coordinates the transition to adulthood through a single primary and four secondary targets.

The juvenile-to-adult (J/A) transition, or puberty, is a period of extensive changes of animal body morphology and function. The onset of puberty is genetically controlled, and the miRNA temporally regulates J/A transition events in nematodes and mammals. Here, we uncover the targets and downstream pathways through which controls male and female sexual organ morphogenesis and skin progenitor cell fates. We find that directs all three processes by silencing a single target, the post-transcriptional regulator In turn, the RNA-binding protein LIN41/TRIM71 regulates these processes by silencing only four target mRNAs. Thus, by silencing LIN41, activates LIN-29a and MAB-10 (an early growth response-type transcription factor and its NAB1/2-orthologous cofactor, respectively) to terminate progenitor cell self-renewal and to promote vulval integrity. By contrast, promotes development of the male sexual organ by up-regulating DMD-3 and MAB-3, two Doublesex/MAB-3 domain-containing transcription factors. Our results provide mechanistic insight into how a linear chain of post-transcriptional regulators diverges in the control of a small set of transcriptional regulators to achieve a coordinated J/A transition.