Skip to main content

Shawn and Eric Miska at the University of Cambridge are senior authors on the paper, and Shawn’s former postdoc, Aisa Sakaguchi, and former graduate student, Matt Simon, as co-first authors with Peter Sarkies from Dr. Miska’s lab.

This study establishes a role for small RNAs in promoting transgenerational fertility via an endogenous temperature-sensitive silencing process that is promoted by the RNAi spreading defective (RSD)-2 and RSD-6 proteins, which have been implicated in RNA interference in response to exogenous double-stranded RNA triggers. The data suggest that a malleable siRNA-based repeat silencing system in germ cells, which may be subject to stochastic, genetic, or epigenetic effects in human populations, could explain some of the transgenerational variation in the penetrance of aging-related disorders