Project description:B-type lamins, the major structural component of the nuclear lamina, is thought to play a repressive role in the expression of many of its bound genes whose silencing are known to be critical for cell differentiation during early development. Using global mapping of lamin-B-chromatin interaction, we find that the binding to lamin-B indeed correlated with gene silencing in mouse embryonic stem cells (ESC) and ESC-derived trophectoderm (TE) lineage cells. To address whether lamin-B directly suppresses the expression of the bound genes, we have derived ESCs from lamin-B-null mouse blastocysts. Unexpectedly, microarray analyses of ESCs and TE cells show that B-type lamins do not repress the expression of their bound genes. Furthermore, the knockout mice that do not express any B-type lamins can develop to term but exhibit small body size and perinatal lethality. Our studies demonstrate that B-type lamins are not required for cell differentiation during early embryonic development. Instead, they are required for proper late embryonic and perinatal development. The availability of the null ESCs and mice opens the door to further define the functions of B-type lamins.
Project description:Introgressed variants from other species can be an important source of genetic variation because they may arise rapidly, can include multiple mutations on a single haplotype, and have often been pretested by selection in the species of origin. Although introgressed alleles are generally deleterious, several studies have reported introgression as the source of adaptive alleles-including the rodenticide-resistant variant of Vkorc1 that introgressed from Mus spretus into European populations of Mus musculus domesticus. Here, we conducted bidirectional genome scans to characterize introgressed regions into one wild population of M. spretus from Spain and three wild populations of M. m. domesticus from France, Germany, and Iran. Despite the fact that these species show considerable intrinsic postzygotic reproductive isolation, introgression was observed in all individuals, including in the M. musculus reference genome (GRCm38). Mus spretus individuals had a greater proportion of introgression compared with M. m. domesticus, and within M. m. domesticus, the proportion of introgression decreased with geographic distance from the area of sympatry. Introgression was observed on all autosomes for both species, but not on the X-chromosome in M. m. domesticus, consistent with known X-linked hybrid sterility and inviability genes that have been mapped to the M. spretus X-chromosome. Tract lengths were generally short with a few outliers of up to 2.7 Mb. Interestingly, the longest introgressed tracts were in olfactory receptor regions, and introgressed tracts were significantly enriched for olfactory receptor genes in both species, suggesting that introgression may be a source of functional novelty even between species with high barriers to gene flow.
Project description:A transcriptome study in mouse hematopoietic stem cells was performed using a sensitive SAGE method, in an attempt to detect medium and low abundant transcripts expressed in these cells. Among a total of 31,380 unique transcript, 17,326 (55%) known genes were detected, 14,054 (45%) low-copy transcripts that have no matches to currently known genes. 3,899 (23%) were alternatively spliced transcripts of the known genes and 3,754 (22%) represent anti-sense transcripts from known genes.
Project description:In mammals, the nuclear lamina interacts with hundreds of large genomic regions, termed lamina-associated domains (LADs) that are generally in a transcriptionally repressed state. Lamins form the major structural component of the lamina and have been reported to bind DNA and chromatin. Here we systematically evaluated whether lamins are necessary for the peripheral localization of LADs in murine embryonic stem cells. Surprisingly, removal of essentially all lamins did not have any detectable effect on the genome-wide interaction pattern of chromatin with the inner nuclear membrane. This suggests that other components of the inner nuclear membrane mediate these interactions. 2 samples, each with a biological replicate: wt mESC, B type lamin null (dKO) dKO mESC