{"doi":"10.1101/2020.09.04.282863","title":"Translation and codon usage regulate Argonaute slicer activity to trigger small RNA biogenesis","abstract":"In the Caenorhabditis elegans germline, thousands of mRNAs are concomitantly expressed with antisense 22G-RNAs, which are loaded into the Argonaute CSR-1. Despite their essential functions for animal fertility and embryonic development, how CSR-1 22G-RNAs are produced remains unknown. Here, we show that CSR-1 slicer activity is primarily involved in triggering the synthesis of small RNAs on the coding sequences of germline mRNAs and post-transcriptionally regulates a fraction of targets. CSR-1-cleaved mRNAs prime the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, EGO-1, to synthesize 22G-RNAs in phase with ribosome translation in the cytoplasm, in contrast to other 22G-RNAs mostly synthesized in germ granules. Moreover, codon optimality and efficient translation antagonize CSR-1 slicing and 22G-RNAs biogenesis. We propose that codon usage differences encoded into mRNA sequences might be a conserved strategy in eukaryotes to regulate small RNA biogenesis and Argonaute targeting.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":120183,"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":12,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9537,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":272207,"name":"Eric Cornes","orcid":"0000-0002-2938-3733","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":272209,"name":"Blaise Li","orcid":"0000-0003-3080-1899","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":272214,"name":"Piergiuseppe Quarato","orcid":"0000-0003-3839-3383","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":557138,"name":"Loan Bourdon","orcid":"0000-0001-7502-753X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":272212,"name":"Florent Dingli","orcid":"0000-0002-7715-2446","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":272213,"name":"Damarys Loew","orcid":"0000-0002-9111-8842","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":558100,"name":"Simone Proccacia","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":272215,"name":"Germano Cecere","orcid":"0000-0001-5912-3417","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":272208,"name":"Meetali Singh","orcid":"0000-0002-5783-073X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":77,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:33.640077Z","pmid":null,"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":[]}