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Genetic analysis demonstrates tissue-specific developmental arrest and motor defects following Argonaute depletion in Caenorhabditis elegans, highlighting distinct local roles for microRNAs.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are essential for worm development, yet their roles remain unclear in most tissues. Here, we established a tissue-specific Argonaute (AGO) knockout system in Caenorhabditis elegans using conditional deletion of alg-1 in an alg-2 mutant background. Tissue-restricted loss of AGO revealed distinct developmental and tissue-specific phenotypes. AGO depletion in the intestine, pharynx, and hypodermis caused developmental arrest and tissue-specific defects, whereas neuronal and muscle-specific AGO depletion impaired locomotion and affected neuronal or muscle-associated phenotypes. Moreover, combined loss of selected tissue-expressed miRNAs only partially recapitulated the corresponding AGO-depletion phenotypes. Muscle-specific re-expression of selected miRNAs rescued the locomotion defect of the compound miRNA mutant. This study establishes a platform for dissecting tissue-specific miRNA functions during animal development.
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Gao et al. (2026) studied this question.
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