JHIBRG:Abstract Jul 3 2008

In addition to miRNA, siRNA and piRNA, another family of small non functional RNAs are reported in Drosophila system. These RNAs are bound to dAGO2 as exogenous siRNA and are processed by Dicer-2 but share characteristics and targets with piRNA. Some results suggest that the RNAs suppress retrotransposon in somatic cells and facilitate feed-forward heterochromatin formation in X chromosome.