Expression of Piwi protein MIWI2 defines a distinct population of multiciliated cells

We find that MIWI2 protein is expressed in a discrete population of multiciliated airway epithelial cells of the lung. The isolation and the next generation sequencing of the MIWI2-positive multiciliated cells revealed that they are phenotypically distinct from neighboring MIWI2-negative multiciliated cells. RNA-seq analysis of sorted tdTomato-positive multiciliated cells versus tdTomato-negative multiciliated cells