Project description:RAS proteins are key regulators of growth factor signaling. Here we show that deletion of all RAS genes in mouse embryonic stem cells (mES) leads to an overall reduction in protein translation, limits their long-term proliferative capacity and incapacitates them to differentiate. Deletion of ERF, a transcriptional repressor of the ETS family, rescues proliferation and differentiation of RAS-deficient mES cells and allows the development of teratomas lacking RAS genes. Upon RAS deletion, ERF translocates to the nucleus where it binds to multiple enhancers of key RAS targets suppressing their expression. We also reveal recurrent losses of ERF in cancer and show that ERF deficiency increases the resistance of cancer cells to pharmacological inhibition of the RAS pathway. In summary, we here reveal a central role for ERF in coordinating RAS signaling in pluripotent cells, and identify a synthetic viable interaction that bypasses the requirement for RAS proteins in mammalian cells.
Project description:RAS proteins are key regulators of growth factor signaling. Here we show that deletion of all RAS genes in mouse embryonic stem cells (mES) leads to an overall reduction in protein translation, limits their long-term proliferative capacity and incapacitates them to differentiate. Deletion of ERF, a transcriptional repressor of the ETS family, rescues proliferation and differentiation of RAS-deficient mES cells and allows the development of teratomas lacking RAS genes. Upon RAS deletion, ERF translocates to the nucleus where it binds to multiple enhancers of key RAS targets suppressing their expression. We also reveal recurrent losses of ERF in cancer and show that ERF deficiency increases the resistance of cancer cells to pharmacological inhibition of the RAS pathway. In summary, we here reveal a central role for ERF in coordinating RAS signaling in pluripotent cells, and identify a synthetic viable interaction that bypasses the requirement for RAS proteins in mammalian cells.
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.