Project description:Sex chromosomes evolved many times independently in many different organisms. According to the currently accepted model, X- and Y-chromosomes evolve from a pair of autosomes via a series of inversions leading to step-wise expansion of a non-recombining region on the Y chromosome (NRY) and the consequential degeneration of genes trapped in the NRY. Our results suggest that plants represent an exception to this rule due to their unique life-cycle that includes alteration of diploid and haploid generations and widespread haploid expression of genes in plant gametophytes. Using a new high-throughput approach we identified over 400 new genes expressed from X- and Y- chromosomes in Silene latifolia, a plant that evolved sex chromosomes about 10 million years ago. Y-linked genes show faster accumulation of amino-acid replacements and loss of expression, compared to X-linked genes. These degenerative processes are significantly less pronounced in more constrained genes and genes that are likely exposed to haploid-phase selection. This may explain why plants retain hundreds of expressed Y-linked genes despite millions of years of Y-chromosome degeneration, while animal Y-chromosomes are almost completely degenerate.
Project description:Sex chromosomes evolved many times independently in many different organisms. According to the currently accepted model, X- and Y-chromosomes evolve from a pair of autosomes via a series of inversions leading to step-wise expansion of a non-recombining region on the Y chromosome (NRY) and the consequential degeneration of genes trapped in the NRY. Our results suggest that plants represent an exception to this rule due to their unique life-cycle that includes alteration of diploid and haploid generations and widespread haploid expression of genes in plant gametophytes. Using a new high-throughput approach we identified over 400 new genes expressed from X- and Y- chromosomes in Silene latifolia, a plant that evolved sex chromosomes about 10 million years ago. Y-linked genes show faster accumulation of amino-acid replacements and loss of expression, compared to X-linked genes. These degenerative processes are significantly less pronounced in more constrained genes and genes that are likely exposed to haploid-phase selection. This may explain why plants retain hundreds of expressed Y-linked genes despite millions of years of Y-chromosome degeneration, while animal Y-chromosomes are almost completely degenerate. We used a combination of Illumina sequencing of cDNA (RNAseq) and segregation analysis of SNPs identified from RNAseq to identify sex-linked genes in plant Silene latifolia. The experiment involved RNAseq from male and female parents and F1 progeny for two genetic crosses. We submit raw data in fastq format for 11 samples. Four of these samples are single end Solexa reads (a single file per sample) and seven samples were sequenced with paired end Solexa sequencing (two fastq files per sample) - 18 files in total.
Project description:Rat embryonic stem cells (ESCs), which are widely studied, can self-renew and exhibit pluripotency in long-term culture, but the mechanism underlying how they exit pluripotency remains obscure. Rat haploid ESCs (haESCs) enable advances in the discovery of unknown functional genes owing to their homozygous and pluripotent characteristics. Herein, we performed genome-wide mutation using piggyBac transposons in rat haESCs and obtained differentiation-retarded mutants assisted by Rex1-GFP reporter selection. High-throughput sequencing analysis further revealed numerous insertions related to various pathways affecting random differentiation. Thereafter, deletion of Thop1 (one candidate gene in the screened list) arrested the differentiation of rat ESCs by inhibiting the phosphorylation of ERK1/2, whereas overexpression of Thop1 promoted rat ESCs exit from pluripotency. Our findings provide an ideal tool to study functional genomics in rats: a homozygous haploid system carrying a pluripotency reporter that facilitates robust discovery of the mechanisms involved in the self-renewal or pluripotency of rat ESCs.
Project description:The role natural selection plays in governing the locations and early evolution of copy number mutations remains largely unexplored. Here we employ high-density full-genome tiling arrays to create a fine-scale genomic map of copy number polymorphisms (CNPs) in Drosophila melanogaster. We inferred a total of 2,658 independent CNPs, 56% of which overlap genes. These include CNPs likely to be under positive selection, most notably high frequency duplications encompassing toxin-response genes. The locations and frequencies of CNPs are strongly shaped by purifying selection with deletions under stronger purifying selection than duplications. Among duplications, those overlapping exons or introns and those falling on the X-chromosome seem to be subject to the strongest purifying selection. In order to characterize copy number polymorphisms (CNPs) in Drosophila malanogaster, we applied comparative genome hybridization (CGH) using tiling arrays covering the full euchromatic genome of Drosophila melanogaster. We inferred copy number changes with a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) that returned the posterior probabilities for copy number by comparing DNA hybridization intensities between natural isolates and the reference genome strain. Training data for copy number changes were obtained via hybridization with a line known to contain a ~200kb homozygous duplication and from a set of 52 validated homozygous deletions. The probabilities of mutation were parsed to make CNP calls. Key words: comparative genomic hybridization, CGH, copy number polymorphism, CNP, copy number variation, CNV, duplication, deletion
Project description:Rat embryonic stem cells (ESCs), which are widely studied, can self-renew and exhibit pluripotency in long-term culture, but the mechanism underlying how they exit pluripotency remains obscure. Rat haploid ESCs (haESCs) enable advances in the discovery of unknown functional genes owing to their homozygous and pluripotent characteristics. Herein, we performed genome-wide mutation using piggyBac transposons in rat haESCs and obtained differentiation-retarded mutants assisted by Rex1-GFP reporter selection. High-throughput sequencing analysis further revealed numerous insertions related to various pathways affecting random differentiation. Thereafter, deletion of Thop1 (one candidate gene in the screened list) arrested the differentiation of rat ESCs by inhibiting the phosphorylation of ERK1/2, whereas overexpression of Thop1 promoted rat ESCs exit from pluripotency. Our findings provide an ideal tool to study functional genomics in rats: a homozygous haploid system carrying a pluripotency reporter that facilitates robust discovery of the mechanisms involved in the self-renewal or pluripotency of rat ESCs.
Project description:Mammalian haploid embryonic stem cells (haESCs) provide new possibilities for large-scale genetic screens because they bear only one copy of each chromosome. However, haESCs are prone to spontaneous diploidization through unknown mechanisms. Here, we report that a small molecule combination could restrain mouse haESCs from diploidization by impeding exit from naïve pluripotency and by shortening the S-G2/M phases. Combined with 2i and PD166285, our chemical cocktail could maintain haESCs in the haploid state for at least five weeks without fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) enrichment of haploid cells. Taken together, we established an effective chemical approach for long-term maintenance of haESCs, and highlighted that proper cell cycle progression was critical for the maintenance of haploid state.
Project description:Diploidy is a fundamental genetic feature in mammals, in which haploid cells normally arise only as post-meiotic germ cells that serve to insure a diploid genome upon fertilization. Gamete manipulation has yielded haploid embryonic stem (ES) cells from several mammalian species, but as of yet not from humans. Here we analyzed a large collection of human parthenogenetic ES cell lines originating from haploid oocytes, leading to the successful isolation and maintenance of human ES cell lines with a normal haploid karyotype. Haploid human ES cells exhibited typical pluripotent stem cell characteristics such as self-renewal capacity and a pluripotency-specific molecular signature. Although haploid human ES cells resembled their diploid counterparts, they also displayed distinct properties including differential regulation of X chromosome inactivation and genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation, alongside reduction in absolute gene expression levels and cell size. Intriguingly, we found that a haploid genome is compatible not only with the undifferentiated pluripotent state, but also with differentiated somatic fates representing all three embryonic germ layers, despite a persistent dosage imbalance between the autosomes and X chromosome. We expect that haploid human ES cells will provide novel means for studying human functional genomics, development and evolution.
Project description:Diploidy is a fundamental genetic feature in mammals, in which haploid cells normally arise only as post-meiotic germ cells that serve to insure a diploid genome upon fertilization. Gamete manipulation has yielded haploid embryonic stem (ES) cells from several mammalian species, but as of yet not from humans. Here we analyzed a large collection of human parthenogenetic ES cell lines originating from haploid oocytes, leading to the successful isolation and maintenance of human ES cell lines with a normal haploid karyotype. Haploid human ES cells exhibited typical pluripotent stem cell characteristics such as self-renewal capacity and a pluripotency-specific molecular signature. Although haploid human ES cells resembled their diploid counterparts, they also displayed distinct properties including differential regulation of X chromosome inactivation and genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation, alongside reduction in absolute gene expression levels and cell size. Intriguingly, we found that a haploid genome is compatible not only with the undifferentiated pluripotent state, but also with differentiated somatic fates representing all three embryonic germ layers, despite a persistent dosage imbalance between the autosomes and X chromosome. We expect that haploid human ES cells will provide novel means for studying human functional genomics, development and evolution.
Project description:Diploidy is a fundamental genetic feature in mammals, in which haploid cells normally arise only as post-meiotic germ cells that serve to insure a diploid genome upon fertilization. Gamete manipulation has yielded haploid embryonic stem (ES) cells from several mammalian species, but as of yet not from humans. Here we analyzed a large collection of human parthenogenetic ES cell lines originating from haploid oocytes, leading to the successful isolation and maintenance of human ES cell lines with a normal haploid karyotype. Haploid human ES cells exhibited typical pluripotent stem cell characteristics such as self-renewal capacity and a pluripotency-specific molecular signature. Although haploid human ES cells resembled their diploid counterparts, they also displayed distinct properties including differential regulation of X chromosome inactivation and genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation, alongside reduction in absolute gene expression levels and cell size. Intriguingly, we found that a haploid genome is compatible not only with the undifferentiated pluripotent state, but also with differentiated somatic fates representing all three embryonic germ layers, despite a persistent dosage imbalance between the autosomes and X chromosome. We expect that haploid human ES cells will provide novel means for studying human functional genomics, development and evolution.