Summary: Piwi domain

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Piwi Edit Wikipedia article

Piwi domain

Structure of the Pyrococcus furiosus Argonaute protein.^[1]

Identifiers

Symbol

Piwi

Available protein structures:
Pfam	structures
PDB	RCSB PDB; PDBe
PDBsum	structure summary

The piwi domain of an argonaute protein with bound siRNA, components of the RNA-induced silencing complex that mediates gene silencing by RNA interference.

The piwi (sometimes also PIWI; originally P-element induced wimpy testis in Drosophila^[2]) 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.^[3] Piwi proteins are highly conserved across evolutionary lineages and are present in both plants and animals.^[4] One of the major human homologues, whose upregulation is implicated in the formation of tumours such as seminomas, is called hiwi;^[5] other variants on the theme include the miwi protein in mice.^[6]

[edit] Role in RNA interference

The piwi domain^[7] 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 that has been determined in the argonaute family of related proteins.^[1] Argonautes, the most well-studied family of nucleic-acid binding proteins, 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 can bind both small interfering RNA (siRNA) generated from exogenous double-stranded RNA and microRNA (miRNA) generated from endogenous non-coding RNA, both produced by the ribonuclease Dicer, to form an RNA-RISC complex. This complex binds and cleaves complementary base pairing messenger RNA, destroying it and preventing its translation into protein. Crystallised 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 stabilised by base stacking-interactions between the base and neighbouring tyrosine residues.^[8]

Recent evidence suggests that the functional role of piwi proteins in germ-line determination is due to their capacity to interact with miRNAs. Components of the miRNA pathway appear to be present in pole plasm and to play a key role in early development and morphogenesis of Drosophila melanogaster embryos, in which germ-line maintenance has been extensively studied.^[9]

[edit] piRNAs and transposon silencing

Recently, a novel class of longer-than-average miRNAs known as Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) has been defined in mammalian cells, about 26-31 nucleotides long as compared to the more typical miRNA or siRNA of about 21 nucleotides. These piRNAs are expressed specifically in spermatogenic cells in the testes of mammals.^[10] piRNAs have been identified in the genomes of mice, rats, and humans, with an unusual "clustered" genomic organization^[11] that may originate from repetitive regions of the genome such as retrotransposons or regions normally organized into heterochromatin, and which are normally derived exclusively from the antisense strand of double-stranded RNA.^[12] piRNAs have thus been classified as repeat-associated small interfering RNAs (rasiRNAs).^[2] Although their biogenesis is not yet well understood, piRNAs and Piwi proteins are thought to form an endogenous system for silencing the expression of selfish genetic elements such as retrotransposons and thus preventing the gene products of such sequences from interfering with germ cell formation.^[12]

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Rivas FV, Tolia NH, Song JJ, et al. (April 2005). "Purified Argonaute2 and an siRNA form recombinant human RISC". Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 12 (4): 340–9. doi:10.1038/nsmb918. PMID 15800637.
^ ^a ^b Saito K, Nishida KM, Mori T, Kawamura Y, Miyoshi K, Nagami T, Siomi H, Siomi MC. (2006). Specific association of Piwi with rasiRNAs derived from retrotransposon and heterochromatic regions in the Drosophila genome. Genes Dev 20(16):2214-22. PMID 16882972
^ 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. doi:10.1101/gad.12.23.3715 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. doi:10.1038/sj.onc.1205505 PMID 12037681
^ Deng W, Lin H. (2002). miwi, a murine homolog of piwi, encodes a cytoplasmic protein essential for spermatogenesis. Dev Cell 2(6):819-30. PMID 12062093
^ Cerutti L, Mian N, Bateman A (October 2000). "Domains in gene silencing and cell differentiation proteins: the novel PAZ domain and redefinition of the Piwi domain". Trends Biochem. Sci. 25 (10): 481–2. doi:10.1016/S0968-0004(00)01641-8. PMID 11050429.
^ 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. doi:10.1038/nature03514 PMID 15800629
^ Megosh HB, Cox DN, Campbell C, Lin H. (2006). The role of PIWI and the miRNA machinery in Drosophila germline determination. Curr Biol 16(19):1884-94. PMID 16949822
^ Kim VN. (2006). Small RNAs just got bigger: Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) in mammalian testes. Genes Dev 20(15):1993-7. PMID 16882976
^ Girard A, Sachidanandam R, Hannon GJ, Carmell MA. (2006). A germline-specific class of small RNAs binds mammalian Piwi proteins. Nature 442(7099):199-202. PMID 16751776
^ ^a ^b Vagin VV, Sigova A, Li C, Seitz H, Gvozdev V, Zamore PD. (2006). A distinct small RNA pathway silences selfish genetic elements in the germline. Science 313(5785):320-4. PMID 16809489

[edit] External links

SCOP 110640 - Piwi domain in SCOP
PDOC50822 - Piwi domain in PROSITE

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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

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
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

External database links

PANDIT:	PF02171
Pseudofam:	PF02171
SYSTERS:	Piwi

This tab holds annotation information from the InterPro database.

InterPro entry IPR003165

This domain is found in the stem cell self-renewal protein Piwi and its relatives in Drosophila melanogaster [PUBMED:9851978]. It has been found in the C-terminal of a number of proteins which also contain the PAZ domain (INTERPRO) in their central region, for example the Argonaute proteins. Several of these proteins have been implicated in the development and maintenance of stem cells through the RNA-mediated gene-quelling mechanisms associated with the protein DICER.

Gene Ontology

The mapping between Pfam and Gene Ontology is provided by InterPro. If you use this data please cite InterPro.

Molecular function

protein binding (GO:0005515)

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 contains the following 46 members:

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 DNA_pol_A_exo1 DNA_pol_B_exo1 DNA_pol_B_exo2 DUF2779 DUF3882 DUF4152 DUF458 Maelstrom MULE NurA Piwi Plant_tran Pox_A22 RNase_H RNase_H_2 RNase_HII RNase_T RuvC rve rve_2 rve_3 RVT_3 Transposase_1 Transposase_mut UPF0236 Ydc2-catalyt

Alignments

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 using the family HMM. We also generate alignments using four representative proteomes (RP) sets, the NCBI sequence database, and our metagenomics sequence database. More...

There are various ways to view or download the sequence alignments that we store. We provide several sequence viewers and a plain-text Stockholm-format file for download.

Alignment types

We make a range of alignments for each Pfam-A family:

seed: the curated alignment from which the HMM for the family is built
full: the alignment generated by searching the sequence database using the HMM
RP15/RP35/RP55/RP75: Representative Proteomes (RPs) at 15%, 35%, 55% and 75% co-membership thresholds
NCBI: alignment generated by searching the NCBI sequence database using the family HMM
meta: alignment generated by searching the metagenomics sequence database using the family HMM

Viewing

You can see the alignments as HTML or in three different sequence viewers:

jalview: a Java applet developed at the University of Dundee. You will need Java installed before running jalview
HTML: an HTML page showing the whole alignment.Please note: full Pfam alignments can be very large. These HTML views are extremely large and often cause problems for browsers. Please use either jalview or the Pfam viewer if you have trouble viewing the HTML version
PP/Heatmap: an HTML-based representation of the alignment, coloured according to the posterior-probability (PP) values from the HMM. As for the standard HTML view, heatmap alignments can also be very large and slow to render.
Pfam viewer: an HTML-based viewer that uses DAS to retrieve alignment fragments on request

Reformatting

You can download (or view in your browser) a text representation of a Pfam alignment in various formats:

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You can also change the order in which sequences are listed in the alignment, change how insertions are represented, alter the characters that are used to represent gaps in sequences and, finally, choose whether to download the alignment or to view it in your browser directly.

Downloading

You may find that large alignments cause problems for the viewers and the reformatting tool, so we also provide all alignments in Stockholm format. You can download either the plain text alignment, or a gzipped version of it.

View options

We make a range of alignments for each Pfam-A family. You can see a description of each above. You can view these alignments in various ways but please note that some types of alignment are never generated while others may not be available for all families, most commonly because the alignments are too large to handle.

	Seed (18)	Full (2067)	Representative proteomes				NCBI (2033)	Meta (12)
	Seed (18)	Full (2067)	RP15 (440)	RP35 (645)	RP55 (1059)	RP75 (1282)	NCBI (2033)	Meta (12)
Jalview	View	View	View	View	View	View	View	View
HTML	View	View	View	View	View	View
PP/heatmap	₁	View	View	View	View	View
Pfam viewer	View	View

¹Cannot generate PP/Heatmap alignments for seeds; no PP data available

Key: available, not generated, — not available.

Format an alignment

	Seed (18)	Full (2067)	Representative proteomes				NCBI (2033)	Meta (12)
	Seed (18)	Full (2067)	RP15 (440)	RP35 (645)	RP55 (1059)	RP75 (1282)	NCBI (2033)	Meta (12)
Alignment:
Format:
Order:	Tree Alphabetical
Sequence:	Inserts lower case All upper case
Gaps:
Download/view:	Download View

Download options

We make all of our alignments available in Stockholm format. You can download them here as raw, plain text files or as gzip-compressed files.

	Seed (18)	Full (2067)	Representative proteomes				NCBI (2033)	Meta (12)
	Seed (18)	Full (2067)	RP15 (440)	RP35 (645)	RP55 (1059)	RP75 (1282)	NCBI (2033)	Meta (12)
Raw Stockholm	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download
Gzipped	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download

You can also download a FASTA format file containing the full-length sequences for all sequences in the full alignment.

External links

MyHits provides a collection of tools to handle multiple sequence alignments. For example, one can refine a seed alignment (sequence addition or removal, re-alignment or manual edition) and then search databases for remote homologs using HMMER3.

HMM logo

HMM logos is one way of visualising profile HMMs. Logos provide a quick overview of the properties of an HMM in a graphical form. You can see a more detailed description of HMM logos and find out how you can interpret them here. More...

Trees

This page displays the phylogenetic tree for this family's seed alignment. We use FastTree to calculate neighbour join trees with a local bootstrap based on 100 resamples (shown next to the tree nodes). FastTree calculates approximately-maximum-likelihood phylogenetic trees from our seed alignment.

Note: You can also download the data file for the tree.

Curation and family details

This section shows the detailed information about the Pfam family. You can see the definitions of many of the terms in this section in the glossary and a fuller explanation of the scoring system that we use in the scores section of the help pages.

Curation

Seed source:

Bateman A

Previous IDs:

none

Type:

Family

Author:

Bateman A, Hammonds G

Number in seed:

18

Number in full:

2067

Average length of the domain:

263.30 aa

Average identity of full alignment:

32 %

Average coverage of the sequence by the domain:

35.31 %

HMM information

HMM build commands:

build method: hmmbuild -o /dev/null HMM SEED

search method: hmmsearch -Z 23193494 -E 1000 --cpu 4 HMM pfamseq

Model details:

Parameter	Sequence	Domain
Gathering cut-off	19.9	19.9
Trusted cut-off	19.9	20.0
Noise cut-off	19.8	19.8

Model length:

302

Family (HMM) version:

12

Download:

download the raw HMM for this family

Species distribution

Sunburst
Tree

Sunburst controls

Show

This visualisation provides a simple graphical representation of the distribution of this family across species. You can find the original interactive tree in the adjacent tab. More...

This chart is a modified "sunburst" visualisation of the species tree for this family. It shows each node in the tree as a separate arc, arranged radially with the superkingdoms at the centre and the species arrayed around the outermost ring.

How the sunburst is generated

The tree is built by considering the taxonomic lineage of each sequence that has a match to this family. For each node in the resulting tree, we draw an arc in the sunburst. The radius of the arc, its distance from the root node at the centre of the sunburst, shows the taxonomic level ("superkingdom", "kingdom", etc). The length of the arc represents either the number of sequences represented at a given level, or the number of species that are found beneath the node in the tree. The weighting scheme can be changed using the sunburst controls.

In order to reduce the complexity of the representation, we reduce the number of taxonomic levels that we show. We consider only the following eight major taxonomic levels:

superkingdom
kingdom
phylum
class
order
family
genus
species

Colouring and labels

Segments of the tree are coloured approximately according to their superkingdom. For example, archeal branches are coloured with shades of orange, eukaryotes in shades of purple, etc. The colour assignments are shown under the sunburst controls. Where space allows, the name of the taxonomic level will be written on the arc itself.

As you move your mouse across the sunburst, the current node will be highlighted. In the top section of the controls panel we show a summary of the lineage of the currently highlighed node. If you pause over an arc, a tooltip will be shown, giving the name of the taxonomic level in the title and a summary of the number of sequences and species below that node in the tree.

Anomalies in the taxonomy tree

There are some situations that the sunburst tree cannot easily handle and for which we have work-arounds in place.

Missing taxonomic levels

Some species in the taxonomic tree may not have one or more of the main eight levels that we display. For example, Bos taurus is not assigned an order in the NCBI taxonomic tree. In such cases we mark the omitted level with, for example, "No order", in both the tooltip and the lineage summary.

Unmapped species names

The tree is built by looking at each sequence in the full alignment for the family. We take the name of the species given by UniProt and try to map that to the full taxonomic tree from NCBI. In some cases, the name chosen by UniProt does not map to any node in the NCBI tree, perhaps because the chosen name is listed as a synonym or a misspelling in the NCBI taxonomy.

So that these nodes are not simply omitted from the sunburst tree, we group them together in a separate branch (or segment of the sunburst tree). Since we cannot determine the lineage for these unmapped species, we show all levels between the superkingdom and the species as "uncategorised".

Sub-species

Since we reduce the species tree to only the eight main taxonomic levels, sequences that are mapped to the sub-species level in the tree would not normally be shown. Rather than leave out these species, we map them instead to their parent species. So, for example, for sequences belonging to one of the Vibrio cholerae sub-species in the NCBI taxonomy, we show them instead as belonging to the species Vibrio cholerae.

Too many species/sequences

For large species trees, you may see blank regions in the outer layers of the sunburst. These occur when there are large numbers of arcs to be drawn in a small space. If an arc is less than approximately one pixel wide, it will not be drawn and the space will be left blank. You may still be able to get some information about the species in that region by moving your mouse across the area, but since each arc will be very small, it will be difficult to accurately locate a particular species.

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Tree controls

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The tree shows the occurrence of this domain across different species. More...

Species trees

We show the species tree in one of two ways. For smaller trees we try to show an interactive representation, which allows you to select specific nodes in the tree and view them as an alignment or as a set of Pfam domain graphics.

Unfortunately we have found that there are problems viewing the interactive tree when the it becomes larger than a certain limit. Furthermore, we have found that Internet Explorer can become unresponsive when viewing some trees, regardless of their size. We therefore show a text representation of the species tree when the size is above a certain limit or if you are using Internet Explorer to view the site.

If you are using IE you can still load the interactive tree by clicking the "Generate interactive tree" button, but please be aware of the potential problems that the interactive species tree can cause.

Interactive tree

For all of the domain matches in a full alignment, we count the number that are found on all sequences in the alignment. This total is shown in the purple box.

We also count the number of unique sequences on which each domain is found, which is shown in green. Note that a domain may appear multiple times on the same sequence, leading to the difference between these two numbers.

Finally, we group sequences from the same organism according to the NCBI code that is assigned by UniProt, allowing us to count the number of distinct sequences on which the domain is found. This value is shown in the pink boxes.

We use the NCBI species tree to group organisms according to their taxonomy and this forms the structure of the displayed tree. Note that in some cases the trees are too large (have too many nodes) to allow us to build an interactive tree, but in most cases you can still view the tree in a plain text, non-interactive representation. Those species which are represented in the seed alignment for this domain are highlighted.

You can use the tree controls to manipulate how the interactive tree is displayed:

show/hide the summary boxes
highlight species that are represented in the seed alignment
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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 62 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 seqence.

Loading structure mapping...

Archea	Eukaryota
Bacteria	Other sequences
Viruses	Unclassified
Viroids	Unclassified sequence

Family: Piwi (PF02171)

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