My new artwork for a fantastic Nature paper that shows a new mechanism for gene-expression!
Many genome-defense pathways are based on small RNA molecules that turn off foreign or harmful genes. In sperm and egg cells genomic integrity is maintained by piRNAs, which originate from parts of these genes – but how can piRNAs be generated from the same regions they inactivate?
The answer lies within a novel protein called Moonshiner, which can initiate transcription within a sea of tightly packed DNA.
Congratulations to Peter Refsing Andersen at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology!
