Project description:Phasin PhaF is a multifunctional protein associated with the surface of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) granules (carbonosomes) that contributes significantly to PHA biogenesis in pseudomonads. PhaF participates in PHA granule stabilization and segregation and its deletion has a notable impact on overall transcriptome, PHA accumulation and cell physiology, suggesting a more extensive function than simply being a simply granule structural protein. We followed a systematic approach to detect potential interactions of PhaF with other components of the cell, which could pinpoint unexplored functions of PhaF in the regulation of PHA production. We determined the PhaF interactome in Pseudomonas putida KT2440 using pull-down-mass spectrometry (PD-MS), in which proteins interacting with PhaF were determined. We separately determined the PHA granule proteome (all proteins associated with PHA granules) in Pseudomonas putida KT2440 using two granule preparation methods.
Project description:Germ granules are membrane-less organelles essential for small RNA biogenesis and germline development. Among the conserved properties of germ granules is their association with the nuclear membrane. Recent studies demonstrated that LOTUS domain proteins, EGGD-1 and EGGD-2 (also known as MIP-1 and MIP-2 respectively), promote the formation of perinuclear germ granules in C. elegans. This finding presents a unique opportunity to evaluate the significance of perinuclear localization of germ granules. Here we show that loss of eggd-1 causes the coalescence of germ granules and formation of abnormal cytoplasmic aggregates. Impairment of perinuclear granules affects certain germline classes of small RNAs including Piwi-interacting RNAs. Transcriptome profiling reveals overexpression of spermatogenic and cuticle-related genes in eggd-1 hermaphrodites. We further demonstrate that disruption of germ granules activates HLH-30-mediated transcriptional program in somatic tissues. Collectively, our findings underscore the essential role of EGGD-1 in germ granule organization and reveal an unexpected germ granule-to-soma communication.
Project description:Non-membrane bound organelles such as nucleoli, processing bodies, cajal bodies, and germ granules form via spontaneous self-assembly of specific proteins and RNAs. How these biomolecular condensates form and interact are poorly understood. Here we identify two proteins (ZNFX-1 and WAGO-4) that localize to C. elegans germ granules (P granules) in early germline blastomeres. Later in germline development, ZNFX-1/WAGO-4 separate from P granules to define an independent liquid-like condensate that we term the Z granule. In adult germ cells, Z granules assemble into ordered tri-droplet assemblages with P granules and Mutator foci that we term the PZM granule. Finally, we show that one biological function of ZNFX-1 and WAGO-4 is to interact with RNAs in the C. elegans germline to promote transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI). We speculate that the temporal and spatial ordering of liquid droplet organelles may help cells organize and coordinate the complex RNA processing pathways underlying gene regulatory systems, such as RNA-directed TEI.
Project description:In C. elegans nematodes, components of liquid-like germ granules were shown to be required for transgenerational small RNA inheritance. Surprisingly, we show here that mutants with defective germ granules can nevertheless inherit potent small RNA-based silencing responses, but some of the mutants lose this ability after many generations of homozygosity. Animals mutated in pptr-1, which is required for stabilization of P granules in the early embryo, display extraordinarily strong heritable RNAi responses, lasting for tens of generations. Intriguingly, the RNAi capacity of descendants derived from mutants defective in the core germ granules proteins MEG-3 and MEG-4 is determined by the genotype of the ancestors, and changes transgenerationally. Further, whether the meg-3/4 mutant alleles were present in the paternal or maternal lineages lead to different transgenerational consequences. Small RNA inheritance, rather than maternal contribution of the germ granules themselves, mediates the transgenerational defects in RNAi of meg-3/4 mutants and their progeny. Accordingly, germ granule defects lead to heritable genome-wide mis-expression of endogenous small RNAs. Upon disruption of germ granules, hrde-1 mutants can inherit RNAi although HRDE-1 was previously thought to be absolutely required for RNAi inheritance. We propose that germ granules sort and shape the RNA pool, and that small RNA inheritance maintains this activity for multiple generations.
Project description:The mammalian gut secretes a family of multifunctional peptides that affect appetite, intestinal secretions, and motility, while some regulate the microbiota. We report peptide YY (PYY1-36), but not endocrine PYY3-36, is an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) expressed by gut epithelial Paneth Cells (PC). PC-PYY has limited antibacterial activity, but shows selective activity against virulent hyphal, but not yeast forms, of Candida albicans. 5 PC-PYY is a cationic molecule that interacts with the anionic surfaces of fungal hyphae to cause membrane disruption and transcriptional reprogramming to maintain the yeast phenotype of the fungus. PC-PYY is packaged into secretory granules and is secreted into and retained by surface mucus, which optimizes PC-PYY activity. Hence, PC-PYY acts as a selective antifungal AMP that contributes to the maintenance of gut fungal commensalism.
Project description:P granules in C. elegans are required for fertility and function to maintain germ cell identity and pluripotency. Sterility in the absence of P granules is often accompanied by the mis-expression of soma-specific proteins and the initiation of somatic differentiation in germ cells. To investigate whether this is caused by the accumulation of somatic transcripts, we performed mRNA-seq on dissected germlines with and without P granules. Strikingly, we found that somatic transcripts do not increase in the young adult germline when P granules are impaired. Instead, we found that impairing P granules causes sperm-specific mRNAs to become highly overexpressed. This includes the accumulation of major sperm protein (MSP) transcripts in germ cells, a phenotype that is suppressed by feminization of the germline. A core component of P granules, the endo-siRNA-binding Argonaute protein CSR-1, has recently been ascribed with the ability to license transcripts for germline expression. However, impairing CSR-1 has very little effect on the accumulation of its mRNA targets. Instead, we found that CSR-1 functions with P granules to prevent MSP and sperm-specific mRNAs from being transcribed in the hermaphrodite germline. These findings suggest that P granules protect germline integrity through two different mechanisms, by 1) preventing the inappropriate expression of somatic proteins at the level of translational regulation, and by 2) functioning with CSR-1 to limit the domain of sperm-specific expression at the level of transcription. Four biological replicates of each condition (empty vector control, P granule RNAi, and CSR-1 RNAi germlines) were collected for total RNA.
Project description:Stress granules are small RNA-protein granules that modify the translational landscape during cellular stress to promote survival. The RhoGTPase RhoA is implicated in the formation of RNA stress granules. Our data demonstrate that the cytokinetic proteins ECT2 and AurkB are localized to stress granules in human astrocytoma cells. AurkB and its downstream target histone-3 are phosphorylated during arsenite-induced stress. Chemical (AZD1152-HQPA) and siRNA inhibition of AurkB results in fewer and smaller stress granules when analyzed utilizing high throughput fluorescent based cellomics assays. RNA immunoprecipitation with the known stress granule aggregates TIAR and G3BP1 was performed on astrocytoma cells and subsequent analysis revealed that astrocytoma stress granules harbour unique mRNAs for various cellular pathways including cellular migration, metabolism, translation and transcriptional regulation. Human astrocytoma cell stress granules contain mRNA that are known to be involved in glioma signaling and the mTOR pathway. These data provide evidence that RNA stress granules are a novel form of epigenetic regulation in astrocytoma cells, which may be targetable by chemical inhibitors and enhance astrocytoma susceptiblity to conventional therapy such as radiation and chemotherapy. Astrocytoma cells were either untreated or treated with arsenite to induce stress granule formation and RNA immunoprecipitates were analyzed by exon array analysis. RNA species that were enriched in TIAR RIPs and G3BP1 RIPS, respectively were compared to compared to TIAR and G3BP1 RIPs from untreated cells and input controls. Ingenuity pathway analysis was performed on the stress granule enriched mRNAs from the TIAR and G3BP1 RIPs to identify significant functional biology networks.
Project description:Condensates that accumulate small RNA biogenesis factors (nuage) are common in germ cells and often associate with nuclei. In the C. elegans germline, P granules overlay large clusters of nuclear pores and this organization has been proposed to facilitate surveillance of nascent transcripts by Argonaute proteins enriched in P granules. We report that co-clustering of nuclear pores and P granules depends on FG repeat containing nucleoporins and FG repeats in the Vasa class helicase GLH-1. Mutants that prevent co-clustering are fertile under standard growth conditions and only mis-regulate a minority of genes, including replication-dependent histones. Our observations suggest that association with nuclear pores, while non-essential for genome surveillance, may serve to tune mRNA flow through P granules and other nuage condensates.
Project description:Stress granules are mRNA-protein assemblies formed on nontranslating mRNAs. Stress granules are important in the stress response, related to neuronal mRNP granules, and aberrant stress granules contribute to some degenerative diseases. By RNA-Seq and single molecule FISH, we describe the stress granule transcriptome in both yeast and mammalian cells. This reveals that while essentially every mRNA, and some ncRNAs, can be targeted to stress granules, the efficiency of targeting can vary from <1% to 73%. mRNA accumulation in stress granules is increased by longer coding regions, poor translatability, and correlates with some RNA binding proteins. Standardizing the RNA-Seq analysis by single molecule FISH allows a quantitative description of the general and stress granule transcriptome. Approximately 15% of the bulk mRNA molecules accumulate in stress granules suggesting their effect will be limited primarily to subsets of mRNAs highly accumulating in stress granules