Fig. 1.

Expression of the piRNA biogenesis machinery in the brain. (A) Transcript expression analyses by RNA-Seq. The dotted line represents baseline of expression based on TPM score for Piwil4, a transcript absent in adult testes (3). (B) Visualization of piwil2 (Mili) transcript alignment from poly(A) selected (green) and from ENCODE long RNA-Seq contigs (gray). Corresponding exons of the Mili gene were identified by numerical values from 1 to 23. Note, number of reads in exon 23 (noncoding) accounts for 61–63% of all reads mapping to the Mili transcript in all tissues. (C) Mili protein expression. Whole cell lysates from brain or testes, from either WT (+/+) or Mili^−/− (−/−) mice were immunoprecipitated using the N-terminal anti-Mili antibody and Western blotted using the C-terminal anti-Mili antibody. The experiment was carried out two to three times. Note, brain lysates were used at 225-fold higher than testes for immunoprecipitation.