Piwi protein

UniProtKB accession:  O28951

Grouped By:  Matching UniProtKB accession

UniProtKB description:  Might play a role in defense against invading genetic elements, using short nucleic acid sequences as guides to bind complementary target strands, resulting in slicing of the target nucleic acid (By similarity). Binds nucleic acids with decreasing affinity in the following order; ssDNA, ssRNA, dsDNA, RNA-DNA, RNA-RNA (PubMed:15800629). Association of the 5' seed region of the guide strand (nucleotides 2-7) with AfPiwi increases affinity for the corresponding target strand; the greatest increase in affinity is for guide DNA with target RNA (PubMed:19187762).