Project description:This strand-specific array is performed to characterize expression features of Ube3a-ATS, including its imprinting status, its exon-intron structure, its transcriptional initiation and termination site as well as its polyadenylation status. The array contains reverse-complementary probes detecting transcripts from both strands and therefore we are able to pick up signal from both Ube3a sense and antisense. By comparing wild-type with various mutants, and total RNA with polyA RNA, we concluded that Ube3a-ATS is a paternally imprinted gene covering the whole gene body of Ube3a in the antisense orientation. It does not have an obvious exon-intron structure. Its transcription initiates at Snrpn major promoter and terminates ~40kb upstream of Ube3a transcriptional start site.
Project description:This strand-specific array is performed to characterize expression features of Ube3a-ATS, including its imprinting status, its exon-intron structure, its transcriptional initiation and termination site as well as its polyadenylation status. The array contains reverse-complementary probes detecting transcripts from both strands and therefore we are able to pick up signal from both Ube3a sense and antisense. By comparing wild-type with various mutants, and total RNA with polyA RNA, we concluded that Ube3a-ATS is a paternally imprinted gene covering the whole gene body of Ube3a in the antisense orientation. It does not have an obvious exon-intron structure. Its transcription initiates at Snrpn major promoter and terminates ~40kb upstream of Ube3a transcriptional start site. Total RNA from Snrpn-Ube3a maternal deletion mutant (del s-u/+), its wild-type littermate, paternal deletion mutant and its wildtype littermate were analyzed. Mutant mice with S-U maternal deletion and Snrpn promoter paternal deleiton which leads to depletion of Ube3a-ATS (del s-u/0.9 and del s-u/4.8) were also analyzed. polyA RNA was purified from the sample 2 and sample 4. All eight samples were hybridized to the custom 8X60k Agilent CGH array.
Project description:We investigated the allele- and strand-specific transcriptional landscape of a megabase-wide genomic region of mouse Ube3a (ubiquitin protein ligase E3A) by means of a highly parallel SNP genotyping platform. We have successfully identified maternal-specific expression of Ube3a and its antisense counterpart (Ube3a-ATS) in brain, but not in liver. Because of the use of inter-subspecies hybrid mice, this megabase-wide analysis provided high-resolution picture of the transcriptional patterns of this region. First, we showed that brain-specific maternal expression of Ube3a is restricted to the second half part of the locus, but is absent from the first half part. Balance of allelic expression is altered in the middle of the locus. Second, we showed that expression of the brain-specific Ube3a-ATS appeared to be terminated in the region upstream to the Ube3a transcription start site. The present study highlights the importance of locus-wide competition between sense and antisense transcripts.
Project description:We previously found that an adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector containing S. aureus Cas9 and a multi-target guide (g)RNA could integrate into the genome and prematurely terminate transcription of Ube3a-ATS, a long non-coding RNA. Here, we assessed the performance of three additional AAV vectors containing S. aureus Cas9 and twenty-five vectors containing N. meningococcus Cas9, all targeting single sites within Ube3a-ATS. We found that none of these single-target gRNA vectors were as effective as multi-target gRNA vectors at reducing Ube3a-ATS expression in neurons. We also developed a new anchored multiplex PCR sequencing (AMP-seq) method and analysis pipeline to quantify the relative frequency of all possible editing events at target sites, including unresolved double-stranded breaks (DSBs) and capture of foreign DNA. We found that integration of AAV was the most frequent editing event (67-89% of all edits) at three different single target sites, far surpassing insertions and deletions (indels). None of the most frequently observed indels was capable of blocking transcription when incorporated into a Ube3a-ATS minigene reporter, whereas two vector derived elements—the polyA and reverse promoter—reduced downstream transcription by up to 50%. Since not all editing events disrupt gene transcription, our findings suggest that the probability that a gene trapping AAV integration event occurs is influenced by which vector-derived element(s) are integrated and by the number of target sites.
Project description:SPO11-promoted DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) formation is a crucial step for meiotic recombination, and it is indispensable to detect the broken DNA ends accurately for dissecting the molecular mechanisms behind. Here, we report a novel technique, named DEtail-seq (DNA End tailing followed by sequencing), that can directly and quantitatively capture the meiotic DSB 3’ overhang hotspots at single-nucleotide resolution.