van Wolfswinkel Josien C
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, 9 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
Integr Comp Biol. 2014 Oct;54(4):700-13. doi: 10.1093/icb/icu084. Epub 2014 Jun 19.
PIWI proteins are well known for their roles in the animal germline. They are essential for germline development and maintenance, and together with their binding partners, the piRNAs, they mediate transposon silencing. More recently, PIWI proteins have also been identified in somatic stem cells in diverse animals. The expression of PIWI proteins in these cells could be related to the ability of such cells to contribute to the germline. However, evaluation of stem cell systems across many different animal phyla suggests that PIWI proteins have an ancestral role in somatic stem cells, irrespective of their contribution to the germ cell lineage. Moreover, the data currently available reveal a possible correlation between the differentiation potential of a cell and its PIWI levels.
PIWI蛋白因其在动物生殖系中的作用而广为人知。它们对于生殖系的发育和维持至关重要，并且与它们的结合伙伴piRNA一起介导转座子沉默。最近，在多种动物的体细胞干细胞中也发现了PIWI蛋白。这些细胞中PIWI蛋白的表达可能与此类细胞对生殖系的贡献能力有关。然而，对许多不同动物门的干细胞系统的评估表明，PIWI蛋白在体细胞干细胞中具有祖先作用，无论它们对生殖细胞谱系的贡献如何。此外，目前可用的数据揭示了细胞的分化潜能与其PIWI水平之间可能存在的相关性。
