{"doi":"10.1101/gr.256131.119","title":"Active retrotransposons help maintain pericentromeric heterochromatin required for faithful cell division","abstract":"Retrotransposons are populated in vertebrate genomes, and when active, are thought to cause genome instability with potential benefit to genome evolution. Retrotransposon-derived RNAs are also known to give rise to small endo-siRNAs to help maintain heterochromatin at their sites of transcription; however, as not all heterochromatic regions are equally active in transcription, it remains unclear how heterochromatin is maintained across the genome. Here, we address these problems by defining the origins of repeat-derived RNAs and their specific chromatin locations in Drosophila S2 cells. We demonstrate that repeat RNAs are predominantly derived from active gypsy elements and processed by Dcr-2 into small RNAs to help maintain pericentromeric heterochromatin. We also show in cultured S2 cells that synthetic repeat-derived endo-siRNA mimics are sufficient to rescue Dcr-2-deficiency-induced defects in heterochromatin formation in interphase and chromosome segregation during mitosis, demonstrating that active retrotransposons are required for stable genetic inheritance.","journal":"Genome Research","year":2020,"id":120555,"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":10,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9461,"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":554554,"name":"Dongpeng Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-8272-1228","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":558485,"name":"Shuheng Wu","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":318079,"name":"Xiao Li","orcid":"0000-0001-8527-4438","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278251,"name":"Changwei Shao","orcid":"0000-0002-4082-7200","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307312,"name":"Peng Zhang","orcid":"0000-0001-9303-1639","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":43242,"name":"Jiayu Chen","orcid":"0000-0001-9449-9321","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278248,"name":"Do‐Hwan Lim","orcid":"0000-0002-2054-1416","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":43247,"name":"Xiang‐Dong Fu","orcid":"0000-0001-5499-8732","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":461678,"name":"Runsheng Chen","orcid":"0000-0001-6049-8347","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":557983,"name":"Shunmin He","orcid":"0000-0002-7294-0865","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278249,"name":"Yajing Hao","orcid":"0000-0003-1384-4176","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":47,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:14:33.640077Z","pmid":"33060173","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":[]}