216,579 research outputs found
A key role for chd1 in histone h3 dynamics at the 3\u27 ends of long genes in yeast
Chd proteins are ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes implicated in biological functions from transcriptional elongation to control of pluripotency. Previous studies of the Chd1 subclass of these proteins have implicated them in diverse roles in gene expression including functions during initiation, elongation, and termination. Furthermore, some evidence has suggested a role for Chd1 in replication-independent histone exchange or assembly. Here, we examine roles of Chd1 in replication-independent dynamics of histone H3 in both Drosophila and yeast. We find evidence of a role for Chd1 in H3 dynamics in both organisms. Using genome-wide ChIP-on-chip analysis, we find that Chd1 influences histone turnover at the 5\u27 and 3\u27 ends of genes, accelerating H3 replacement at the 5\u27 ends of genes while protecting the 3\u27 ends of genes from excessive H3 turnover. Although consistent with a direct role for Chd1 in exchange, these results may indicate that Chd1 stabilizes nucleosomes perturbed by transcription. Curiously, we observe a strong effect of gene length on Chd1\u27s effects on H3 turnover. Finally, we show that Chd1 also affects histone modification patterns over genes, likely as a consequence of its effects on histone replacement. Taken together, our results emphasize a role for Chd1 in histone replacement in both budding yeast and Drosophila melanogaster, and surprisingly they show that the major effects of Chd1 on turnover occur at the 3\u27 ends of genes
IST Austria Thesis
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the lateral acquisition of genes across existing species
boundaries, is a major evolutionary force shaping microbial genomes that facilitates
adaptation to new environments as well as resistance to antimicrobial drugs. As such,
understanding the mechanisms and constraints that determine the outcomes of HGT
events is crucial to understand the dynamics of HGT and to design better strategies to
overcome the challenges that originate from it.
Following the insertion and expression of a newly transferred gene, the success of an
HGT event will depend on the fitness effect it has on the recipient (host) cell. Therefore,
predicting the impact of HGT on the genetic composition of a population critically
depends on the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) of horizontally transferred genes.
However, to date, we have little knowledge of the DFE of newly transferred genes, and
hence little is known about the shape and scale of this distribution.
It is particularly important to better understand the selective barriers that determine
the fitness effects of newly transferred genes. In spite of substantial bioinformatics
efforts to identify horizontally transferred genes and selective barriers, a systematic
experimental approach to elucidate the roles of different selective barriers in defining
the fate of a transfer event has largely been absent. Similarly, although the fact that
environment might alter the fitness effect of a horizontally transferred gene may seem
obvious, little attention has been given to it in a systematic experimental manner.
In this study, we developed a systematic experimental approach that consists of
transferring 44 arbitrarily selected Salmonella typhimurium orthologous genes into an
Escherichia coli host, and estimating the fitness effects of these transferred genes at a
constant expression level by performing competition assays against the wild type.
In chapter 2, we performed one-to-one competition assays between a mutant strain
carrying a transferred gene and the wild type strain. By using flow cytometry we
estimated selection coefficients for the transferred genes with a precision level of 10-3,and obtained the DFE of horizontally transferred genes. We then investigated if these
fitness effects could be predicted by any of the intrinsic properties of the genes, namely,
functional category, degree of complexity (protein-protein interactions), GC content,
codon usage and length. Our analyses revealed that the functional category and length
of the genes act as potential selective barriers. Finally, using the same procedure with
the endogenous E. coli orthologs of these 44 genes, we demonstrated that gene dosage is
the most prominent selective barrier to HGT.
In chapter 3, using the same set of genes we investigated the role of environment on the
success of HGT events. Under six different environments with different levels of stress
we performed more complex competition assays, where we mixed all 44 mutant strains
carrying transferred genes with the wild type strain. To estimate the fitness effects of
genes relative to wild type we used next generation sequencing. We found that the DFEs
of horizontally transferred genes are highly dependent on the environment, with
abundant gene–by-environment interactions. Furthermore, we demonstrated a
relationship between average fitness effect of a gene across all environments and its
environmental variance, and thus its predictability. Finally, in spite of the fitness effects
of genes being highly environment-dependent, we still observed a common shape of
DFEs across all tested environments
Dynamics of transcription factor binding site evolution
Evolution of gene regulation is crucial for our understanding of the
phenotypic differences between species, populations and individuals.
Sequence-specific binding of transcription factors to the regulatory regions on
the DNA is a key regulatory mechanism that determines gene expression and hence
heritable phenotypic variation. We use a biophysical model for directional
selection on gene expression to estimate the rates of gain and loss of
transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) in finite populations under both
point and insertion/deletion mutations. Our results show that these rates are
typically slow for a single TFBS in an isolated DNA region, unless the
selection is extremely strong. These rates decrease drastically with increasing
TFBS length or increasingly specific protein-DNA interactions, making the
evolution of sites longer than ~10 bp unlikely on typical eukaryotic speciation
timescales. Similarly, evolution converges to the stationary distribution of
binding sequences very slowly, making the equilibrium assumption questionable.
The availability of longer regulatory sequences in which multiple binding sites
can evolve simultaneously, the presence of "pre-sites" or partially decayed old
sites in the initial sequence, and biophysical cooperativity between
transcription factors, can all facilitate gain of TFBS and reconcile
theoretical calculations with timescales inferred from comparative genetics.Comment: 28 pages, 15 figure
Precision of readout at the hunchback gene: analyzing short transcription time traces in living fly embryos
The simultaneous expression of the hunchback gene in the numerous nuclei of
the developing fly embryo gives us a unique opportunity to study how
transcription is regulated in living organisms. A recently developed MS2-MCP
technique for imaging nascent messenger RNA in living Drosophila embryos allows
us to quantify the dynamics of the developmental transcription process. The
initial measurement of the morphogens by the hunchback promoter takes place
during very short cell cycles, not only giving each nucleus little time for a
precise readout, but also resulting in short time traces of transcription.
Additionally, the relationship between the measured signal and the promoter
state depends on the molecular design of the reporting probe. We develop an
analysis approach based on tailor made autocorrelation functions that overcomes
the short trace problems and quantifies the dynamics of transcription
initiation. Based on live imaging data, we identify signatures of bursty
transcription initiation from the hunchback promoter. We show that the
precision of the expression of the hunchback gene to measure its position along
the anterior-posterior axis is low both at the boundary and in the anterior
even at cycle 13, suggesting additional post-transcriptional averaging
mechanisms to provide the precision observed in fixed embryos
Partial differential equations for self-organization in cellular and developmental biology
Understanding the mechanisms governing and regulating the emergence of structure and heterogeneity within cellular systems, such as the developing embryo, represents a multiscale challenge typifying current integrative biology research, namely, explaining the macroscale behaviour of a system from microscale dynamics. This review will focus upon modelling how cell-based dynamics orchestrate the emergence of higher level structure. After surveying representative biological examples and the models used to describe them, we will assess how developments at the scale of molecular biology have impacted on current theoretical frameworks, and the new modelling opportunities that are emerging as a result. We shall restrict our survey of mathematical approaches to partial differential equations and the tools required for their analysis. We will discuss the gap between the modelling abstraction and biological reality, the challenges this presents and highlight some open problems in the field
Gene expression time delays & Turing pattern formation systems
The incorporation of time delays can greatly affect the behaviour of partial differential equations and dynamical systems. In addition, there is evidence that time delays in gene expression due to transcription and translation play an important role in the dynamics of cellular systems. In this paper, we investigate the effects of incorporating gene expression time delays into a one-dimensional putative reaction diffusion pattern formation mechanism on both stationary domains and domains with spatially uniform exponential growth. While oscillatory behaviour is rare, we find that the time taken to initiate and stabilise patterns increases dramatically as the time delay is increased. In addition, we observe that on rapidly growing domains the time delay can induce a failure of the Turing instability which cannot be predicted by a naive linear analysis of the underlying equations about the homogeneous steady state. The dramatic lag in the induction of patterning, or even its complete absence on occasions, highlights the importance of considering explicit gene expression time delays in models for cellular reaction diffusion patterning
Turing's model for biological pattern formation and the robustness problem
One of the fundamental questions in developmental biology is how the vast range of pattern and structure we observe in nature emerges from an almost uniformly homogeneous fertilized egg. In particular, the mechanisms by which biological systems maintain robustness, despite being subject to numerous sources of noise, are shrouded in mystery. Postulating plausible theoretical models of biological heterogeneity is not only difficult, but it is also further complicated by the problem of generating robustness, i.e. once we can generate a pattern, how do we ensure that this pattern is consistently reproducible in the face of perturbations to the domain, reaction time scale, boundary conditions and so forth. In this paper, not only do we review the basic properties of Turing's theory, we highlight the successes and pitfalls of using it as a model for biological systems, and discuss emerging developments in the area
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