Terminal Reassortment Drives the Quantum Evolution of Type III Effectors in Bacterial Pathogens

Many bacterial pathogens employ a type III secretion system to deliver type III secreted effectors (T3SEs) into host cells, where they interact directly with host substrates to modulate defense pathways and promote disease. This interaction creates intense selective pressures on these secreted effectors, necessitating rapid evolution to overcome host surveillance systems and defenses. Using computational and evolutionary approaches, we have identified numerous mosaic and truncated T3SEs among animal and plant pathogens. We propose that these secreted virulence genes have evolved through a shuffling process we have called “terminal reassortment.” In terminal reassortment, existing T3SE termini are mobilized within the genome, creating random genetic fusions that result in chimeric genes. Up to 32% of T3SE families in species with relatively large and well-characterized T3SE repertoires show evidence of terminal reassortment, as compared to only 7% of non-T3SE families. Terminal reassortment may permit the near instantaneous evolution of new T3SEs and appears responsible for major modifications to effector activity and function. Because this process plays a more significant role in the evolution of T3SEs than non-effectors, it provides insight into the evolutionary origins of T3SEs and may also help explain the rapid emergence of new infectious agents

A Comprehensive Genetic Characterization of Bacterial Motility

We have developed a powerful experimental framework that combines competitive selection and microarray-based genetic footprinting to comprehensively reveal the genetic basis of bacterial behaviors. Application of this method to Escherichia coli motility identifies 95% of the known flagellar and chemotaxis genes, and reveals three dozen novel loci that, to varying degrees and through diverse mechanisms, affect motility. To probe the network context in which these genes function, we developed a method that uncovers genome-wide epistatic interactions through comprehensive analyses of double-mutant phenotypes. This allows us to place the novel genes within the context of signaling and regulatory networks, including the Rcs phosphorelay pathway and the cyclic di-GMP second-messenger system. This unifying framework enables sensitive and comprehensive genetic characterization of complex behaviors across the microbial biosphere

Neutral genomic microevolution of a recently emerged pathogen, salmonella enterica serovar agona

Salmonella enterica serovar Agona has caused multiple food-borne outbreaks of gastroenteritis since it was first isolated in 1952. We analyzed the genomes of 73 isolates from global sources, comparing five distinct outbreaks with sporadic infections as well as food contamination and the environment. Agona consists of three lineages with minimal mutational diversity: only 846 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have accumulated in the non-repetitive, core genome since Agona evolved in 1932 and subsequently underwent a major population expansion in the 1960s. Homologous recombination with other serovars of S. enterica imported 42 recombinational tracts (360 kb) in 5/143 nodes within the genealogy, which resulted in 3,164 additional SNPs. In contrast to this paucity of genetic diversity, Agona is highly diverse according to pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), which is used to assign isolates to outbreaks. PFGE diversity reflects a highly dynamic accessory genome associated with the gain or loss (indels) of 51 bacteriophages, 10 plasmids, and 6 integrative conjugational elements (ICE/IMEs), but did not correlate uniquely with outbreaks. Unlike the core genome, indels occurred repeatedly in independent nodes (homoplasies), resulting in inaccurate PFGE genealogies. The accessory genome contained only few cargo genes relevant to infection, other than antibiotic resistance. Thus, most of the genetic diversity within this recently emerged pathogen reflects changes in the accessory genome, or is due to recombination, but these changes seemed to reflect neutral processes rather than Darwinian selection. Each outbreak was caused by an independent clade, without universal, outbreak-associated genomic features, and none of the variable genes in the pan-genome seemed to be associated with an ability to cause outbreaks

Convergent evolution of phytopathogenic pseudomonads onto hazelnut

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Expression Profiles Reveal Parallel Evolution of Epistatic Interactions Involving the CRP Regulon in Escherichia coli

The extent and nature of epistatic interactions between mutations are issues of fundamental importance in evolutionary biology. However, they are difficult to study and their influence on adaptation remains poorly understood. Here, we use a systems-level approach to examine epistatic interactions that arose during the evolution of Escherichia coli in a defined environment. We used expression arrays to compare the effect on global patterns of gene expression of deleting a central regulatory gene, crp. Effects were measured in two lineages that had independently evolved for 20,000 generations and in their common ancestor. We found that deleting crp had a much more dramatic effect on the expression profile of the two evolved lines than on the ancestor. Because the sequence of the crp gene was unchanged during evolution, these differences indicate epistatic interactions between crp and mutations at other loci that accumulated during evolution. Moreover, a striking degree of parallelism was observed between the two independently evolved lines; 115 genes that were not crp-dependent in the ancestor became dependent on crp in both evolved lines. An analysis of changes in crp dependence of well-characterized regulons identified a number of regulatory genes as candidates for harboring beneficial mutations that could account for these parallel expression changes. Mutations within three of these genes have previously been found and shown to contribute to fitness. Overall, these findings indicate that epistasis has been important in the adaptive evolution of these lines, and they provide new insight into the types of genetic changes through which epistasis can evolve. More generally, we demonstrate that expression profiles can be profitably used to investigate epistatic interactions

Mitotic Recombination Accelerates Adaptation in the Fungus Aspergillus nidulans

Understanding the prevalence of sexual reproduction in eukaryotes is a hard problem. At least two aspects still defy a fully satisfactory explanation, the functional significance of genetic recombination and the great variation among taxa in the relative lengths of the haploid and diploid phases in the sexual cycle. We have performed an experimental study to explore the specific advantages of haploidy or diploidy in the fungus Aspergillus nidulans. Comparing the rate of adaptation to a novel environment between haploid and isogenic diploid strains over 3,000 mitotic generations, we demonstrate that diploid strains, which during the experiment have reverted to haploidy following parasexual recombination, reach the highest fitness. This is due to the accumulation of recessive deleterious mutations in diploid nuclei, some of which show their combined beneficial effect in haploid recombinants. Our findings show the adaptive significance of mitotic recombination combined with flexibility in the timing of ploidy level transition if sign epistasis is an important determinant of fitness

Molecular Evolution of Pseudomonas syringae Type III Secreted Effector Proteins

Diverse Gram-negative pathogens like Pseudomonas syringae employ type III secreted effector (T3SE) proteins as primary virulence factors that combat host immunity and promote disease. T3SEs can also be recognized by plant hosts and activate an effector triggered immune (ETI) response that shifts the interaction back toward plant immunity. Consequently, T3SEs are pivotal in determining the virulence potential of individual P. syringae strains, and ultimately help to restrict P. syringae pathogens to a subset of potential hosts that are unable to recognize their repertoires of T3SEs. While a number of effector families are known to be present in the P. syringae species complex, one of the most persistent challenges has been documenting the complex variation in T3SE contents across a diverse collection of strains. Using the entire pan-genome of 494 P. syringae strains isolated from more than 100 hosts, we conducted a global analysis of all known and putative T3SEs. We identified a total of 14,613 putative T3SEs, 4,636 of which were unique at the amino acid level, and show that T3SE repertoires of different P. syringae strains vary dramatically, even among strains isolated from the same hosts. We also find substantial diversification within many T3SE families, and in many cases find strong signatures of positive selection. Furthermore, we identify multiple gene gain and loss events for several families, demonstrating an important role of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in the evolution of P. syringae T3SEs. These analyses provide insight into the evolutionary history of P. syringae T3SEs as they co-evolve with the host immune system, and dramatically expand the database of P. syringae T3SEs alleles

Genome-Wide Expression Profiling of the Arabidopsis Female Gametophyte Identifies Families of Small, Secreted Proteins

The female gametophyte of flowering plants, the embryo sac, develops within the diploid (sporophytic) tissue of the ovule. While embryo sac–expressed genes are known to be required at multiple stages of the fertilization process, the set of embryo sac–expressed genes has remained poorly defined. In particular, the set of genes responsible for mediating intracellular communication between the embryo sac and the male gametophyte, the pollen grain, is unknown. We used high-throughput cDNA sequencing and whole-genome tiling arrays to compare gene expression in wild-type ovules to that in dif1 ovules, which entirely lack embryo sacs, and myb98 ovules, which are impaired in pollen tube attraction. We identified nearly 400 genes that are downregulated in dif1 ovules. Seventy-eight percent of these embryo sac–dependent genes were predicted to encode for secreted proteins, and 60% belonged to multigenic families. Our results define a large number of candidate extracellular signaling molecules that may act during embryo sac development or fertilization; less than half of these are represented on the widely used ATH1 expression array. In particular, we found that 37 out of 40 genes encoding Domain of Unknown Function 784 (DUF784) domains require the synergid-specific transcription factor MYB98 for expression. Several DUF784 genes were transcribed in synergid cells of the embryo sac, implicating the DUF784 gene family in mediating late stages of embryo sac development or interactions with pollen tubes. The coexpression of highly similar proteins suggests a high degree of functional redundancy among embryo sac genes

Comparing Patterns of Natural Selection across Species Using Selective Signatures

Comparing gene expression profiles over many different conditions has led to insights that were not obvious from single experiments. In the same way, comparing patterns of natural selection across a set of ecologically distinct species may extend what can be learned from individual genome-wide surveys. Toward this end, we show how variation in protein evolutionary rates, after correcting for genome-wide effects such as mutation rate and demographic factors, can be used to estimate the level and types of natural selection acting on genes across different species. We identify unusually rapidly and slowly evolving genes, relative to empirically derived genome-wide and gene family-specific background rates for 744 core protein families in 30 γ-proteobacterial species. We describe the pattern of fast or slow evolution across species as the “selective signature” of a gene. Selective signatures represent a profile of selection across species that is predictive of gene function: pairs of genes with correlated selective signatures are more likely to share the same cellular function, and genes in the same pathway can evolve in concert. For example, glycolysis and phenylalanine metabolism genes evolve rapidly in Idiomarina loihiensis, mirroring an ecological shift in carbon source from sugars to amino acids. In a broader context, our results suggest that the genomic landscape is organized into functional modules even at the level of natural selection, and thus it may be easier than expected to understand the complex evolutionary pressures on a cell

Project of dimmable lighting system

Diplomová práce se zabývá teorií a návrhem umělého osvětlení, nouzového osvětlení a způsobu řízení osvětlení v aule Slezské univerzity v Karviné. Součástí práce je také měření současného stavu osvětlovací soustavy s následným energetickým vyhodnocením a výpočtem úspor elektrické energie. V rámci práce je také zpracován návrh nového svítidla. Cílem diplomové práce je navrhnout osvětlovací soustavu s ohledem na osvětlovací normy a snížit energetickou náročnost nového osvětlení.This thesis focuses on theory and design of artificial lighting, emergency lighting and lighting control method in the Auditorium of the Silesian University in Karvina. The thesis also includes measuring the current state of the lighting system with consequent energy evaluation and calculation of energy savings. As part of the work is also a proposal of new lamps The thesis aims to design a lighting system with regard to the lighting standards to reduce energy demands of the new lighting.410 - Katedra elektroenergetikyvýborn