021,"id":174288,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":23,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9562,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":713307,"name":"Paul A. O’Brien","orcid":"0000-0003-3932-1461","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":565066,"name":"Shibani Bhattacharya","orcid":"0000-0002-7706-9167","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":513817,"name":"Arthur G. Palmer","orcid":"0000-0002-2770-0053","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":335006,"name":"Leemor Joshua‐Tor","orcid":"0000-0001-8185-8049","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":442082,"name":"Jonathan J. Ipsaro","orcid":"0000-0002-2743-3776","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":70,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:54.772014Z","pmid":"33789107","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}