FLX sequencing of Piwi-associated small RNAs extracted from Drosophila ovarian somatic cells (OSC)

piRNAs function in silencing retrotransposons by associating with the PIWI proteins, AGO3, Aub, and Piwi, in Drosophila germlines. Bioinformatics analyses of piRNAs in Drosophila ovaries suggested that piRNAs are produced by two systems, the primary processing pathway and the amplification loop, from repetitive genes and piRNA clusters in the genome. The amplification loop occurs in a Dicer-independent, PIWI-Slicer-dependent manner. However, the primary processing pathway remains largely conceptual. Here we show that in ovarian somatic cells, which lack Aub and AGO3 but express Piwi, the primary processing pathway for piRNAs indeed exists. Keywords: Small RNA profiling by high throughput sequencing Overall design: Piwi-associated small RNAs were extracted from Drosophila ovarian somatic cells and their deep sequencing was carried out.