Decoupling of evolutionary changes in transcription factor binding and gene expression in mammals

To understand the evolutionary dynamics between transcription factor (TF) binding and gene expression in mammals, we compared transcriptional output and the binding intensities for three tissue-specific TFs in livers from four closely related mouse species. For each transcription factor, TF-dependent genes and the TF binding sites most likely to influence mRNA expression were identified by comparing mRNA expression levels between wild-type and TF knockout mice. Independent evolution was observed genome-wide between the rate of change in TF binding and the rate of change in mRNA expression across taxa, with the exception of a small number of TF-dependent genes. We also found that binding intensities are preferentially conserved near genes whose expression is dependent on the TF, and the conservation is shared among binding peaks in close proximity to each other near the TSS. Expression of TF-dependent genes typically showed an increased sensitivity to changes in binding levels as measured by mRNA abundance. Taken together, these results highlight a significant tolerance to evolutionary changes in TF binding intensity in mammalian transcriptional networks and suggest that some TF-dependent genes may be largely regulated by a single TF across evolution

Rapid turnover of long noncoding RNAs and the evolution of gene expression.

A large proportion of functional sequence within mammalian genomes falls outside protein-coding exons and can be transcribed into long RNAs. However, the roles in mammalian biology of long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) are not well understood. Few lncRNAs have experimentally determined roles, with some of these being lineage-specific. Determining the extent by which transcription of lncRNA loci is retained or lost across multiple evolutionary lineages is essential if we are to understand their contribution to mammalian biology and to lineage-specific traits. Here, we experimentally investigated the conservation of lncRNA expression among closely related rodent species, allowing the evolution of DNA sequence to be uncoupled from evolution of transcript expression. We generated total RNA (RNAseq) and H3K4me3-bound (ChIPseq) DNA data, and combined both to construct catalogues of transcripts expressed in the adult liver of Mus musculus domesticus (C57BL/6J), Mus musculus castaneus, and Rattus norvegicus. We estimated the rate of transcriptional turnover of lncRNAs and investigated the effects of their lineage-specific birth or death. LncRNA transcription showed considerably greater gain and loss during rodent evolution, compared with protein-coding genes. Nucleotide substitution rates were found to mirror the in vivo transcriptional conservation of intergenic lncRNAs between rodents: only the sequences of noncoding loci with conserved transcription were constrained. Finally, we found that lineage-specific intergenic lncRNAs appear to be associated with modestly elevated expression of genomically neighbouring protein-coding genes. Our findings show that nearly half of intergenic lncRNA loci have been gained or lost since the last common ancestor of mouse and rat, and they predict that such rapid transcriptional turnover contributes to the evolution of tissue- and lineage-specific gene expression

Regulatory Divergence of Transcript Isoforms in a Mammalian Model System.

Phenotypic differences between species are driven by changes in gene expression and, by extension, by modifications in the regulation of the transcriptome. Investigation of mammalian transcriptome divergence has been restricted to analysis of bulk gene expression levels and gene-internal splicing. Using allele-specific expression analysis in inter-strain hybrids of Mus musculus, we determined the contribution of multiple cellular regulatory systems to transcriptome divergence, including: alternative promoter usage, transcription start site selection, cassette exon usage, alternative last exon usage, and alternative polyadenylation site choice. Between mouse strains, a fifth of genes have variations in isoform usage that contribute to transcriptomic changes, half of which alter encoded amino acid sequence. Virtually all divergence in isoform usage altered the post-transcriptional regulatory instructions in gene UTRs. Furthermore, most genes with isoform differences between strains contain changes originating from multiple regulatory systems. This result indicates widespread cross-talk and coordination exists among different regulatory systems. Overall, isoform usage diverges in parallel with and independently to gene expression evolution, and the cis and trans regulatory contribution to each differs significantly

Clustered CTCF binding is an evolutionary mechanism to maintain topologically associating domains

Funder: European Molecular Biology Laboratory; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100013060Abstract: Background: CTCF binding contributes to the establishment of a higher-order genome structure by demarcating the boundaries of large-scale topologically associating domains (TADs). However, despite the importance and conservation of TADs, the role of CTCF binding in their evolution and stability remains elusive. Results: We carry out an experimental and computational study that exploits the natural genetic variation across five closely related species to assess how CTCF binding patterns stably fixed by evolution in each species contribute to the establishment and evolutionary dynamics of TAD boundaries. We perform CTCF ChIP-seq in multiple mouse species to create genome-wide binding profiles and associate them with TAD boundaries. Our analyses reveal that CTCF binding is maintained at TAD boundaries by a balance of selective constraints and dynamic evolutionary processes. Regardless of their conservation across species, CTCF binding sites at TAD boundaries are subject to stronger sequence and functional constraints compared to other CTCF sites. TAD boundaries frequently harbor dynamically evolving clusters containing both evolutionarily old and young CTCF sites as a result of the repeated acquisition of new species-specific sites close to conserved ones. The overwhelming majority of clustered CTCF sites colocalize with cohesin and are significantly closer to gene transcription start sites than nonclustered CTCF sites, suggesting that CTCF clusters particularly contribute to cohesin stabilization and transcriptional regulation. Conclusions: Dynamic conservation of CTCF site clusters is an apparently important feature of CTCF binding evolution that is critical to the functional stability of a higher-order chromatin structure

Clustered CTCF binding is an evolutionary mechanism to maintain topologically associating domains

Funder: European Molecular Biology Laboratory; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100013060Abstract: Background: CTCF binding contributes to the establishment of a higher-order genome structure by demarcating the boundaries of large-scale topologically associating domains (TADs). However, despite the importance and conservation of TADs, the role of CTCF binding in their evolution and stability remains elusive. Results: We carry out an experimental and computational study that exploits the natural genetic variation across five closely related species to assess how CTCF binding patterns stably fixed by evolution in each species contribute to the establishment and evolutionary dynamics of TAD boundaries. We perform CTCF ChIP-seq in multiple mouse species to create genome-wide binding profiles and associate them with TAD boundaries. Our analyses reveal that CTCF binding is maintained at TAD boundaries by a balance of selective constraints and dynamic evolutionary processes. Regardless of their conservation across species, CTCF binding sites at TAD boundaries are subject to stronger sequence and functional constraints compared to other CTCF sites. TAD boundaries frequently harbor dynamically evolving clusters containing both evolutionarily old and young CTCF sites as a result of the repeated acquisition of new species-specific sites close to conserved ones. The overwhelming majority of clustered CTCF sites colocalize with cohesin and are significantly closer to gene transcription start sites than nonclustered CTCF sites, suggesting that CTCF clusters particularly contribute to cohesin stabilization and transcriptional regulation. Conclusions: Dynamic conservation of CTCF site clusters is an apparently important feature of CTCF binding evolution that is critical to the functional stability of a higher-order chromatin structure

Dissecting the Within-Africa Ancestry of Populations of African Descent in the Americas

The ancestry of African-descended Americans is known to be drawn from three distinct populations: African, European, and Native American. While many studies consider this continental admixture, few account for the genetically distinct sources of ancestry within Africa--the continent with the highest genetic variation. Here, we dissect the within-Africa genetic ancestry of various populations of the Americas self-identified as having primarily African ancestry using uniparentally inherited mitochondrial DNA.We first confirmed that our results obtained using uniparentally-derived group admixture estimates are correlated with the average autosomal-derived individual admixture estimates (hence are relevant to genomic ancestry) by assessing continental admixture using both types of markers (mtDNA and Y-chromosome vs. ancestry informative markers). We then focused on the within-Africa maternal ancestry, mining our comprehensive database of published mtDNA variation (∼5800 individuals from 143 African populations) that helped us thoroughly dissect the African mtDNA pool. Using this well-defined African mtDNA variation, we quantified the relative contributions of maternal genetic ancestry from multiple W/WC/SW/SE (West to South East) African populations to the different pools of today's African-descended Americans of North and South America and the Caribbean.Our analysis revealed that both continental admixture and within-Africa admixture may be critical to achieving an adequate understanding of the ancestry of African-descended Americans. While continental ancestry reflects gender-specific admixture processes influenced by different socio-historical practices in the Americas, the within-Africa maternal ancestry reflects the diverse colonial histories of the slave trade. We have confirmed that there is a genetic thread connecting Africa and the Americas, where each colonial system supplied their colonies in the Americas with slaves from African colonies they controlled or that were available for them at the time. This historical connection is reflected in different relative contributions from populations of W/WC/SW/SE Africa to geographically distinct Africa-derived populations of the Americas, adding to the complexity of genomic ancestry in groups ostensibly united by the same demographic label

Repeat associated mechanisms of genome evolution and function revealed by the Mus caroli and Mus pahari genomes

Understanding the mechanisms driving lineage-specific evolution in both primates and rodents has been hindered by the lack of sister clades with a similar phylogenetic structure having high-quality genome assemblies. Here, we have created chromosome-level assemblies of the Mus caroli and Mus pahari genomes. Together with the Mus musculus and Rattus norvegicus genomes, this set of rodent genomes is similar in divergence times to the Hominidae (human-chimpanzee-gorilla-orangutan). By comparing the evolutionary dynamics between the Muridae and Hominidae, we identified punctate events of chromosome reshuffling that shaped the ancestral karyotype of Mus musculus and Mus caroli between 3 and 6 million yr ago, but that are absent in the Hominidae. Hominidae show between four- and sevenfold lower rates of nucleotide change and feature turnover in both neutral and functional sequences, suggesting an underlying coherence to the Muridae acceleration. Our system of matched, high-quality genome assemblies revealed how specific classes of repeats can play lineage-specific roles in related species. Recent LINE activity has remodeled protein-coding loci to a greater extent across the Muridae than the Hominidae, with functional consequences at the species level such as reproductive isolation. Furthermore, we charted a Muridae-specific retrotransposon expansion at unprecedented resolution, revealing how a single nucleotide mutation transformed a specific SINE element into an active CTCF binding site carrier specifically in Mus caroli, which resulted in thousands of novel, species-specific CTCF binding sites. Our results show that the comparison of matched phylogenetic sets of genomes will be an increasingly powerful strategy for understanding mammalian biology

Repeat associated mechanisms of genome evolution and function revealed by the Mus caroli and Mus pahari genomes.

Understanding the mechanisms driving lineage-specific evolution in both primates and rodents has been hindered by the lack of sister clades with a similar phylogenetic structure having high-quality genome assemblies. Here, we have created chromosome-level assemblies of the Mus caroli and Mus pahari genomes. Together with the Mus musculus and Rattus norvegicus genomes, this set of rodent genomes is similar in divergence times to the Hominidae (human-chimpanzee-gorilla-orangutan). By comparing the evolutionary dynamics between the Muridae and Hominidae, we identified punctate events of chromosome reshuffling that shaped the ancestral karyotype of Mus musculus and Mus caroli between 3 and 6 million yr ago, but that are absent in the Hominidae. Hominidae show between four- and sevenfold lower rates of nucleotide change and feature turnover in both neutral and functional sequences, suggesting an underlying coherence to the Muridae acceleration. Our system of matched, high-quality genome assemblies revealed how specific classes of repeats can play lineage-specific roles in related species. Recent LINE activity has remodeled protein-coding loci to a greater extent across the Muridae than the Hominidae, with functional consequences at the species level such as reproductive isolation. Furthermore, we charted a Muridae-specific retrotransposon expansion at unprecedented resolution, revealing how a single nucleotide mutation transformed a specific SINE element into an active CTCF binding site carrier specifically in Mus caroli, which resulted in thousands of novel, species-specific CTCF binding sites. Our results show that the comparison of matched phylogenetic sets of genomes will be an increasingly powerful strategy for understanding mammalian biology

A systematic, large-scale comparison of transcription factor binding site models

Background The modelling of gene regulation is a major challenge in biomedical research. This process is dominated by transcription factors (TFs) and mutations in their binding sites (TFBSs) may cause the misregulation of genes, eventually leading to disease. The consequences of DNA variants on TF binding are modelled in silico using binding matrices, but it remains unclear whether these are capable of accurately representing in vivo binding. In this study, we present a systematic comparison of binding models for 82 human TFs from three freely available sources: JASPAR matrices, HT-SELEX-generated models and matrices derived from protein binding microarrays (PBMs). We determined their ability to detect experimentally verified “real” in vivo TFBSs derived from ENCODE ChIP-seq data. As negative controls we chose random downstream exonic sequences, which are unlikely to harbour TFBS. All models were assessed by receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis. Results While the area- under-curve was low for most of the tested models with only 47 % reaching a score of 0.7 or higher, we noticed strong differences between the various position-specific scoring matrices with JASPAR and HT-SELEX models showing higher success rates than PBM-derived models. In addition, we found that while TFBS sequences showed a higher degree of conservation than randomly chosen sequences, there was a high variability between individual TFBSs. Conclusions Our results show that only few of the matrix-based models used to predict potential TFBS are able to reliably detect experimentally confirmed TFBS. We compiled our findings in a freely accessible web application called ePOSSUM (http:/mutationtaster.charite.de/ePOSSUM/) which uses a Bayes classifier to assess the impact of genetic alterations on TF binding in user-defined sequences. Additionally, ePOSSUM provides information on the reliability of the prediction using our test set of experimentally confirmed binding sites

A transcription factor collective defines the HSN serotonergic neuron regulatory landscape

Cell differentiation is controlled by individual transcription factors (TFs) that together activate a selection of enhancers in specific cell types. How these combinations of TFs identify and activate their target sequences remains poorly understood. Here, we identify the cis-regulatory transcriptional code that controls the differentiation of serotonergic HSN neurons in Caenorhabditis elegans. Activation of the HSN transcriptome is directly orchestrated by a collective of six TFs. Binding site clusters for this TF collective form a regulatory signature that is sufficient for de novo identification of HSN neuron functional enhancers. Among C. elegans neurons, the HSN transcriptome most closely resembles that of mouse serotonergic neurons. Mouse orthologs of the HSN TF collective also regulate serotonergic differentiation and can functionally substitute for their worm counterparts which suggests deep homology. Our results identify rules governing the regulatory landscape of a critically important neuronal type in two species separated by over 700 million years