Sequencing and comparing whole mitochondrial genomes ofanimals

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Boore, Jeffrey L.; Macey, J. Robert; Medina, Monica

2005-04-22

Comparing complete animal mitochondrial genome sequences is becoming increasingly common for phylogenetic reconstruction and as a model for genome evolution. Not only are they much more informative than shorter sequences of individual genes for inferring evolutionary relatedness, but these data also provide sets of genome-level characters, such as the relative arrangements of genes, that can be especially powerful. We describe here the protocols commonly used for physically isolating mtDNA, for amplifying these by PCR or RCA, for cloning,sequencing, assembly, validation, and gene annotation, and for comparing both sequences and gene arrangements. On several topics, we offer general observations based on our experiences to date with determining and comparing complete mtDNA sequences.

Accurate quantification of mouse mitochondrial DNA without co-amplification of nuclear mitochondrial insertion sequences.

Science.gov (United States)

Malik, Afshan N; Czajka, Anna; Cunningham, Phil

2016-07-01

Mitochondria contain an extra-nuclear genome in the form of mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA), damage to which can lead to inflammation and bioenergetic deficit. Changes in MtDNA levels are increasingly used as a biomarker of mitochondrial dysfunction. We previously reported that in humans, fragments in the nuclear genome known as nuclear mitochondrial insertion sequences (NumtS) affect accurate quantification of MtDNA. In the current paper our aim was to determine whether mouse NumtS affect the quantification of MtDNA and to establish a method designed to avoid this. The existence of NumtS in the mouse genome was confirmed using blast N, unique MtDNA regions were identified using FASTA, and MtDNA primers which do not co-amplify NumtS were designed and tested. MtDNA copy numbers were determined in a range of mouse tissues as the ratio of the mitochondrial and nuclear genome using real time qPCR and absolute quantification. Approximately 95% of mouse MtDNA was duplicated in the nuclear genome as NumtS which were located in 15 out of 21 chromosomes. A unique region was identified and primers flanking this region were used. MtDNA levels differed significantly in mouse tissues being the highest in the heart, with levels in descending order (highest to lowest) in kidney, liver, blood, brain, islets and lung. The presence of NumtS in the nuclear genome of mouse could lead to erroneous data when studying MtDNA content or mutation. The unique primers described here will allow accurate quantification of MtDNA content in mouse models without co-amplification of NumtS. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. and Mitochondria Research Society. All rights reserved.

Mouse Nkrp1-Clr gene cluster sequence and expression analyses reveal conservation of tissue-specific MHC-independent immunosurveillance.

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Qiang Zhang

Full Text Available The Nkrp1 (Klrb1-Clr (Clec2 genes encode a receptor-ligand system utilized by NK cells as an MHC-independent immunosurveillance strategy for innate immune responses. The related Ly49 family of MHC-I receptors displays extreme allelic polymorphism and haplotype plasticity. In contrast, previous BAC-mapping and aCGH studies in the mouse suggest the neighboring and related Nkrp1-Clr cluster is evolutionarily stable. To definitively compare the relative evolutionary rate of Nkrp1-Clr vs. Ly49 gene clusters, the Nkrp1-Clr gene clusters from two Ly49 haplotype-disparate inbred mouse strains, BALB/c and 129S6, were sequenced. Both Nkrp1-Clr gene cluster sequences are highly similar to the C57BL/6 reference sequence, displaying the same gene numbers and order, complete pseudogenes, and gene fragments. The Nkrp1-Clr clusters contain a strikingly dissimilar proportion of repetitive elements compared to the Ly49 clusters, suggesting that certain elements may be partly responsible for the highly disparate Ly49 vs. Nkrp1 evolutionary rate. Focused allelic polymorphisms were found within the Nkrp1b/d (Klrb1b, Nkrp1c (Klrb1c, and Clr-c (Clec2f genes, suggestive of possible immune selection. Cell-type specific transcription of Nkrp1-Clr genes in a large panel of tissues/organs was determined. Clr-b (Clec2d and Clr-g (Clec2i showed wide expression, while other Clr genes showed more tissue-specific expression patterns. In situ hybridization revealed specific expression of various members of the Clr family in leukocytes/hematopoietic cells of immune organs, various tissue-restricted epithelial cells (including intestinal, kidney tubular, lung, and corneal progenitor epithelial cells, as well as myocytes. In summary, the Nkrp1-Clr gene cluster appears to evolve more slowly relative to the related Ly49 cluster, and likely regulates innate immunosurveillance in a tissue-specific manner.

Expressed sequence tags of differential genes in the radioresistant mice and their parental mice

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Qin; Yue Jingyin; Li Jin; Song Li; Liu Qiang; Mu Chuanjie; Wu Hongying

2009-01-01

Objective: To explore radioresistance correlative genes in IRM-2 inbred mouse. Methods: The total RNA was extracted from spleen cells of IRM-2 and their parent 615 and ICR/JCL mouse. The mRNA differential display technique was used to analyze gene expression differences. Each differential bands were amplified by PCR, cloned and sequenced. Results: There were 75 differential expression bands appearing in IRM-2 mouse but not in 615 and ICR/JCL mouse. Fifty-two pieces of cDNA sequences were got by sequencing. Twenty-one expressed sequence tags (EST) that were not the same as known mice genes were found and registered by comparing with GenBank database. Conclusion: Twenty-one EST denote that radioresistance correlative genes may be in IRM-2 mouse, which have laid a foundation for isolating and identifying radioresistance correlative genes in further study. (authors)

High-resolution gene expression profiling using RNA sequencing in patients with inflammatory bowel disease and in mouse models of colitis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Holgersen, Kristine; Kutlu, Burak; Fox, Brian

2015-01-01

pathways and assess the similarity between the experimental models and human disease. RNA sequencing was performed on colon biopsies from CD patients, UC patients and non-IBD controls. Genes shown to be significantly dysregulated in human IBD were used to study gene expression in colons from a piroxicam......Proper interpretation of data from preclinical animal studies requires a thorough knowledge about the pathophysiology of both the human disease and animal models. In this study, the expression of IBD-associated genes was characterised in mouse models of colitis to examine the underlying molecular......-accelerated colitis interleukin-10 knockout (PAC IL-10 k.o.), an adoptive transfer (AdTr) and a dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) colitis mouse model. 92 out of 115 literature-defined genes linked to IBD were significantly differentially expressed in inflamed mucosa of CD and/or UC patients compared with non-IBD controls...

Comparative mapping in the beige-satin region of mouse chromosome 13

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Perou, C.M.; Pryor, R.; Kaplan, J. [Univ. of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT (United States)] [and others

1997-01-15

The proximal end of mouse chromosome (Chr) 13 contains regions conserved on human chromosomes 1q42-q44, 6p23-p21, and 7p22-p13. This region also contains mutations that may be models for human disease, including beige (human Chediak-Higashi syndrome). An interspecific backcross of SB/Le and Mus spretus mice was used to generate a molecular genetic linkage map of mouse chromosome 13 with an emphasis on the proximal region including beige (bg) and satin (sa). This map provides the gene order of the two phenotypic markers bg and sa relative to restriction fragment length polymorphisms and simple sequence length polymorphisms in 131 backcross animals. In parallel, we have created a physical map of the region using Nidogen (Nid) as a molecular starting point for cloning a YAC contig that was used to identify the beige gene. The physical map provides the fine-structure order of genes and anonymous DNA fragments that was not resolved by the genetic linkage mapping. The results show that the bg region of mouse Chr 13 is highly conserved on human Chr 1q42-q44 and provide a starting point for a complete functional analysis of the entire bg-sa interval. 37 refs., 4 figs., 1 tab.

Insights from Human/Mouse genome comparisons

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Pennacchio, Len A.

2003-03-30

Large-scale public genomic sequencing efforts have provided a wealth of vertebrate sequence data poised to provide insights into mammalian biology. These include deep genomic sequence coverage of human, mouse, rat, zebrafish, and two pufferfish (Fugu rubripes and Tetraodon nigroviridis) (Aparicio et al. 2002; Lander et al. 2001; Venter et al. 2001; Waterston et al. 2002). In addition, a high-priority has been placed on determining the genomic sequence of chimpanzee, dog, cow, frog, and chicken (Boguski 2002). While only recently available, whole genome sequence data have provided the unique opportunity to globally compare complete genome contents. Furthermore, the shared evolutionary ancestry of vertebrate species has allowed the development of comparative genomic approaches to identify ancient conserved sequences with functionality. Accordingly, this review focuses on the initial comparison of available mammalian genomes and describes various insights derived from such analysis.

Conservation of Tcrg-V5 and limited allelic sequence polymorphism of the other Tcrg-V genes used by mouse tissue-specific gd-T lymphocytes

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Roger, T.; Morisset, J.; Seman, M. [Universite Denis Diderot, Paris (France)

1996-12-31

The mouse Tcrg locus comprises seven Tcrg-V, four Tcrg-J, and four Tcrg-C segments which generate only six major types of functional g chains, Vg7-, Vg4-, Vg6-, or Vg5-Jg1-Cg1, Vg2-Jg2-Cg2, and Vg1-Jg4-Cg4. A complete analysis of restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of the Tcrg locus in wild and inbred mice suggested its relative conservation compared to other loci of the immunoglobulin (Ig) gene family. Three haplotypes have been characterized in laboratory mice: gA, gB, and gC, represented by BALB/c, DBA/2, and AKR prototypes. Tcr-gA and -gC haplotypes are highly related. By contrast, Tcr-gB, likely inherited from Asian mouse subspecies, appeared very different by RFLP analysis. Yet only partial sequence data have been reported on gA and gB Tcrg-V genes. Here, the complete sequence of all Tcrg-V genes of the two haplotypes is described. 16 refs., 1 fig.

An evaluation of Comparative Genome Sequencing (CGS by comparing two previously-sequenced bacterial genomes

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Herring Christopher D

2007-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background With the development of new technology, it has recently become practical to resequence the genome of a bacterium after experimental manipulation. It is critical though to know the accuracy of the technique used, and to establish confidence that all of the mutations were detected. Results In order to evaluate the accuracy of genome resequencing using the microarray-based Comparative Genome Sequencing service provided by Nimblegen Systems Inc., we resequenced the E. coli strain W3110 Kohara using MG1655 as a reference, both of which have been completely sequenced using traditional sequencing methods. CGS detected 7 of 8 small sequence differences, one large deletion, and 9 of 12 IS element insertions present in W3110, but did not detect a large chromosomal inversion. In addition, we confirmed that CGS also detected 2 SNPs, one deletion and 7 IS element insertions that are not present in the genome sequence, which we attribute to changes that occurred after the creation of the W3110 lambda clone library. The false positive rate for SNPs was one per 244 Kb of genome sequence. Conclusion CGS is an effective way to detect multiple mutations present in one bacterium relative to another, and while highly cost-effective, is prone to certain errors. Mutations occurring in repeated sequences or in sequences with a high degree of secondary structure may go undetected. It is also critical to follow up on regions of interest in which SNPs were not called because they often indicate deletions or IS element insertions.

Sequence and chromosomal localization of the mouse brevican gene

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rauch, U; Meyer, H; Brakebusch, C

1997-01-01

Brevican is a brain-specific proteoglycan belonging to the aggrecan family. Phage clones containing the complete mouse brevican open reading frame of 2649 bp and the complete 3'-untranslated region of 341 bp were isolated from a mouse brain cDNA library, and cosmid clones containing the mouse...

Comparative metabonomics of differential hydrazine toxicity in the rat and mouse

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bollard, Mary E.; Keun, Hector C.; Beckonert, Olaf; Ebbels, Tim M.D.; Antti, Henrik; Nicholls, Andrew W.; Shockcor, John P.; Cantor, Glenn H.; Stevens, Greg; Lindon, John C.; Holmes, Elaine; Nicholson, Jeremy K.

2005-01-01

Interspecies variation between rats and mice has been studied for hydrazine toxicity using a novel metabonomics approach. Hydrazine hydrochloride was administered to male Sprague-Dawley rats (30 mg/kg, n = 10 and 90 mg/kg, n = 10) and male B6C3F mice (100 mg/kg, n = 8 and 250 mg/kg, n = 8) by oral gavage. In each species, the high dose was selected to produce the major histopathologic effect, hepatocellular lipid accumulation. Urine samples were collected at sequential time points up to 168 h post dose and analyzed by 1 H NMR spectroscopy. The metabolites of hydrazine, namely diacetyl hydrazine and 1,4,5,6-tetrahydro-6-oxo-3-pyridazine carboxylic acid (THOPC), were detected in both the rat and mouse urine samples. Monoacetyl hydrazine was detected only in urine samples from the rat and its absence in the urine of the mouse was attributed to a higher activity of N-acetyl transferases in the mouse compared with the rat. Differential metabolic effects observed between the two species included elevated urinary β-alanine, 3-D-hydroxybutyrate, citrulline, N-acetylcitrulline, and reduced trimethylamine-N-oxide excretion unique to the rat. Metabolic principal component (PC) trajectories highlighted the greater degree of toxic response in the rat. A data scaling method, scaled to maximum aligned and reduced trajectories (SMART) analysis, was used to remove the differences between the metabolic starting positions of the rat and mouse and varying magnitudes of effect, to facilitate comparison of the response geometries between the rat and mouse. Mice followed 'biphasic' open PC trajectories, with incomplete recovery 7 days after dosing, whereas rats followed closed 'hairpin' time profiles, indicating functional reversibility. The greater magnitude of metabolic effects observed in the rat was supported by the more pronounced effect on liver pathology in the rat when compared with the mouse

Mouse SNP Miner: an annotated database of mouse functional single nucleotide polymorphisms

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Ramensky Vasily E

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The mapping of quantitative trait loci in rat and mouse has been extremely successful in identifying chromosomal regions associated with human disease-related phenotypes. However, identifying the specific phenotype-causing DNA sequence variations within a quantitative trait locus has been much more difficult. The recent availability of genomic sequence from several mouse inbred strains (including C57BL/6J, 129X1/SvJ, 129S1/SvImJ, A/J, and DBA/2J has made it possible to catalog DNA sequence differences within a quantitative trait locus derived from crosses between these strains. However, even for well-defined quantitative trait loci ( Description To help identify functional DNA sequence variations within quantitative trait loci we have used the Ensembl annotated genome sequence to compile a database of mouse single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs that are predicted to cause missense, nonsense, frameshift, or splice site mutations (available at http://bioinfo.embl.it/SnpApplet/. For missense mutations we have used the PolyPhen and PANTHER algorithms to predict whether amino acid changes are likely to disrupt protein function. Conclusion We have developed a database of mouse SNPs predicted to cause missense, nonsense, frameshift, and splice-site mutations. Our analysis revealed that 20% and 14% of missense SNPs are likely to be deleterious according to PolyPhen and PANTHER, respectively, and 6% are considered deleterious by both algorithms. The database also provides gene expression and functional annotations from the Symatlas, Gene Ontology, and OMIM databases to further assess candidate phenotype-causing mutations. To demonstrate its utility, we show that Mouse SNP Miner successfully finds a previously identified candidate SNP in the taste receptor, Tas1r3, that underlies sucrose preference in the C57BL/6J strain. We also use Mouse SNP Miner to derive a list of candidate phenotype-causing mutations within a previously

Comparison of methods for genomic localization of gene trap sequences

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Ferrin Thomas E

2006-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Gene knockouts in a model organism such as mouse provide a valuable resource for the study of basic biology and human disease. Determining which gene has been inactivated by an untargeted gene trapping event poses a challenging annotation problem because gene trap sequence tags, which represent sequence near the vector insertion site of a trapped gene, are typically short and often contain unresolved residues. To understand better the localization of these sequences on the mouse genome, we compared stand-alone versions of the alignment programs BLAT, SSAHA, and MegaBLAST. A set of 3,369 sequence tags was aligned to build 34 of the mouse genome using default parameters for each algorithm. Known genome coordinates for the cognate set of full-length genes (1,659 sequences were used to evaluate localization results. Results In general, all three programs performed well in terms of localizing sequences to a general region of the genome, with only relatively subtle errors identified for a small proportion of the sequence tags. However, large differences in performance were noted with regard to correctly identifying exon boundaries. BLAT correctly identified the vast majority of exon boundaries, while SSAHA and MegaBLAST missed the majority of exon boundaries. SSAHA consistently reported the fewest false positives and is the fastest algorithm. MegaBLAST was comparable to BLAT in speed, but was the most susceptible to localizing sequence tags incorrectly to pseudogenes. Conclusion The differences in performance for sequence tags and full-length reference sequences were surprisingly small. Characteristic variations in localization results for each program were noted that affect the localization of sequence at exon boundaries, in particular.

CloVR-Comparative: automated, cloud-enabled comparative microbial genome sequence analysis pipeline

OpenAIRE

Agrawal, Sonia; Arze, Cesar; Adkins, Ricky S.; Crabtree, Jonathan; Riley, David; Vangala, Mahesh; Galens, Kevin; Fraser, Claire M.; Tettelin, Herv?; White, Owen; Angiuoli, Samuel V.; Mahurkar, Anup; Fricke, W. Florian

2017-01-01

Background The benefit of increasing genomic sequence data to the scientific community depends on easy-to-use, scalable bioinformatics support. CloVR-Comparative combines commonly used bioinformatics tools into an intuitive, automated, and cloud-enabled analysis pipeline for comparative microbial genomics. Results CloVR-Comparative runs on annotated complete or draft genome sequences that are uploaded by the user or selected via a taxonomic tree-based user interface and downloaded from NCBI. ...

Ensembl 2002: accommodating comparative genomics.

Science.gov (United States)

Clamp, M; Andrews, D; Barker, D; Bevan, P; Cameron, G; Chen, Y; Clark, L; Cox, T; Cuff, J; Curwen, V; Down, T; Durbin, R; Eyras, E; Gilbert, J; Hammond, M; Hubbard, T; Kasprzyk, A; Keefe, D; Lehvaslaiho, H; Iyer, V; Melsopp, C; Mongin, E; Pettett, R; Potter, S; Rust, A; Schmidt, E; Searle, S; Slater, G; Smith, J; Spooner, W; Stabenau, A; Stalker, J; Stupka, E; Ureta-Vidal, A; Vastrik, I; Birney, E

2003-01-01

The Ensembl (http://www.ensembl.org/) database project provides a bioinformatics framework to organise biology around the sequences of large genomes. It is a comprehensive source of stable automatic annotation of human, mouse and other genome sequences, available as either an interactive web site or as flat files. Ensembl also integrates manually annotated gene structures from external sources where available. As well as being one of the leading sources of genome annotation, Ensembl is an open source software engineering project to develop a portable system able to handle very large genomes and associated requirements. These range from sequence analysis to data storage and visualisation and installations exist around the world in both companies and at academic sites. With both human and mouse genome sequences available and more vertebrate sequences to follow, many of the recent developments in Ensembl have focusing on developing automatic comparative genome analysis and visualisation.

Swallow Event Sequencing: Comparing Healthy Older and Younger Adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Herzberg, Erica G; Lazarus, Cathy L; Steele, Catriona M; Molfenter, Sonja M

2018-04-23

Previous research has established that a great deal of variation exists in the temporal sequence of swallowing events for healthy adults. Yet, the impact of aging on swallow event sequence is not well understood. Kendall et al. (Dysphagia 18(2):85-91, 2003) suggested there are 4 obligatory paired-event sequences in swallowing. We directly compared adherence to these sequences, as well as event latencies, and quantified the percentage of unique sequences in two samples of healthy adults: young ( 65). The 8 swallowing events that contribute to the sequences were reliably identified from videofluoroscopy in a sample of 23 healthy seniors (10 male, mean age 74.7) and 20 healthy young adults (10 male, mean age 31.5) with no evidence of penetration-aspiration or post-swallow residue. Chi-square analyses compared the proportions of obligatory pairs and unique sequences by age group. Compared to the older subjects, younger subjects had significantly lower adherence to two obligatory sequences: Upper Esophageal Sphincter (UES) opening occurs before (or simultaneous with) the bolus arriving at the UES and UES maximum distention occurs before maximum pharyngeal constriction. The associated latencies were significantly different between age groups as well. Further, significantly fewer unique swallow sequences were observed in the older group (61%) compared with the young (82%) (χ 2  = 31.8; p < 0.001). Our findings suggest that paired swallow event sequences may not be robust across the age continuum and that variation in swallow sequences appears to decrease with aging. These findings provide normative references for comparisons to older individuals with dysphagia.

Systematic identification of cis-regulatory sequences active in mouse and human embryonic stem cells.

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Marica Grskovic

2007-08-01

Full Text Available Understanding the transcriptional regulation of pluripotent cells is of fundamental interest and will greatly inform efforts aimed at directing differentiation of embryonic stem (ES cells or reprogramming somatic cells. We first analyzed the transcriptional profiles of mouse ES cells and primordial germ cells and identified genes upregulated in pluripotent cells both in vitro and in vivo. These genes are enriched for roles in transcription, chromatin remodeling, cell cycle, and DNA repair. We developed a novel computational algorithm, CompMoby, which combines analyses of sequences both aligned and non-aligned between different genomes with a probabilistic segmentation model to systematically predict short DNA motifs that regulate gene expression. CompMoby was used to identify conserved overrepresented motifs in genes upregulated in pluripotent cells. We show that the motifs are preferentially active in undifferentiated mouse ES and embryonic germ cells in a sequence-specific manner, and that they can act as enhancers in the context of an endogenous promoter. Importantly, the activity of the motifs is conserved in human ES cells. We further show that the transcription factor NF-Y specifically binds to one of the motifs, is differentially expressed during ES cell differentiation, and is required for ES cell proliferation. This study provides novel insights into the transcriptional regulatory networks of pluripotent cells. Our results suggest that this systematic approach can be broadly applied to understanding transcriptional networks in mammalian species.

Mouse adhalin

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Liu, L; Vachon, P H; Kuang, W

1997-01-01

. To analyze the biological roles of adhalin, we cloned the mouse adhalin cDNA, raised peptide-specific antibodies to its cytoplasmic domain, and examined its expression and localization in vivo and in vitro. The mouse adhalin sequence was 80% identical to that of human, rabbit, and hamster. Adhalin...... was specifically expressed in striated muscle cells and their immediate precursors, and absent in many other cell types. Adhalin expression in embryonic mouse muscle was coincident with primary myogenesis. Its expression was found to be up-regulated at mRNA and protein levels during myogenic differentiation...

CloVR-Comparative: automated, cloud-enabled comparative microbial genome sequence analysis pipeline.

Science.gov (United States)

Agrawal, Sonia; Arze, Cesar; Adkins, Ricky S; Crabtree, Jonathan; Riley, David; Vangala, Mahesh; Galens, Kevin; Fraser, Claire M; Tettelin, Hervé; White, Owen; Angiuoli, Samuel V; Mahurkar, Anup; Fricke, W Florian

2017-04-27

The benefit of increasing genomic sequence data to the scientific community depends on easy-to-use, scalable bioinformatics support. CloVR-Comparative combines commonly used bioinformatics tools into an intuitive, automated, and cloud-enabled analysis pipeline for comparative microbial genomics. CloVR-Comparative runs on annotated complete or draft genome sequences that are uploaded by the user or selected via a taxonomic tree-based user interface and downloaded from NCBI. CloVR-Comparative runs reference-free multiple whole-genome alignments to determine unique, shared and core coding sequences (CDSs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Output includes short summary reports and detailed text-based results files, graphical visualizations (phylogenetic trees, circular figures), and a database file linked to the Sybil comparative genome browser. Data up- and download, pipeline configuration and monitoring, and access to Sybil are managed through CloVR-Comparative web interface. CloVR-Comparative and Sybil are distributed as part of the CloVR virtual appliance, which runs on local computers or the Amazon EC2 cloud. Representative datasets (e.g. 40 draft and complete Escherichia coli genomes) are processed in genomics projects, while eliminating the need for on-site computational resources and expertise.

Comparative anatomy of the human APRT gene and enzyme: nucleotide sequence divergence and conservation of a nonrandom CpG dinucleotide arrangement

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Broderick, T.P.; Schaff, D.A.; Bertino, A.M.; Dush, M.K.; Tischfield, J.A.; Stambrook, P.J.

1987-01-01

The functional human adenine phosphoribosyltransferase (APRT) gene is <2.6 kilobases in length and contains five exons. The amino acid sequences of APRTs have been highly conserved throughout evolution. The human enzyme is 82%, 90%, and 40% identical to the mouse, hamster, and Escherichia coli enzymes, respectively. The promoter region of the human APRT gene, like that of several other housekeeping genes, lacks TATA and CCAAT boxes but contains five GC boxes that are potential binding sites for the Sp1 transcription factor. The distal three, however, are dispensable for gene expression. Comparison between human and mouse APRT gene nucleotide sequences reveals a high degree of homology within protein coding regions but an absence of significant homology in 5' flanking, 3' untranslated, and intron sequences, except for similarly positioned GC boxes in the promoter region and a 26-base-pair region in intron 3. This 26-base-pair sequence is 92% identical with a similarly positioned sequence in the mouse gene and is also found in intron 3 of the hamster gene, suggesting that its retention may be a consequence of stringent selection. The positions of all introns have been precisely retained in the human and both rodent genes. Retention of an elevated CpG dinucleotide content, despite loss of sequence homology, suggests that there may be selection for CpG dinucleotides in these regions and that their maintenance may be important for APRT gene function

An update on the mouse liver proteome

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Borlak Jürgen

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Decoding of the liver proteome is subject of intense research, but hampered by methodological constraints. We recently developed an improved protocol for studying rat liver proteins based on 2-DE-MALDI-TOF-MS peptide mass finger printing. This methodology was now applied to develop a mouse liver protein database. Results Liver proteins were extracted by two different lysis buffers in sequence followed by a liquid-phase IEF pre-fractionation and separation of proteins by 2 DE at two different pH ranges, notably 5-8 and 7-10. Based on 9600 in gel digests a total of 643 mouse liver proteins with high sequence coverage (> 20 peptides per protein could be identified by MALDI-TOF-MS peptide mass finger printing. Notably, 255 proteins are novel and have not been reported so far by conventional two-dimensional electrophoresis proteome mapping. Additionally, the results of the present findings for mouse liver were compared to published data of the rat proteome to compile as many proteins as possible in a rodent liver database. Conclusion Based on 2-DE MALDI-TOF-MS a significantly improved proteome map of mouse liver was obtained. We discuss some prominent members of newly identified proteins for a better understanding of liver biology.

Genomic sequences of murine gamma B- and gamma C-crystallin-encoding genes: promoter analysis and complete evolutionary pattern of mouse, rat and human gamma-crystallins.

Science.gov (United States)

Graw, J; Liebstein, A; Pietrowski, D; Schmitt-John, T; Werner, T

1993-12-22

The murine genes, gamma B-cry and gamma C-cry, encoding the gamma B- and gamma C-crystallins, were isolated from a genomic DNA library. The complete nucleotide (nt) sequences of both genes were determined from 661 and 711 bp, respectively, upstream from the first exon to the corresponding polyadenylation sites, comprising more than 2650 and 2890 bp, respectively. The new sequences were compared to the partial cDNA sequences available for the murine gamma B-cry and gamma C-cry, as well as to the corresponding genomic sequences from rat and man, at both the nt and predicted amino acid (aa) sequence levels. In the gamma B-cry promoter region, a canonical CCAAT-box, a TATA-box, putative NF-I and C/EBP sites were detected. An R-repeat is inserted 366 bp upstream from the transcription start point. In contrast, the gamma C-cry promoter does not contain a CCAAT-box, but some other putative binding sites for transcription factors (AP-2, UBP-1, LBP-1) were located by computer analysis. The promoter regions of all six gamma-cry from mouse, rat and human, except human psi gamma F-cry, were analyzed for common sequence elements. A complex sequence element of about 70-80 bp was found in the proximal promoter, which contains a gamma-cry-specific and almost invariant sequence (crygpel) of 14 nt, and ends with the also invariant TATA-box. Within the complex sequence element, a minimum of three further features specific for the gamma A-, gamma B- and gamma D/E/F-cry genes can be defined, at least two of which were recently shown to be functional. In addition to these four sequence elements, a subtype-specific structure of inverted repeats with different-sized spacers can be deduced from the multiple sequence alignment. A phylogenetic analysis based on the promoter region, as well as the complete exon 3 of all gamma-cry from mouse, rat and man, suggests separation of only five gamma-cry subtypes (gamma A-, gamma B-, gamma C-, gamma D- and gamma E/F-cry) prior to species separation.

Spatially conserved regulatory elements identified within human and mouse Cd247 gene using high-throughput sequencing data from the ENCODE project

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pundhir, Sachin; Hannibal, Tine Dahlbæk; Bang-Berthelsen, Claus Heiner

2014-01-01

. In this study, we have utilized the wealth of high-throughput sequencing data produced during the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project to identify spatially conserved regulatory elements within the Cd247 gene from human and mouse. We show the presence of two transcription factor binding sites...

Detailed analysis of sequence changes occurring during vlsE antigenic variation in the mouse model of Borrelia burgdorferi infection.

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Loïc Coutte

2009-02-01

Full Text Available Lyme disease Borrelia can infect humans and animals for months to years, despite the presence of an active host immune response. The vls antigenic variation system, which expresses the surface-exposed lipoprotein VlsE, plays a major role in B. burgdorferi immune evasion. Gene conversion between vls silent cassettes and the vlsE expression site occurs at high frequency during mammalian infection, resulting in sequence variation in the VlsE product. In this study, we examined vlsE sequence variation in B. burgdorferi B31 during mouse infection by analyzing 1,399 clones isolated from bladder, heart, joint, ear, and skin tissues of mice infected for 4 to 365 days. The median number of codon changes increased progressively in C3H/HeN mice from 4 to 28 days post infection, and no clones retained the parental vlsE sequence at 28 days. In contrast, the decrease in the number of clones with the parental vlsE sequence and the increase in the number of sequence changes occurred more gradually in severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID mice. Clones containing a stop codon were isolated, indicating that continuous expression of full-length VlsE is not required for survival in vivo; also, these clones continued to undergo vlsE recombination. Analysis of clones with apparent single recombination events indicated that recombinations into vlsE are nonselective with regard to the silent cassette utilized, as well as the length and location of the recombination event. Sequence changes as small as one base pair were common. Fifteen percent of recovered vlsE variants contained "template-independent" sequence changes, which clustered in the variable regions of vlsE. We hypothesize that the increased frequency and complexity of vlsE sequence changes observed in clones recovered from immunocompetent mice (as compared with SCID mice is due to rapid clearance of relatively invariant clones by variable region-specific anti-VlsE antibody responses.

A comparative evaluation of sequence classification programs

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Bazinet Adam L

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background A fundamental problem in modern genomics is to taxonomically or functionally classify DNA sequence fragments derived from environmental sampling (i.e., metagenomics. Several different methods have been proposed for doing this effectively and efficiently, and many have been implemented in software. In addition to varying their basic algorithmic approach to classification, some methods screen sequence reads for ’barcoding genes’ like 16S rRNA, or various types of protein-coding genes. Due to the sheer number and complexity of methods, it can be difficult for a researcher to choose one that is well-suited for a particular analysis. Results We divided the very large number of programs that have been released in recent years for solving the sequence classification problem into three main categories based on the general algorithm they use to compare a query sequence against a database of sequences. We also evaluated the performance of the leading programs in each category on data sets whose taxonomic and functional composition is known. Conclusions We found significant variability in classification accuracy, precision, and resource consumption of sequence classification programs when used to analyze various metagenomics data sets. However, we observe some general trends and patterns that will be useful to researchers who use sequence classification programs.

A genome survey sequencing of the Java mouse deer (Tragulus javanicus) adds new aspects to the evolution of lineage specific retrotransposons in Ruminantia (Cetartiodactyla).

Science.gov (United States)

Gallus, S; Kumar, V; Bertelsen, M F; Janke, A; Nilsson, M A

2015-10-25

Ruminantia, the ruminating, hoofed mammals (cow, deer, giraffe and allies) are an unranked artiodactylan clade. Around 50-60 million years ago the BovB retrotransposon entered the ancestral ruminantian genome through horizontal gene transfer. A survey genome screen using 454-pyrosequencing of the Java mouse deer (Tragulus javanicus) and the lesser kudu (Tragelaphus imberbis) was done to investigate and to compare the landscape of transposable elements within Ruminantia. The family Tragulidae (mouse deer) is the only representative of Tragulina and phylogenetically important, because it represents the earliest divergence in Ruminantia. The data analyses show that, relative to other ruminantian species, the lesser kudu genome has seen an expansion of BovB Long INterspersed Elements (LINEs) and BovB related Short INterspersed Elements (SINEs) like BOVA2. In comparison the genome of Java mouse deer has fewer BovB elements than other ruminants, especially Bovinae, and has in addition a novel CHR-3 SINE most likely propagated by LINE-1. By contrast the other ruminants have low amounts of CHR SINEs but high numbers of actively propagating BovB-derived and BovB-propagated SINEs. The survey sequencing data suggest that the transposable element landscape in mouse deer (Tragulina) is unique among Ruminantia, suggesting a lineage specific evolutionary trajectory that does not involve BovB mediated retrotransposition. This shows that the genomic landscape of mobile genetic elements can rapidly change in any lineage. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Supplementary data: Comparative studies on sequence ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

Unknown

Page 1. Supplementary data: Comparative studies on sequence characteristics around translation initiation codon in four eukaryotes. Qingpo Liu and Qingzhong Xue. J. Genet. 84, 317–322. Table 1. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients of 39 base positions around the AUG codon in the four eukaryotic species studied.

Generation of mast cells from mouse fetus: analysis of differentiation and functionality, and transcriptome profiling using next generation sequencer.

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Nobuyuki Fukuishi

Full Text Available While gene knockout technology can reveal the roles of proteins in cellular functions, including in mast cells, fetal death due to gene manipulation frequently interrupts experimental analysis. We generated mast cells from mouse fetal liver (FLMC, and compared the fundamental functions of FLMC with those of bone marrow-derived mouse mast cells (BMMC. Under electron microscopy, numerous small and electron-dense granules were observed in FLMC. In FLMC, the expression levels of a subunit of the FcεRI receptor and degranulation by IgE cross-linking were comparable with BMMC. By flow cytometry we observed surface expression of c-Kit prior to that of FcεRI on FLMC, although on BMMC the expression of c-Kit came after FcεRI. The surface expression levels of Sca-1 and c-Kit, a marker of putative mast cell precursors, were slightly different between bone marrow cells and fetal liver cells, suggesting that differentiation stage or cell type are not necessarily equivalent between both lineages. Moreover, this indicates that phenotypically similar mast cells may not have undergone an identical process of differentiation. By comprehensive analysis using the next generation sequencer, the same frequency of gene expression was observed for 98.6% of all transcripts in both cell types. These results indicate that FLMC could represent a new and useful tool for exploring mast cell differentiation, and may help to elucidate the roles of individual proteins in the function of mast cells where gene manipulation can induce embryonic lethality in the mid to late stages of pregnancy.

Generation of mast cells from mouse fetus: analysis of differentiation and functionality, and transcriptome profiling using next generation sequencer.

Science.gov (United States)

Fukuishi, Nobuyuki; Igawa, Yuusuke; Kunimi, Tomoyo; Hamano, Hirofumi; Toyota, Masao; Takahashi, Hironobu; Kenmoku, Hiromichi; Yagi, Yasuyuki; Matsui, Nobuaki; Akagi, Masaaki

2013-01-01

While gene knockout technology can reveal the roles of proteins in cellular functions, including in mast cells, fetal death due to gene manipulation frequently interrupts experimental analysis. We generated mast cells from mouse fetal liver (FLMC), and compared the fundamental functions of FLMC with those of bone marrow-derived mouse mast cells (BMMC). Under electron microscopy, numerous small and electron-dense granules were observed in FLMC. In FLMC, the expression levels of a subunit of the FcεRI receptor and degranulation by IgE cross-linking were comparable with BMMC. By flow cytometry we observed surface expression of c-Kit prior to that of FcεRI on FLMC, although on BMMC the expression of c-Kit came after FcεRI. The surface expression levels of Sca-1 and c-Kit, a marker of putative mast cell precursors, were slightly different between bone marrow cells and fetal liver cells, suggesting that differentiation stage or cell type are not necessarily equivalent between both lineages. Moreover, this indicates that phenotypically similar mast cells may not have undergone an identical process of differentiation. By comprehensive analysis using the next generation sequencer, the same frequency of gene expression was observed for 98.6% of all transcripts in both cell types. These results indicate that FLMC could represent a new and useful tool for exploring mast cell differentiation, and may help to elucidate the roles of individual proteins in the function of mast cells where gene manipulation can induce embryonic lethality in the mid to late stages of pregnancy.

Genomic targets of Brachyury (T in differentiating mouse embryonic stem cells.

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Amanda L Evans

Full Text Available The T-box transcription factor Brachyury (T is essential for formation of the posterior mesoderm and the notochord in vertebrate embryos. Work in the frog and the zebrafish has identified some direct genomic targets of Brachyury, but little is known about Brachyury targets in the mouse.Here we use chromatin immunoprecipitation and mouse promoter microarrays to identify targets of Brachyury in embryoid bodies formed from differentiating mouse ES cells. The targets we identify are enriched for sequence-specific DNA binding proteins and include components of signal transduction pathways that direct cell fate in the primitive streak and tailbud of the early embryo. Expression of some of these targets, such as Axin2, Fgf8 and Wnt3a, is down regulated in Brachyury mutant embryos and we demonstrate that they are also Brachyury targets in the human. Surprisingly, we do not observe enrichment of the canonical T-domain DNA binding sequence 5'-TCACACCT-3' in the vicinity of most Brachyury target genes. Rather, we have identified an (AC(n repeat sequence, which is conserved in the rat but not in human, zebrafish or Xenopus. We do not understand the significance of this sequence, but speculate that it enhances transcription factor binding in the regulatory regions of Brachyury target genes in rodents.Our work identifies the genomic targets of a key regulator of mesoderm formation in the early mouse embryo, thereby providing insights into the Brachyury-driven genetic regulatory network and allowing us to compare the function of Brachyury in different species.

Establishing a framework for comparative analysis of genome sequences

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bansal, A.K.

1995-06-01

This paper describes a framework and a high-level language toolkit for comparative analysis of genome sequence alignment The framework integrates the information derived from multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic tree (hypothetical tree of evolution) to derive new properties about sequences. Multiple sequence alignments are treated as an abstract data type. Abstract operations have been described to manipulate a multiple sequence alignment and to derive mutation related information from a phylogenetic tree by superimposing parsimonious analysis. The framework has been applied on protein alignments to derive constrained columns (in a multiple sequence alignment) that exhibit evolutionary pressure to preserve a common property in a column despite mutation. A Prolog toolkit based on the framework has been implemented and demonstrated on alignments containing 3000 sequences and 3904 columns.

The PRC2-binding long non-coding RNAs in human and mouse genomes are associated with predictive sequence features

Science.gov (United States)

Tu, Shiqi; Yuan, Guo-Cheng; Shao, Zhen

2017-01-01

Recently, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have emerged as an important class of molecules involved in many cellular processes. One of their primary functions is to shape epigenetic landscape through interactions with chromatin modifying proteins. However, mechanisms contributing to the specificity of such interactions remain poorly understood. Here we took the human and mouse lncRNAs that were experimentally determined to have physical interactions with Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), and systematically investigated the sequence features of these lncRNAs by developing a new computational pipeline for sequences composition analysis, in which each sequence is considered as a series of transitions between adjacent nucleotides. Through that, PRC2-binding lncRNAs were found to be associated with a set of distinctive and evolutionarily conserved sequence features, which can be utilized to distinguish them from the others with considerable accuracy. We further identified fragments of PRC2-binding lncRNAs that are enriched with these sequence features, and found they show strong PRC2-binding signals and are more highly conserved across species than the other parts, implying their functional importance.

Analysis of 16S libraries of mouse gastrointestinal microflora reveals a large new group of mouse intestinal bacteria.

Science.gov (United States)

Salzman, Nita H; de Jong, Hendrik; Paterson, Yvonne; Harmsen, Hermie J M; Welling, Gjalt W; Bos, Nicolaas A

2002-11-01

Total genomic DNA from samples of intact mouse small intestine, large intestine, caecum and faeces was used as template for PCR amplification of 16S rRNA gene sequences with conserved bacterial primers. Phylogenetic analysis of the amplification products revealed 40 unique 16S rDNA sequences. Of these sequences, 25% (10/40) corresponded to described intestinal organisms of the mouse, including Lactobacillus spp., Helicobacter spp., segmented filamentous bacteria and members of the altered Schaedler flora (ASF360, ASF361, ASF502 and ASF519); 75% (30/40) represented novel sequences. A large number (11/40) of the novel sequences revealed a new operational taxonomic unit (OTU) belonging to the Cytophaga-Flavobacter-Bacteroides phylum, which the authors named 'mouse intestinal bacteria'. 16S rRNA probes were developed for this new OTU. Upon analysis of the novel sequences, eight were found to cluster within the Eubacterium rectale-Clostridium coccoides group and three clustered within the Bacteroides group. One of the novel sequences was distantly related to Verrucomicrobium spinosum and one was distantly related to Bacillus mycoides. Oligonucleotide probes specific for the 16S rRNA of these novel clones were generated. Using a combination of four previously described and four newly designed probes, approximately 80% of bacteria recovered from the murine large intestine and 71% of bacteria recovered from the murine caecum could be identified by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH).

Next-generation sequence analysis of cancer xenograft models.

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Fernando J Rossello

Full Text Available Next-generation sequencing (NGS studies in cancer are limited by the amount, quality and purity of tissue samples. In this situation, primary xenografts have proven useful preclinical models. However, the presence of mouse-derived stromal cells represents a technical challenge to their use in NGS studies. We examined this problem in an established primary xenograft model of small cell lung cancer (SCLC, a malignancy often diagnosed from small biopsy or needle aspirate samples. Using an in silico strategy that assign reads according to species-of-origin, we prospectively compared NGS data from primary xenograft models with matched cell lines and with published datasets. We show here that low-coverage whole-genome analysis demonstrated remarkable concordance between published genome data and internal controls, despite the presence of mouse genomic DNA. Exome capture sequencing revealed that this enrichment procedure was highly species-specific, with less than 4% of reads aligning to the mouse genome. Human-specific expression profiling with RNA-Seq replicated array-based gene expression experiments, whereas mouse-specific transcript profiles correlated with published datasets from human cancer stroma. We conclude that primary xenografts represent a useful platform for complex NGS analysis in cancer research for tumours with limited sample resources, or those with prominent stromal cell populations.

Fast T1 and T2 mapping methods: the zoomed U-FLARE sequence compared with EPI and snapshot-FLASH for abdominal imaging at 11.7 Tesla.

Science.gov (United States)

Pastor, Géraldine; Jiménez-González, María; Plaza-García, Sandra; Beraza, Marta; Reese, Torsten

2017-06-01

A newly adapted zoomed ultrafast low-angle RARE (U-FLARE) sequence is described for abdominal imaging applications at 11.7 Tesla and compared with the standard echo-plannar imaging (EPI) and snapshot fast low angle shot (FLASH) methods. Ultrafast EPI and snapshot-FLASH protocols were evaluated to determine relaxation times in phantoms and in the mouse kidney in vivo. Owing to their apparent shortcomings, imaging artefacts, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and variability in the determination of relaxation times, these methods are compared with the newly implemented zoomed U-FLARE sequence. Snapshot-FLASH has a lower SNR when compared with the zoomed U-FLARE sequence and EPI. The variability in the measurement of relaxation times is higher in the Look-Locker sequences than in inversion recovery experiments. Respectively, the average T1 and T2 values at 11.7 Tesla are as follows: kidney cortex, 1810 and 29 ms; kidney medulla, 2100 and 25 ms; subcutaneous tumour, 2365 and 28 ms. This study demonstrates that the zoomed U-FLARE sequence yields single-shot single-slice images with good anatomical resolution and high SNR at 11.7 Tesla. Thus, it offers a viable alternative to standard protocols for mapping very fast parameters, such as T1 and T2, or dynamic processes in vivo at high field.

COMPARATIVE GENOTOXIC RESPONSES TO ARSENITE IN GUINEA PIG, MOUSE, RAT AND HUMAN LYMPHOCYTES

Science.gov (United States)

Comparative genotoxic responses to arsenite in guinea pig, mouse, rat and human lymphocytes.Inorganic arsenic is a known human carcinogen causing skin, lung, and bladder cancer following chronic exposures. Yet, long-term laboratory animal carcinogenicity studies have ...

Comparative analysis of catfish BAC end sequences with the zebrafish genome

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Abernathy Jason

2009-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Comparative mapping is a powerful tool to transfer genomic information from sequenced genomes to closely related species for which whole genome sequence data are not yet available. However, such an approach is still very limited in catfish, the most important aquaculture species in the United States. This project was initiated to generate additional BAC end sequences and demonstrate their applications in comparative mapping in catfish. Results We reported the generation of 43,000 BAC end sequences and their applications for comparative genome analysis in catfish. Using these and the additional 20,000 existing BAC end sequences as a resource along with linkage mapping and existing physical map, conserved syntenic regions were identified between the catfish and zebrafish genomes. A total of 10,943 catfish BAC end sequences (17.3% had significant BLAST hits to the zebrafish genome (cutoff value ≤ e-5, of which 3,221 were unique gene hits, providing a platform for comparative mapping based on locations of these genes in catfish and zebrafish. Genetic linkage mapping of microsatellites associated with contigs allowed identification of large conserved genomic segments and construction of super scaffolds. Conclusion BAC end sequences and their associated polymorphic markers are great resources for comparative genome analysis in catfish. Highly conserved chromosomal regions were identified to exist between catfish and zebrafish. However, it appears that the level of conservation at local genomic regions are high while a high level of chromosomal shuffling and rearrangements exist between catfish and zebrafish genomes. Orthologous regions established through comparative analysis should facilitate both structural and functional genome analysis in catfish.

Comparative analysis of genome maintenance genes in naked mole rat, mouse, and human.

Science.gov (United States)

MacRae, Sheila L; Zhang, Quanwei; Lemetre, Christophe; Seim, Inge; Calder, Robert B; Hoeijmakers, Jan; Suh, Yousin; Gladyshev, Vadim N; Seluanov, Andrei; Gorbunova, Vera; Vijg, Jan; Zhang, Zhengdong D

2015-04-01

Genome maintenance (GM) is an essential defense system against aging and cancer, as both are characterized by increased genome instability. Here, we compared the copy number variation and mutation rate of 518 GM-associated genes in the naked mole rat (NMR), mouse, and human genomes. GM genes appeared to be strongly conserved, with copy number variation in only four genes. Interestingly, we found NMR to have a higher copy number of CEBPG, a regulator of DNA repair, and TINF2, a protector of telomere integrity. NMR, as well as human, was also found to have a lower rate of germline nucleotide substitution than the mouse. Together, the data suggest that the long-lived NMR, as well as human, has more robust GM than mouse and identifies new targets for the analysis of the exceptional longevity of the NMR. © 2015 The Authors. Aging Cell published by the Anatomical Society and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Fine-scale maps of recombination rates and hotspots in the mouse genome.

Science.gov (United States)

Brunschwig, Hadassa; Levi, Liat; Ben-David, Eyal; Williams, Robert W; Yakir, Benjamin; Shifman, Sagiv

2012-07-01

Recombination events are not uniformly distributed and often cluster in narrow regions known as recombination hotspots. Several studies using different approaches have dramatically advanced our understanding of recombination hotspot regulation. Population genetic data have been used to map and quantify hotspots in the human genome. Genetic variation in recombination rates and hotspots usage have been explored in human pedigrees, mouse intercrosses, and by sperm typing. These studies pointed to the central role of the PRDM9 gene in hotspot modulation. In this study, we used single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from whole-genome resequencing and genotyping studies of mouse inbred strains to estimate recombination rates across the mouse genome and identified 47,068 historical hotspots--an average of over 2477 per chromosome. We show by simulation that inbred mouse strains can be used to identify positions of historical hotspots. Recombination hotspots were found to be enriched for the predicted binding sequences for different alleles of the PRDM9 protein. Recombination rates were on average lower near transcription start sites (TSS). Comparing the inferred historical recombination hotspots with the recent genome-wide mapping of double-strand breaks (DSBs) in mouse sperm revealed a significant overlap, especially toward the telomeres. Our results suggest that inbred strains can be used to characterize and study the dynamics of historical recombination hotspots. They also strengthen previous findings on mouse recombination hotspots, and specifically the impact of sequence variants in Prdm9.

Structure of a mouse immunoglobulin G that lacks the entire CH1 domain: Protein sequencing and small-angle X-ray scattering studies

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Igarashi, Takako; Tanaka, Toshiyuki; Nakanishi, Mamoru; Arata, Yoji; Sato, Mamoru; Katsube, Yukiteru; Takio, Koji

1990-01-01

The structure of a short-chain IgG2a antibody, which is a member of the family of mouse anti-dansyl switch variant antibodies with identical variable regions but different heavy-chain constant regions, is reported. Amino acid sequencing analyses have demonstrated that in the short-chain IgG2a antibody the entire C H 1 domain is deleted whereas the hinge region remains intact. Small-angle X-ray scattering data were collected for the short-chain IgG2a antibody and compared with those for the switch variant IgG1, IgG2a, and IgG2b antibodies with the normal heavy chain. It has been concluded that deletion of the C H 1 domain results in a large structural change and the short-chain IgG2a antibody possesses an elongated molecular shape with a much smaller hinge angle as compared with the normal IgG2a antibody that is a Y-shaped molecule

Comparative action spectra for pyrimidine dimer formation in Cloudman S91 mouse melanoma and EMT6 mouse mammary carcinoma cells

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hill, H Z [New Jersey, Medical School, Newark (USA); Setlow, R B [Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (USA)

1982-05-01

Pyrimidine dimer formation in melanotic mouse melanoma cells, Cloudman S91H-, and in mouse mammary carcinoma cells, EMT6, was compared as a function of wavelength by irradiating equal numbers of cells from the two cell lines simultaneously. More dimers were formed in EMT6 than in S91H- by light of wavelengths less than 289nm, while light of higher wavelengths caused equivalent dimer formation, as measured by the Micrococcus luteus UV-endonuclease assay. The cells of S91H- are lightly melanotic, yet shielding at lower wavelengths is considerable. It is speculated that melanin pigmentation arose by selection during an evolutionary period when UV-C light reaching the earth's surface was significantly greater than it is today.

RISC RNA sequencing for context-specific identification of in vivo microRNA targets.

Science.gov (United States)

Matkovich, Scot J; Van Booven, Derek J; Eschenbacher, William H; Dorn, Gerald W

2011-01-07

MicroRNAs (miRs) are expanding our understanding of cardiac disease and have the potential to transform cardiovascular therapeutics. One miR can target hundreds of individual mRNAs, but existing methodologies are not sufficient to accurately and comprehensively identify these mRNA targets in vivo. To develop methods permitting identification of in vivo miR targets in an unbiased manner, using massively parallel sequencing of mouse cardiac transcriptomes in combination with sequencing of mRNA associated with mouse cardiac RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISCs). We optimized techniques for expression profiling small amounts of RNA without introducing amplification bias and applied this to anti-Argonaute 2 immunoprecipitated RISCs (RISC-Seq) from mouse hearts. By comparing RNA-sequencing results of cardiac RISC and transcriptome from the same individual hearts, we defined 1645 mRNAs consistently targeted to mouse cardiac RISCs. We used this approach in hearts overexpressing miRs from Myh6 promoter-driven precursors (programmed RISC-Seq) to identify 209 in vivo targets of miR-133a and 81 in vivo targets of miR-499. Consistent with the fact that miR-133a and miR-499 have widely differing "seed" sequences and belong to different miR families, only 6 targets were common to miR-133a- and miR-499-programmed hearts. RISC-sequencing is a highly sensitive method for general RISC profiling and individual miR target identification in biological context and is applicable to any tissue and any disease state.

International interlaboratory study comparing single organism 16S rRNA gene sequencing data: Beyond consensus sequence comparisons

Science.gov (United States)

Olson, Nathan D.; Lund, Steven P.; Zook, Justin M.; Rojas-Cornejo, Fabiola; Beck, Brian; Foy, Carole; Huggett, Jim; Whale, Alexandra S.; Sui, Zhiwei; Baoutina, Anna; Dobeson, Michael; Partis, Lina; Morrow, Jayne B.

2015-01-01

This study presents the results from an interlaboratory sequencing study for which we developed a novel high-resolution method for comparing data from different sequencing platforms for a multi-copy, paralogous gene. The combination of PCR amplification and 16S ribosomal RNA gene (16S rRNA) sequencing has revolutionized bacteriology by enabling rapid identification, frequently without the need for culture. To assess variability between laboratories in sequencing 16S rRNA, six laboratories sequenced the gene encoding the 16S rRNA from Escherichia coli O157:H7 strain EDL933 and Listeria monocytogenes serovar 4b strain NCTC11994. Participants performed sequencing methods and protocols available in their laboratories: Sanger sequencing, Roche 454 pyrosequencing®, or Ion Torrent PGM®. The sequencing data were evaluated on three levels: (1) identity of biologically conserved position, (2) ratio of 16S rRNA gene copies featuring identified variants, and (3) the collection of variant combinations in a set of 16S rRNA gene copies. The same set of biologically conserved positions was identified for each sequencing method. Analytical methods using Bayesian and maximum likelihood statistics were developed to estimate variant copy ratios, which describe the ratio of nucleotides at each identified biologically variable position, as well as the likely set of variant combinations present in 16S rRNA gene copies. Our results indicate that estimated variant copy ratios at biologically variable positions were only reproducible for high throughput sequencing methods. Furthermore, the likely variant combination set was only reproducible with increased sequencing depth and longer read lengths. We also demonstrate novel methods for evaluating variable positions when comparing multi-copy gene sequence data from multiple laboratories generated using multiple sequencing technologies. PMID:27077030

International interlaboratory study comparing single organism 16S rRNA gene sequencing data: Beyond consensus sequence comparisons

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nathan D. Olson

2015-03-01

Full Text Available This study presents the results from an interlaboratory sequencing study for which we developed a novel high-resolution method for comparing data from different sequencing platforms for a multi-copy, paralogous gene. The combination of PCR amplification and 16S ribosomal RNA gene (16S rRNA sequencing has revolutionized bacteriology by enabling rapid identification, frequently without the need for culture. To assess variability between laboratories in sequencing 16S rRNA, six laboratories sequenced the gene encoding the 16S rRNA from Escherichia coli O157:H7 strain EDL933 and Listeria monocytogenes serovar 4b strain NCTC11994. Participants performed sequencing methods and protocols available in their laboratories: Sanger sequencing, Roche 454 pyrosequencing®, or Ion Torrent PGM®. The sequencing data were evaluated on three levels: (1 identity of biologically conserved position, (2 ratio of 16S rRNA gene copies featuring identified variants, and (3 the collection of variant combinations in a set of 16S rRNA gene copies. The same set of biologically conserved positions was identified for each sequencing method. Analytical methods using Bayesian and maximum likelihood statistics were developed to estimate variant copy ratios, which describe the ratio of nucleotides at each identified biologically variable position, as well as the likely set of variant combinations present in 16S rRNA gene copies. Our results indicate that estimated variant copy ratios at biologically variable positions were only reproducible for high throughput sequencing methods. Furthermore, the likely variant combination set was only reproducible with increased sequencing depth and longer read lengths. We also demonstrate novel methods for evaluating variable positions when comparing multi-copy gene sequence data from multiple laboratories generated using multiple sequencing technologies.

Functional and structural analysis of the DNA sequence conferring glucocorticoid inducibility to the mouse mammary tumor virus gene

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Skroch, P.

1987-05-01

In the first part of my thesis I show that the DNA element conferring glucocorticoid inducibility to the Mouse Mammary Tumor Virus (HRE) has enhancer properties. It activates a heterologous promoter - that of the β-globin gene, independently of distance, position and orientation. These properties however have to be regarded in relation to the remaining regulatory elements of the activated gene as the recombinants between HRE and the TK gene have demonstrated. In the second part of my thesis I investigated the biological significance of certain sequence motifs of the HRE, which are remarkable by their interaction with transacting factors or sequence homologies with other regulatory DNA elements. I could confirm the generally postulated modular structure of enhancers for the HRE and bring the relevance of the single subdomains for the function of the element into relationship. (orig.) [de

Characteristics of the mouse genomic histamine H1 receptor gene

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Inoue, Isao; Taniuchi, Ichiro; Kitamura, Daisuke [Kyushu Univ., Fukuoka (Japan)] [and others

1996-08-15

We report here the molecular cloning of a mouse histamine H1 receptor gene. The protein deduced from the nucleotide sequence is composed of 488 amino acid residues with characteristic properties of GTP binding protein-coupled receptors. Our results suggest that the mouse histamine H1 receptor gene is a single locus, and no related sequences were detected. Interspecific backcross analysis indicated that the mouse histamine H1 receptor gene (Hrh1) is located in the central region of mouse Chromosome 6 linked to microphthalmia (Mitfmi), ras-related fibrosarcoma oncogene 1 (Raf1), and ret proto-oncogene (Ret) in a region of homology with human chromosome 3p. 12 refs., 3 figs.

Number and location of mouse mammary tumor virus proviral DNA in mouse DNA of normal tissue and of mammary tumors.

Science.gov (United States)

Groner, B; Hynes, N E

1980-01-01

The Southern DNA filter transfer technique was used to characterize the genomic location of the mouse mammary tumor proviral DNA in different inbred strains of mice. Two of the strains (C3H and CBA) arose from a cross of a Bagg albino (BALB/c) mouse and a DBA mouse. The mouse mammary tumor virus-containing restriction enzyme DNA fragments of these strains had similar patterns, suggesting that the proviruses of these mice are in similar genomic locations. Conversely, the pattern arising from the DNA of the GR mouse, a strain genetically unrelated to the others, appeared different, suggesting that its mouse mammary tumor proviruses are located in different genomic sites. The structure of another gene, that coding for beta-globin, was also compared. The mice strains which we studied can be categorized into two classes, expressing either one or two beta-globin proteins. The macroenvironment of the beta-globin gene appeared similar among the mice strains belonging to one genetic class. Female mice of the C3H strain exogenously transmit mouse mammary tumor virus via the milk, and their offspring have a high incidence of mammary tumor occurrence. DNA isolated from individual mammary tumors taken from C3H mice or from BALB/c mice foster nursed on C3H mothers was analyzed by the DNA filter transfer technique. Additional mouse mammary tumor virus-containing fragments were found in the DNA isolated from each mammary tumor. These proviral sequences were integrated into different genomic sites in each tumor. Images PMID:6245257

Mouse myocardial first-pass perfusion MR imaging

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Coolen, Bram F.; Moonen, Rik P. M.; Paulis, Leonie E. M.; Geelen, Tessa; Nicolay, Klaas; Strijkers, Gustav J.

2010-01-01

A first-pass myocardial perfusion sequence for mouse cardiac MRI is presented. A segmented ECG-triggered acquisition combined with parallel imaging acceleration was used to capture the first pass of a Gd-DTPA bolus through the mouse heart with a temporal resolution of 300-400 msec. The method was

Genome-wide RNA-seq analysis of human and mouse platelet transcriptomes

Science.gov (United States)

Rowley, Jesse W.; Oler, Andrew J.; Tolley, Neal D.; Hunter, Benjamin N.; Low, Elizabeth N.; Nix, David A.; Yost, Christian C.; Zimmerman, Guy A.

2011-01-01

Inbred mice are a useful tool for studying the in vivo functions of platelets. Nonetheless, the mRNA signature of mouse platelets is not known. Here, we use paired-end next-generation RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to characterize the polyadenylated transcriptomes of human and mouse platelets. We report that RNA-seq provides unprecedented resolution of mRNAs that are expressed across the entire human and mouse genomes. Transcript expression and abundance are often conserved between the 2 species. Several mRNAs, however, are differentially expressed in human and mouse platelets. Moreover, previously described functional disparities between mouse and human platelets are reflected in differences at the transcript level, including protease activated receptor-1, protease activated receptor-3, platelet activating factor receptor, and factor V. This suggests that RNA-seq is a useful tool for predicting differences in platelet function between mice and humans. Our next-generation sequencing analysis provides new insights into the human and murine platelet transcriptomes. The sequencing dataset will be useful in the design of mouse models of hemostasis and a catalyst for discovery of new functions of platelets. Access to the dataset is found in the “Introduction.” PMID:21596849

Comparative analysis of genome maintenance genes in naked mole rat, mouse, and human

NARCIS (Netherlands)

S.L. Macrae (Sheila L.); Q. Zhang (Quanwei); C. Lemetre (Christophe); I. Seim (Inge); R.B. Calder (Robert B.); J.H.J. Hoeijmakers (Jan); Y. Suh (Yousin); V.N. Gladyshev (Vadim N.); A. Seluanov (Andrei); V. Gorbunova (Vera); J. Vijg (Jan); Z.D. Zhang (Zhengdong D.)

2015-01-01

textabstractGenome maintenance (GM) is an essential defense system against aging and cancer, as both are characterized by increased genome instability. Here, we compared the copy number variation and mutation rate of 518 GM-associated genes in the naked mole rat (NMR), mouse, and human genomes. GM

Comparative study of the organisation and phenotypes of bladder interstitial cells in human, mouse and rat.

Science.gov (United States)

Gevaert, Thomas; Neuhaus, Jochen; Vanstreels, Els; Daelemans, Dirk; Everaerts, Wouter; Der Aa, Frank Van; Timmermans, Jean-Pierre; Roskams, Tania; Steiner, Clara; Pintelon, Isabel; De Ridder, Dirk

2017-12-01

With most research on interstitial cells (IC) in the bladder being conducted on animal models, it remains unclear whether all structural and functional data on IC from animal models can be translated to the human context. This prompted us to compare the structural and immunohistochemical properties of IC in bladders from mouse, rat and human. Tissue samples were obtained from the bladder dome and subsequently processed for immunohistochemistry and electron microscopy. The ultrastructural properties of IC were compared by means of electron microscopy and IC were additionally characterized with single/double immunohistochemistry/immunofluorescence. Our results reveal a similar organization of the IC network in the upper lamina propria (ULP), the deep lamina propria (DLP) and the detrusor muscle in human, rat and mouse bladders. Furthermore, despite several similarities in IC phenotypes, we also found several obvious inter-species differences in IC, especially in the ULP. Most remarkably in this respect, ULP IC in human bladder predominantly displayed a myoid phenotype with abundant presence of contractile micro-filaments, while those in rat and mouse bladders showed a fibroblast phenotype. In conclusion, the organization of ULP IC, DLP IC and detrusor IC is comparable in human, rat and mouse bladders, although several obvious inter-species differences in IC phenotypes were found. The present data show that translating research data on IC in laboratory animals to the human setting should be carried out with caution.

Mouse myocardial first-pass perfusion MR imaging

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Coolen, B.F.; Moonen, R.P.M.; Paulis, L.E.M.; Geelen, T.; Nicolay, K.; Strijkers, G.J.

2010-01-01

A first-pass myocardial perfusion sequence for mouse cardiac MRI is presented. A segmented ECG-triggered acquisition combined with parallel imaging acceleration was used to capture the first pass of a Gd-DTPA bolus through the mouse heart with a temporal resolution of 300–400 msec. The method was

Comparative performance of the BGISEQ-500 versus Illumina HiSeq2500 sequencing platforms for palaeogenomic sequencing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mak, Sarah Siu Tze Mak; Gopalakrishnan, Shyam Sunder; Carøe, Christian

2017-01-01

on degraded DNA, then directly compared the sequencing performance and data quality of the BGISEQ-500 to the Illumina HiSeq2500 platform, on DNA extracted from eight historic and ancient dog and wolf samples. Results: The data generated was largely comparable between sequencing platforms...... difference was also observed in the mitochondrial DNA percentages recovered (p = 0.018), although we believe this is likely a stochastic effect relating to the extremely low levels of mitochondria that were sequenced from three of the samples with overall very low levels of endogenous DNA. Conclusions......: Although we acknowledge our analyses were limited to animal material, our observations suggest that the BGISEQ-500 holds the potential to represent valid and potentially valuable alternative platform for palaeogenomic data generation, that is worthy of future exploration by those interested...

Low-pass sequencing for microbial comparative genomics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kennedy Sean

2004-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background We studied four extremely halophilic archaea by low-pass shotgun sequencing: (1 the metabolically versatile Haloarcula marismortui; (2 the non-pigmented Natrialba asiatica; (3 the psychrophile Halorubrum lacusprofundi and (4 the Dead Sea isolate Halobaculum gomorrense. Approximately one thousand single pass genomic sequences per genome were obtained. The data were analyzed by comparative genomic analyses using the completed Halobacterium sp. NRC-1 genome as a reference. Low-pass shotgun sequencing is a simple, inexpensive, and rapid approach that can readily be performed on any cultured microbe. Results As expected, the four archaeal halophiles analyzed exhibit both bacterial and eukaryotic characteristics as well as uniquely archaeal traits. All five halophiles exhibit greater than sixty percent GC content and low isoelectric points (pI for their predicted proteins. Multiple insertion sequence (IS elements, often involved in genome rearrangements, were identified in H. lacusprofundi and H. marismortui. The core biological functions that govern cellular and genetic mechanisms of H. sp. NRC-1 appear to be conserved in these four other halophiles. Multiple TATA box binding protein (TBP and transcription factor IIB (TFB homologs were identified from most of the four shotgunned halophiles. The reconstructed molecular tree of all five halophiles shows a large divergence between these species, but with the closest relationship being between H. sp. NRC-1 and H. lacusprofundi. Conclusion Despite the diverse habitats of these species, all five halophiles share (1 high GC content and (2 low protein isoelectric points, which are characteristics associated with environmental exposure to UV radiation and hypersalinity, respectively. Identification of multiple IS elements in the genome of H. lacusprofundi and H. marismortui suggest that genome structure and dynamic genome reorganization might be similar to that previously observed in the

Dispersed repetitive sequences in eukaryotic genomes and their possible biological significance

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Georgiev, G.P.; Kramerov, D.A.; Ryskov, A.P.; Skryabin, K.G.; Lukanidin, E.M.

1983-01-01

In this paper is described the properties of a novel mouse mdg-like element, the A2 sequence, which is the most abundant repetitive sequence. We also characterized an ubiquitous B2 sequence that represents, after B1, the dominant family among the short interspersed repeats of the mouse genome. The existence of some putative transposition intermediates was shown for repeats of both A and B types of the mouse genome. These are closed circular DNA of the A type and small polyadenylated B + RNAs. The fundamental question that arises is whether these sequences are simply selfish DNA capable of transpositions or do they fulfill some useful biological functions within the genome. 66 references, 11 figures, 1 table

Survey sequencing and comparative analysis of the elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii genome.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Byrappa Venkatesh

2007-04-01

Full Text Available Owing to their phylogenetic position, cartilaginous fishes (sharks, rays, skates, and chimaeras provide a critical reference for our understanding of vertebrate genome evolution. The relatively small genome of the elephant shark, Callorhinchus milii, a chimaera, makes it an attractive model cartilaginous fish genome for whole-genome sequencing and comparative analysis. Here, the authors describe survey sequencing (1.4x coverage and comparative analysis of the elephant shark genome, one of the first cartilaginous fish genomes to be sequenced to this depth. Repetitive sequences, represented mainly by a novel family of short interspersed element-like and long interspersed element-like sequences, account for about 28% of the elephant shark genome. Fragments of approximately 15,000 elephant shark genes reveal specific examples of genes that have been lost differentially during the evolution of tetrapod and teleost fish lineages. Interestingly, the degree of conserved synteny and conserved sequences between the human and elephant shark genomes are higher than that between human and teleost fish genomes. Elephant shark contains putative four Hox clusters indicating that, unlike teleost fish genomes, the elephant shark genome has not experienced an additional whole-genome duplication. These findings underscore the importance of the elephant shark as a critical reference vertebrate genome for comparative analysis of the human and other vertebrate genomes. This study also demonstrates that a survey-sequencing approach can be applied productively for comparative analysis of distantly related vertebrate genomes.

Analysis of 16S libraries of mouse gastrointestinal microflora reveals a large new group of mouse intestinal bacteria

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Salzman, NH; de Jong, H; Paterson, Y; Harmsen, HJM; Welling, GW; Bos, NA

2002-01-01

Total genomic DNA from samples of intact mouse small intestine, large intestine, caecum and faeces was used as template for PCR amplification of 16S rRNA gene sequences with conserved bacterial primers. Phylogenetic analysis of the amplification products revealed 40 unique 16S rDNA sequences. Of

Structure of a mouse immunoglobulin G that lacks the entire C sub H 1 domain: Protein sequencing and small-angle X-ray scattering studies

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Igarashi, Takako; Tanaka, Toshiyuki; Nakanishi, Mamoru; Arata, Yoji (Univ. of Tokyo (Japan)); Sato, Mamoru; Katsube, Yukiteru (Osaka Univ. (Japan)); Takio, Koji (Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, Saitama (Japan))

1990-06-19

The structure of a short-chain IgG2a antibody, which is a member of the family of mouse anti-dansyl switch variant antibodies with identical variable regions but different heavy-chain constant regions, is reported. Amino acid sequencing analyses have demonstrated that in the short-chain IgG2a antibody the entire C{sub H}1 domain is deleted whereas the hinge region remains intact. Small-angle X-ray scattering data were collected for the short-chain IgG2a antibody and compared with those for the switch variant IgG1, IgG2a, and IgG2b antibodies with the normal heavy chain. It has been concluded that deletion of the C{sub H}1 domain results in a large structural change and the short-chain IgG2a antibody possesses an elongated molecular shape with a much smaller hinge angle as compared with the normal IgG2a antibody that is a Y-shaped molecule.

Effect of Duplicate Genes on Mouse Genetic Robustness: An Update

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhixi Su

2014-01-01

Full Text Available In contrast to S. cerevisiae and C. elegans, analyses based on the current knockout (KO mouse phenotypes led to the conclusion that duplicate genes had almost no role in mouse genetic robustness. It has been suggested that the bias of mouse KO database toward ancient duplicates may possibly cause this knockout duplicate puzzle, that is, a very similar proportion of essential genes (PE between duplicate genes and singletons. In this paper, we conducted an extensive and careful analysis for the mouse KO phenotype data and corroborated a strong effect of duplicate genes on mouse genetics robustness. Moreover, the effect of duplicate genes on mouse genetic robustness is duplication-age dependent, which holds after ruling out the potential confounding effect from coding-sequence conservation, protein-protein connectivity, functional bias, or the bias of duplicates generated by whole genome duplication (WGD. Our findings suggest that two factors, the sampling bias toward ancient duplicates and very ancient duplicates with a proportion of essential genes higher than that of singletons, have caused the mouse knockout duplicate puzzle; meanwhile, the effect of genetic buffering may be correlated with sequence conservation as well as protein-protein interactivity.

Identification of hamster inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) promoter sequences that influence basal and inducible iNOS expression

Science.gov (United States)

Saldarriaga, Omar A.; Travi, Bruno L.; Choudhury, Goutam Ghosh; Melby, Peter C.

2012-01-01

IFN-γ/LPS-activated hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) macrophages express significantly less iNOS (NOS2) than activated mouse macrophages, which contributes to the hamster's susceptibility to intracellular pathogens. We determined a mechanism responsible for differences in iNOS promoter activity in hamsters and mice. The HtPP (1.2 kb) showed low basal and inducible promoter activity when compared with the mouse, and sequences within a 100-bp region (−233 to −133) of the mouse and hamster promoters influenced this activity. Moreover, within this 100 bp, we identified a smaller region (44 bp) in the mouse promoter, which recovered basal promoter activity when swapped into the hamster promoter. The mouse homolog (100-bp region) contained a cis-element for NF-IL-6 (−153/−142), which was absent in the hamster counterpart. EMSA and supershift assays revealed that the hamster sequence did not support the binding of NF-IL-6. Introduction of a functional NF-IL-6 binding sequence into the hamster promoter or its alteration in the mouse promoter revealed the critical importance of this transcription factor for full iNOS promoter activity. Furthermore, the binding of NF-IL-6 to the iNOS promoter (−153/−142) in vivo was increased in mouse cells but was reduced in hamster cells after IFN-γ/LPS stimulation. Differences in the activity of the iNOS promoters were evident in mouse and hamster cells, so they were not merely a result of species-specific differences in transcription factors. Thus, we have identified unique DNA sequences and a critical transcription factor, NF-IL-6, which contribute to the overall basal and inducible expression of hamster iNOS. PMID:22517919

Determining and comparing protein function in Bacterial genome sequences

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Vesth, Tammi Camilla

of this class have very little homology to other known genomes making functional annotation based on sequence similarity very difficult. Inspired in part by this analysis, an approach for comparative functional annotation was created based public sequenced genomes, CMGfunc. Functionally related groups......In November 2013, there was around 21.000 different prokaryotic genomes sequenced and publicly available, and the number is growing daily with another 20.000 or more genomes expected to be sequenced and deposited by the end of 2014. An important part of the analysis of this data is the functional...... annotation of genes – the descriptions assigned to genes that describe the likely function of the encoded proteins. This process is limited by several factors, including the definition of a function which can be more or less specific as well as how many genes can actually be assigned a function based...

Antibiotic selection of Escherichia coli sequence type 131 in a mouse intestinal colonization model

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hertz, Frederik Boetius; Løbner-Olesen, Anders; Frimodt-Møller, Niels

2014-01-01

The ability of different antibiotics to select for extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Escherichia coli remains a topic of discussion. In a mouse intestinal colonization model, we evaluated the selective abilities of nine common antimicrobials (cefotaxime, cefuroxime, dicloxacillin...... day, antibiotic treatment was initiated and given subcutaneously once a day for three consecutive days. CFU of E. coli ST131, Bacteroides, and Gram-positive aerobic bacteria in fecal samples were studied, with intervals, until day 8. Bacteroides was used as an indicator organism for impact on the Gram......, clindamycin, penicillin, ampicillin, meropenem, ciprofloxacin, and amdinocillin) against a CTX-M-15-producing E. coli sequence type 131 (ST131) isolate with a fluoroquinolone resistance phenotype. Mice (8 per group) were orogastrically administered 0.25 ml saline with 10(8) CFU/ml E. coli ST131. On that same...

An analysis of possible off target effects following CAS9/CRISPR targeted deletions of neuropeptide gene enhancers from the mouse genome.

Science.gov (United States)

Hay, Elizabeth Anne; Khalaf, Abdulla Razak; Marini, Pietro; Brown, Andrew; Heath, Karyn; Sheppard, Darrin; MacKenzie, Alasdair

2017-08-01

We have successfully used comparative genomics to identify putative regulatory elements within the human genome that contribute to the tissue specific expression of neuropeptides such as galanin and receptors such as CB1. However, a previous inability to rapidly delete these elements from the mouse genome has prevented optimal assessment of their function in-vivo. This has been solved using CAS9/CRISPR genome editing technology which uses a bacterial endonuclease called CAS9 that, in combination with specifically designed guide RNA (gRNA) molecules, cuts specific regions of the mouse genome. However, reports of "off target" effects, whereby the CAS9 endonuclease is able to cut sites other than those targeted, limits the appeal of this technology. We used cytoplasmic microinjection of gRNA and CAS9 mRNA into 1-cell mouse embryos to rapidly generate enhancer knockout mouse lines. The current study describes our analysis of the genomes of these enhancer knockout lines to detect possible off-target effects. Bioinformatic analysis was used to identify the most likely putative off-target sites and to design PCR primers that would amplify these sequences from genomic DNA of founder enhancer deletion mouse lines. Amplified DNA was then sequenced and blasted against the mouse genome sequence to detect off-target effects. Using this approach we were unable to detect any evidence of off-target effects in the genomes of three founder lines using any of the four gRNAs used in the analysis. This study suggests that the problem of off-target effects in transgenic mice have been exaggerated and that CAS9/CRISPR represents a highly effective and accurate method of deleting putative neuropeptide gene enhancer sequences from the mouse genome. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Genomes of the Mouse Collaborative Cross.

Science.gov (United States)

Srivastava, Anuj; Morgan, Andrew P; Najarian, Maya L; Sarsani, Vishal Kumar; Sigmon, J Sebastian; Shorter, John R; Kashfeen, Anwica; McMullan, Rachel C; Williams, Lucy H; Giusti-Rodríguez, Paola; Ferris, Martin T; Sullivan, Patrick; Hock, Pablo; Miller, Darla R; Bell, Timothy A; McMillan, Leonard; Churchill, Gary A; de Villena, Fernando Pardo-Manuel

2017-06-01

new genetic variants introduced by mutation and drift in the CC genomes. We estimate that new SNP mutations are accumulating in each CC strain at a rate of 2.4 ± 0.4 per gigabase per generation. The fixation of new mutations by genetic drift has introduced thousands of new variants into the CC strains. The majority of these mutations are novel compared to currently sequenced laboratory stocks and wild mice, and some are predicted to alter gene function. Approximately one-third of the CC inbred strains have acquired large deletions (>10 kb) many of which overlap known coding genes and functional elements. The sequence of these mice is a critical resource to CC users, increases threefold the number of mouse inbred strain genomes available publicly, and provides insight into the effect of mutation and drift on common resources. Copyright © 2017 Srivastava et al.

Comparative effectiveness of inter-simple sequence repeat and ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

A study to compare the effectiveness of inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) profiling was carried out with a total of 65 DNA samples using 12 species of Indian Garcinia. ISSR and RAPD profiling were performed with 19 and 12 primers, respectively. ISSR markers ...

Statistical method to compare massive parallel sequencing pipelines.

Science.gov (United States)

Elsensohn, M H; Leblay, N; Dimassi, S; Campan-Fournier, A; Labalme, A; Roucher-Boulez, F; Sanlaville, D; Lesca, G; Bardel, C; Roy, P

2017-03-01

Today, sequencing is frequently carried out by Massive Parallel Sequencing (MPS) that cuts drastically sequencing time and expenses. Nevertheless, Sanger sequencing remains the main validation method to confirm the presence of variants. The analysis of MPS data involves the development of several bioinformatic tools, academic or commercial. We present here a statistical method to compare MPS pipelines and test it in a comparison between an academic (BWA-GATK) and a commercial pipeline (TMAP-NextGENe®), with and without reference to a gold standard (here, Sanger sequencing), on a panel of 41 genes in 43 epileptic patients. This method used the number of variants to fit log-linear models for pairwise agreements between pipelines. To assess the heterogeneity of the margins and the odds ratios of agreement, four log-linear models were used: a full model, a homogeneous-margin model, a model with single odds ratio for all patients, and a model with single intercept. Then a log-linear mixed model was fitted considering the biological variability as a random effect. Among the 390,339 base-pairs sequenced, TMAP-NextGENe® and BWA-GATK found, on average, 2253.49 and 1857.14 variants (single nucleotide variants and indels), respectively. Against the gold standard, the pipelines had similar sensitivities (63.47% vs. 63.42%) and close but significantly different specificities (99.57% vs. 99.65%; p < 0.001). Same-trend results were obtained when only single nucleotide variants were considered (99.98% specificity and 76.81% sensitivity for both pipelines). The method allows thus pipeline comparison and selection. It is generalizable to all types of MPS data and all pipelines.

Automated whole-genome multiple alignment of rat, mouse, and human

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Brudno, Michael; Poliakov, Alexander; Salamov, Asaf; Cooper, Gregory M.; Sidow, Arend; Rubin, Edward M.; Solovyev, Victor; Batzoglou, Serafim; Dubchak, Inna

2004-07-04

We have built a whole genome multiple alignment of the three currently available mammalian genomes using a fully automated pipeline which combines the local/global approach of the Berkeley Genome Pipeline and the LAGAN program. The strategy is based on progressive alignment, and consists of two main steps: (1) alignment of the mouse and rat genomes; and (2) alignment of human to either the mouse-rat alignments from step 1, or the remaining unaligned mouse and rat sequences. The resulting alignments demonstrate high sensitivity, with 87% of all human gene-coding areas aligned in both mouse and rat. The specificity is also high: <7% of the rat contigs are aligned to multiple places in human and 97% of all alignments with human sequence > 100kb agree with a three-way synteny map built independently using predicted exons in the three genomes. At the nucleotide level <1% of the rat nucleotides are mapped to multiple places in the human sequence in the alignment; and 96.5% of human nucleotides within all alignments agree with the synteny map. The alignments are publicly available online, with visualization through the novel Multi-VISTA browser that we also present.

Mouse mammary tumor virus-like gene sequences are present in lung patient specimens

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rodríguez-Padilla Cristina

2011-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Previous studies have reported on the presence of Murine Mammary Tumor Virus (MMTV-like gene sequences in human cancer tissue specimens. Here, we search for MMTV-like gene sequences in lung diseases including carcinomas specimens from a Mexican population. This study was based on our previous study reporting that the INER51 lung cancer cell line, from a pleural effusion of a Mexican patient, contains MMTV-like env gene sequences. Results The MMTV-like env gene sequences have been detected in three out of 18 specimens studied, by PCR using a specific set of MMTV-like primers. The three identified MMTV-like gene sequences, which were assigned as INER6, HZ101, and HZ14, were 99%, 98%, and 97% homologous, respectively, as compared to GenBank sequence accession number AY161347. The INER6 and HZ-101 samples were isolated from lung cancer specimens, and the HZ-14 was isolated from an acute inflammatory lung infiltrate sample. Two of the env sequences exhibited disruption of the reading frame due to mutations. Conclusion In summary, we identified the presence of MMTV-like gene sequences in 2 out of 11 (18% of the lung carcinomas and 1 out of 7 (14% of acute inflamatory lung infiltrate specimens studied of a Mexican Population.

Comparative genomics beyond sequence-based alignments

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Þórarinsson, Elfar; Yao, Zizhen; Wiklund, Eric D.

2008-01-01

Recent computational scans for non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in multiple organisms have relied on existing multiple sequence alignments. However, as sequence similarity drops, a key signal of RNA structure--frequent compensating base changes--is increasingly likely to cause sequence-based alignment me...

Porcine MYF6 gene: sequence, homology analysis, and variation in the promoter region.

Science.gov (United States)

Wyszyńska-Koko, J; Kurył, J

2004-01-01

MYF6 gene codes for the bHLH transcription factor belonging to MyoD family. Its expression accompanies the processes of differentiation and maturation of myotubes during embriogenesis and continues on a relatively high level after birth, affecting the muscle phenotype. The porcine MYF6 gene was amplified and sequenced and compared with MYF6 gene sequences of other species. The amino acid sequence was deduced and an interspecies homology analysis was performed. Myf-6 protein shows a high conservation among species of 99 and 97% identity when comparing pig with cow and human, respectively, and of 93% when comparing pig with mouse and rat. The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was revealed within the promoter region, which appeared to be T --> C transition recognized by a MspI restriction enzyme.

Characterization of piRNAs across postnatal development in mouse brain

KAUST Repository

Ghosheh, Yanal; Seridi, Loqmane; Ryu, Tae Woo; Takahashi, Hazuki; Orlando, Valerio; Carninci, Piero; Ravasi, Timothy

2016-01-01

PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are responsible for maintaining the genome stability by silencing retrotransposons in germline tissues– where piRNAs were first discovered and thought to be restricted. Recently, novel functions were reported for piRNAs in germline and somatic cells. Using deep sequencing of small RNAs and CAGE of postnatal development of mouse brain, we identified piRNAs only in adult mouse brain. These piRNAs have similar sequence length as those of MILI-bound piRNAs. In addition, we predicted novel candidate regulators and putative targets of adult brain piRNAs.

Characterization of piRNAs across postnatal development in mouse brain

KAUST Repository

Ghosheh, Yanal

2016-04-26

PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are responsible for maintaining the genome stability by silencing retrotransposons in germline tissues– where piRNAs were first discovered and thought to be restricted. Recently, novel functions were reported for piRNAs in germline and somatic cells. Using deep sequencing of small RNAs and CAGE of postnatal development of mouse brain, we identified piRNAs only in adult mouse brain. These piRNAs have similar sequence length as those of MILI-bound piRNAs. In addition, we predicted novel candidate regulators and putative targets of adult brain piRNAs.

Molecular analyses of the agouti allele in the Japanese house mouse identify a novel variant of the agouti gene.

Science.gov (United States)

Iwasa, Masahiro A; Kawamura, Sayaka; Myoshu, Hikari; Suzuki, Taichi A

2018-03-01

It has been thought that the Japanese house mouse carries the A w allele at the agouti locus causing light-colored bellies, but they do not always show this coloration. Thus, the presence of the A w allele seems to be doubtful in them. To ascertain whether the A w allele is present, a two-pronged approach was used. First, we compared lengths of DNA fragments obtained from three PCRs conducted on them to the known fragment sizes generated from mouse strains exhibiting homozygosities of either a/a, A/A, or A w /A w . PCR I, PCR II, and PCR III amplify only in the A and A w alleles, the a and A w alleles, and the a allele, respectively, and we detected amplifications in strains with A/A and A w /A w by PCR I, in those with a/a and the Japanese house mouse by PCR II, and in those with a/a by PCR III. Second, we sequenced the exon 1A region of the agouti gene and obtained sequences corresponding to the above strains and the Japanese house mouse, but their sequences were similar to those of the a allele. We concluded that their agouti allele is not identical to the A w allele and seems to be a novel type similar to the a allele.

Comparative analysis of TCDD-induced AhR-mediated gene expression in human, mouse and rat primary B cells

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kovalova, Natalia, E-mail: kovalova@msu.edu [Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Institute for Integrative Toxicology, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Nault, Rance, E-mail: naultran@msu.edu [Institute for Integrative Toxicology, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Crawford, Robert, E-mail: crawfo28@msu.edu [Institute for Integrative Toxicology, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Zacharewski, Timothy R., E-mail: tzachare@msu.edu [Institute for Integrative Toxicology, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Kaminski, Norbert E., E-mail: kamins11@msu.edu [Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI 48824 (United States); Institute for Integrative Toxicology, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI 48824 (United States)

2017-02-01

2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is a persistent environmental pollutant that activates the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) resulting in altered gene expression. In vivo, in vitro, and ex vivo studies have demonstrated that B cells are directly impaired by TCDD, and are a sensitive target as evidenced by suppression of antibody responses. The window of sensitivity to TCDD-induced suppression of IgM secretion among mouse, rat and human B cells is similar. Specifically, TCDD must be present within the initial 12 h post B cell stimulation, indicating that TCDD disrupts early signaling network(s) necessary for B lymphocyte activation and differentiation. Therefore, we hypothesized that TCDD treatment across three different species (mouse, rat and human) triggers a conserved, B cell-specific mechanism that is involved in TCDD-induced immunosuppression. RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) was used to identify B cell-specific orthologous genes that are differentially expressed in response to TCDD in primary mouse, rat and human B cells. Time course studies identified TCDD-elicited differential expression of 515 human, 2371 mouse and 712 rat orthologous genes over the 24-h period. 28 orthologs were differentially expressed in response to TCDD in all three species. Overrepresented pathways enriched in all three species included cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, ECM-receptor interaction, focal adhesion, regulation of actin cytoskeleton and pathways in cancer. Differentially expressed genes functionally associated with cell-cell signaling in humans, immune response in mice, and oxidation reduction in rats. Overall, these results suggest that despite the conservation of the AhR and its signaling mechanism, TCDD elicits species-specific gene expression changes. - Highlights: • Kovalova TAAP Highlights Nov. 2016 • RNA-Seq identified TCDD-induced gene expression in PWM-activated primary B cells. • TCDD elicited differential expression of 515 human, 2371 mouse and 712

Quantitatively different, yet qualitatively alike: a meta-analysis of the mouse core gut microbiome with a view towards the human gut microbiome.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lukasz Krych

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: A number of human diseases such as obesity and diabetes are associated with changes or imbalances in the gut microbiota (GM. Laboratory mice are commonly used as experimental models for such disorders. The introduction and dynamic development of next generation sequencing techniques have enabled detailed mapping of the GM of both humans and animal models. Nevertheless there is still a significant knowledge gap regarding the human and mouse common GM core and thus the applicability of the latter as an animal model. The aim of the present study was to identify inter- and intra-individual differences and similarities between the GM composition of particular mouse strains and humans. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A total of 1509428 high quality tag-encoded partial 16S rRNA gene sequences determined using 454/FLX Titanium (Roche pyro-sequencing reflecting the GM composition of 32 human samples from 16 individuals and 88 mouse samples from three laboratory mouse strains commonly used in diabetes research were analyzed using Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA, nonparametric multivariate analysis of similarity (ANOSIM and alpha diversity measures. A reliable cutoff threshold for low abundant taxa estimated on the basis of the present study is recommended for similar trials. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Distinctive quantitative differences in the relative abundance of most taxonomic groups between the examined categories were found. All investigated mouse strains clustered separately, but with a range of shared features when compared to the human GM. However, both mouse fecal, caecal and human fecal samples shared to a large extent not only representatives of the same phyla, but also a substantial fraction of common genera, where the number of shared genera increased with sequencing depth. In conclusion, the GM of mice and humans is quantitatively different (in terms of abundance of specific phyla and species but share a large qualitatively

Comparative analysis of sequences from PT 2013

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mikkelsen, Susie Sommer

Sheatfish and not EHNV. Generally, mistakes occurred at the ends of the sequences. This can be due to several factors. One is that the sequence has not been trimmed of the sequence primer sites. Another is the lack of quality control of the chromatogram. Finally, sequencing in just one direction can result...... diseases in Europe. As part of the EURL proficiency test for fish diseases it is required to sequence any RANA virus isolates found in any of the samples. It is also highly recommended to sequence the ISA virus to determine whether it be HPRΔ or HPR0. Furthermore, it is recommended that any VHSV and IHNV...... isolates be genotyped. As part of the evaluation of the proficiency results it was decided this year to look into the quality and similarity of the sequence results for selected viruses. Ampoule III in the proficiency test 2013 contained an EHNV isolate. The EURL received 43 sequences from 41 laboratories...

Comparative genome sequencing of Drosophila pseudoobscura: Chromosomal, gene, and cis-element evolution

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Richards, Stephen; Liu, Yue; Bettencourt, Brian R.

2005-01-01

years (Myr) since the pseudoobscura/melanogaster divergence. Genes expressed in the testes had higher amino acid sequence divergence than the genome-wide average, consistent with the rapid evolution of sex-specific proteins. Cis-regulatory sequences are more conserved than random and nearby sequences......We have sequenced the genome of a second Drosophila species, Drosophila pseudoobscura, and compared this to the genome sequence of Drosophila melanogaster, a primary model organism. Throughout evolution the vast majority of Drosophila genes have remained on the same chromosome arm, but within each...... between the species-but the difference is slight, suggesting that the evolution of cis-regulatory elements is flexible. Overall, a pattern of repeat-mediated chromosomal rearrangement, and high coadaptation of both male genes and cis-regulatory sequences emerges as important themes of genome divergence...

Characterization of mutations at the mouse phenylalanine hydroxylase locus

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

McDonald, J.D.; Charlton, C.K. [Wichita State Univ., KS (United States)

1997-02-01

Two genetic mouse models for human phenylketonuria have been characterized by DNA sequence analysis. For each, a distinct mutation was identified within the protein coding sequence of the phenylalanine hydroxylase gene. This establishes that the mutated locus is the same as that causing human phenylketonuria and allows a comparison between these mouse phenylketonuria models and the human disease. A genotype/phenotype relationship that is strikingly similar to the human disease emerges, underscoring the similarity of phenylketonuria in mouse and man. In PAH{sup ENU1}, the phenotype is mild. The Pah{sup enu1} mutation predicts a conservative valine to alanine amino acid substitution and is located in exon 3, a gene region where serious mutations are rare in humans. In PAH{sup ENU2} the phenotype is severe. The Pah{sup enu2} mutation predicts a radical phenylalanine to serine substitution and is located in exon 7, a gene region where serious mutations are common in humans. In PAH{sup ENU2}, the sequence information was used to devise a direct genotyping system based on the creation of a new Alw26I restriction endonuclease site. 26 refs., 2 figs., 1 tab.

Comparative analysis of myostatin gene and promoter sequences of Qinchuan and Red Angus cattle.

Science.gov (United States)

He, Y L; Wu, Y H; Quan, F S; Liu, Y G; Zhang, Y

2013-09-04

To better understand the function of the myostatin gene and its promoter region in bovine, we amplified and sequenced the myostatin gene and promoter from the blood of Qinchuan and Red Angus cattle by using polymerase chain reaction. The sequences of Qinchuan and Red Angus cattle were compared with those of other cattle breeds available in GenBank. Exon splice sites were confirmed by mRNA sequencing. Compared to the published sequence (GenBank accession No. AF320998), 69 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified in the Qinchuan myostatin gene, only one of which was an insertion mutation in Qinchuan cattle. There was a 16-bp insertion in the first 705-bp intron in 3 Qinchuan cattle. A total of 7 SNPs were identified in exon 3, in which the mutation occurred in the third base of the codon and was synonymous. On comparing the Qinchuan myostatin gene sequence to that of Red Angus cattle, a total of 50 SNPs were identified in the first and third exons. In addition, there were 18 SNPs identified in the Qinchuan cattle promoter region compared with those of other cattle compared to the Red Angus cattle myostatin promoter region. breeds (GenBank accession No. AF348479), but only 14 SNPs when compared to the Red Angus cattle myostatin promoter region.

Intestinal lesions in pediatric Crohn disease: comparative detectability among pulse sequences at MR enterography

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sohn, Beomseok; Kim, Myung-Joon; Lee, Mi-Jung; Koh, Hong; Han, Kyung Hwa

2014-01-01

Variable sequences can be used in MR enterography, and no consensus exists for the best protocol in children with Crohn disease. To compare the lesion detectability of various MR enterography sequences and to correlate the findings of these sequences with the Pediatric Crohn's Disease Activity Index (PCDAI) in children with Crohn disease. Children with clinically or pathologically confirmed Crohn disease underwent MR enterography, including a single-shot fast spin-echo (SSFSE) sequence, motility imaging (coronal 2-D balanced fast field echo), diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), and dynamic contrast enhancement imaging (including arterial, portal and delayed phases). The lesion detectability of each sequence was graded 0-2 for each involved bowel segment. The lesion detectability and PCDAI result on different sequences were compared using the weighted least squares method and Student's t-test, respectively. Fifteen children (11 boys, 4 girls, mean age 13.7 ± 1.4 years) with a total of 41 lesions were included in this study. All lesions detected in more than two sequences were visible on the single-shot fast spin-echo (SSFSE) sequence. The relative lesion detection rate was 78.1% on motility imaging, 90.2% on DWI, and 92.7% on arterial, 95.1% on portal and 95.1% on delayed phase imaging. Compared to the SSFSE sequence, motility imaging (P < 0.001) and DWI (P = 0.039) demonstrated lower detectability. The mean PCDAI result in the detected lesions was statistically higher only on dynamic enhancement imaging (P < 0.001). All MR enterography sequences were found to have relatively high lesion detectability in children with Crohn disease, while motility imaging showed the lowest lesion detectability. Lesions detected on dynamic enhancement imaging showed a higher PCDAI result, which suggests that this sequence is specific for active inflammation. (orig.)

Comparative cardiac toxicity of anthracyclines in vitro and in vivo in the mouse.

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Stefano Toldo

Full Text Available PURPOSE: The antineoplastic efficacy of anthracyclines is limited by their cardiac toxicity. In this study, we evaluated the toxicity of doxorubicin, non-pegylated liposomal-delivered doxorubicin, and epirubicin in HL-1 adult cardiomyocytes in culture as well as in the mouse in vivo. METHODS: The cardiomyocytes were incubated with the three anthracyclines (1 µM to assess reactive oxygen generation, DNA damage and apoptotic cell death. CF-1 mice (10/group received doxorubicin, epirubicin or non-pegylated liposomal-doxorubicin (10 mg/kg and cardiac function was monitored by Doppler echocardiography to measure left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF, heart rate (HR and cardiac output (CO both prior to and 10 days after drug treatment. RESULTS: In HL-1 cells, non-pegylated liposomal-doxorubicin generated significantly less reactive oxygen species (ROS, as well as less DNA damage and apoptosis activation when compared with doxorubicin and epirubicin. Cultured breast tumor cells showed similar sensitivity to the three anthracyclines. In the healthy mouse, non-pegylated liposomal doxorubicin showed a minimal and non-significant decrease in LVEF with no change in HR or CO, compared to doxorubicin and epirubicin. CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence for reduced cardiac toxicity of non-pegylated-liposomal doxorubicin characterized by attenuation of ROS generation, DNA damage and apoptosis in comparison to epirubicin and doxorubicin.

Borders and Comparative Cytoarchitecture of the Perirhinal and Postrhinal Cortices in an F1 Hybrid Mouse

Science.gov (United States)

Beaudin, Stephane A.; Singh, Teghpal; Agster, Kara L.

2013-01-01

We examined the cytoarchitectonic and chemoarchitectonic organization of the cortical regions associated with the posterior rhinal fissure in the mouse brain, within the framework of what is known about these regions in the rat. Primary observations were in a first-generation hybrid mouse line, B6129PF/J1. The F1 hybrid was chosen because of the many advantages afforded in the study of the molecular and cellular bases of learning and memory. Comparisons with the parent strains, the C57BL6/J and 129P3/J are also reported. Mouse brain tissue was processed for visualization of Nissl material, myelin, acetyl cholinesterase, parvalbumin, and heavy metals. Tissue stained for heavy metals by the Timm’s method was particularly useful in the assignment of borders and in the comparative analyses because the patterns of staining were similar across species and strains. As in the rat, the areas examined were parcellated into 2 regions, the perirhinal and the postrhinal cortices. The perirhinal cortex was divided into areas 35 and 36, and the postrhinal cortex was divided into dorsal (PORd) and ventral (PORv) subregions. In addition to identifying the borders of the perirhinal cortex, we were able to identify a region in the mouse brain that shares signature features with the rat postrhinal cortex. PMID:22368084

Full-Length Sequence of Mouse Acupuncture-Induced 1-L (Aig1l Gene Including Its Transcriptional Start Site

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Mika Ohta

2011-01-01

Full Text Available We have been investigating the molecular efficacy of electroacupuncture (EA, which is one type of acupuncture therapy. In our previous molecular biological study of acupuncture, we found an EA-induced gene, named acupuncture-induced 1-L (Aig1l, in mouse skeletal muscle. The aims of this study consisted of identification of the full-length cDNA sequence of Aig1l including the transcriptional start site, determination of the tissue distribution of Aig1l and analysis of the effect of EA on Aig1l gene expression. We determined the complete cDNA sequence including the transcriptional start site via cDNA cloning with the cap site hunting method. We then analyzed the tissue distribution of Aig1l by means of northern blot analysis and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. We used the semiquantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction to examine the effect of EA on Aig1l gene expression. Our results showed that the complete cDNA sequence of Aig1l was 6073 bp long, and the putative protein consisted of 962 amino acids. All seven tissues that we analyzed expressed the Aig1l gene. In skeletal muscle, EA induced expression of the Aig1l gene, with high expression observed after 3 hours of EA. Our findings thus suggest that the Aig1l gene may play a key role in the molecular mechanisms of EA efficacy.

Functional analysis of limb transcriptional enhancers in the mouse.

Science.gov (United States)

Nolte, Mark J; Wang, Ying; Deng, Jian Min; Swinton, Paul G; Wei, Caimiao; Guindani, Michele; Schwartz, Robert J; Behringer, Richard R

2014-01-01

Transcriptional enhancers are genomic sequences bound by transcription factors that act together with basal transcriptional machinery to regulate gene transcription. Several high-throughput methods have generated large datasets of tissue-specific enhancer sequences with putative roles in developmental processes. However, few enhancers have been deleted from the genome to determine their roles in development. To understand the roles of two enhancers active in the mouse embryonic limb bud we deleted them from the genome. Although the genes regulated by these enhancers are unknown, they were selected because they were identified in a screen for putative limb bud-specific enhancers associated with p300, an acetyltransferase that participates in protein complexes that promote active transcription, and because the orthologous human enhancers (H1442 and H280) drive distinct lacZ expression patterns in limb buds of embryonic day (E) 11.5 transgenic mice. We show that the orthologous mouse sequences, M1442 and M280, regulate dynamic expression in the developing limb. Although significant transcriptional differences in enhancer-proximal genes in embryonic limb buds accompany the deletion of M1442 and M280 no gross limb malformations during embryonic development were observed, demonstrating that M1442 and M280 are not required for mouse limb development. However, M280 is required for the development and/or maintenance of body size; M280 mice are significantly smaller than controls. M280 also harbors an "ultraconserved" sequence that is identical between human, rat, and mouse. This is the first report of a phenotype resulting from the deletion of an ultraconserved element. These studies highlight the importance of determining enhancer regulatory function by experiments that manipulate them in situ and suggest that some of an enhancer's regulatory capacities may be developmentally tolerated rather than developmentally required. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Quantitative miRNA expression analysis: comparing microarrays with next-generation sequencing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Willenbrock, Hanni; Salomon, Jesper; Søkilde, Rolf

2009-01-01

Recently, next-generation sequencing has been introduced as a promising, new platform for assessing the copy number of transcripts, while the existing microarray technology is considered less reliable for absolute, quantitative expression measurements. Nonetheless, so far, results from the two...... technologies have only been compared based on biological data, leading to the conclusion that, although they are somewhat correlated, expression values differ significantly. Here, we use synthetic RNA samples, resembling human microRNA samples, to find that microarray expression measures actually correlate...... better with sample RNA content than expression measures obtained from sequencing data. In addition, microarrays appear highly sensitive and perform equivalently to next-generation sequencing in terms of reproducibility and relative ratio quantification....

Expressed sequence tags as a tool for phylogenetic analysis of placental mammal evolution.

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Morgan Kullberg

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: We investigate the usefulness of expressed sequence tags, ESTs, for establishing divergences within the tree of placental mammals. This is done on the example of the established relationships among primates (human, lagomorphs (rabbit, rodents (rat and mouse, artiodactyls (cow, carnivorans (dog and proboscideans (elephant. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We have produced 2000 ESTs (1.2 mega bases from a marsupial mouse and characterized the data for their use in phylogenetic analysis. The sequences were used to identify putative orthologous sequences from whole genome projects. Although most ESTs stem from single sequence reads, the frequency of potential sequencing errors was found to be lower than allelic variation. Most of the sequences represented slowly evolving housekeeping-type genes, with an average amino acid distance of 6.6% between human and mouse. Positive Darwinian selection was identified at only a few single sites. Phylogenetic analyses of the EST data yielded trees that were consistent with those established from whole genome projects. CONCLUSIONS: The general quality of EST sequences and the general absence of positive selection in these sequences make ESTs an attractive tool for phylogenetic analysis. The EST approach allows, at reasonable costs, a fast extension of data sampling from species outside the genome projects.

BLAST and FASTA similarity searching for multiple sequence alignment.

Science.gov (United States)

Pearson, William R

2014-01-01

BLAST, FASTA, and other similarity searching programs seek to identify homologous proteins and DNA sequences based on excess sequence similarity. If two sequences share much more similarity than expected by chance, the simplest explanation for the excess similarity is common ancestry-homology. The most effective similarity searches compare protein sequences, rather than DNA sequences, for sequences that encode proteins, and use expectation values, rather than percent identity, to infer homology. The BLAST and FASTA packages of sequence comparison programs provide programs for comparing protein and DNA sequences to protein databases (the most sensitive searches). Protein and translated-DNA comparisons to protein databases routinely allow evolutionary look back times from 1 to 2 billion years; DNA:DNA searches are 5-10-fold less sensitive. BLAST and FASTA can be run on popular web sites, but can also be downloaded and installed on local computers. With local installation, target databases can be customized for the sequence data being characterized. With today's very large protein databases, search sensitivity can also be improved by searching smaller comprehensive databases, for example, a complete protein set from an evolutionarily neighboring model organism. By default, BLAST and FASTA use scoring strategies target for distant evolutionary relationships; for comparisons involving short domains or queries, or searches that seek relatively close homologs (e.g. mouse-human), shallower scoring matrices will be more effective. Both BLAST and FASTA provide very accurate statistical estimates, which can be used to reliably identify protein sequences that diverged more than 2 billion years ago.

Comparative analysis of the prion protein gene sequences in African lion.

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Chang-De; Pang, Wan-Yong; Zhao, De-Ming

2006-10-01

The prion protein gene of African lion (Panthera Leo) was first cloned and polymorphisms screened. The results suggest that the prion protein gene of eight African lions is highly homogenous. The amino acid sequences of the prion protein (PrP) of all samples tested were identical. Four single nucleotide polymorphisms (C42T, C81A, C420T, T600C) in the prion protein gene (Prnp) of African lion were found, but no amino acid substitutions. Sequence analysis showed that the higher homology is observed to felis catus AF003087 (96.7%) and to sheep number M31313.1 (96.2%) Genbank accessed. With respect to all the mammalian prion protein sequences compared, the African lion prion protein sequence has three amino acid substitutions. The homology might in turn affect the potential intermolecular interactions critical for cross species transmission of prion disease.

A combination of LongSAGE with Solexa sequencing is well suited to explore the depth and the complexity of transcriptome

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Scoté-Blachon Céline

2008-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background "Open" transcriptome analysis methods allow to study gene expression without a priori knowledge of the transcript sequences. As of now, SAGE (Serial Analysis of Gene Expression, LongSAGE and MPSS (Massively Parallel Signature Sequencing are the mostly used methods for "open" transcriptome analysis. Both LongSAGE and MPSS rely on the isolation of 21 pb tag sequences from each transcript. In contrast to LongSAGE, the high throughput sequencing method used in MPSS enables the rapid sequencing of very large libraries containing several millions of tags, allowing deep transcriptome analysis. However, a bias in the complexity of the transcriptome representation obtained by MPSS was recently uncovered. Results In order to make a deep analysis of mouse hypothalamus transcriptome avoiding the limitation introduced by MPSS, we combined LongSAGE with the Solexa sequencing technology and obtained a library of more than 11 millions of tags. We then compared it to a LongSAGE library of mouse hypothalamus sequenced with the Sanger method. Conclusion We found that Solexa sequencing technology combined with LongSAGE is perfectly suited for deep transcriptome analysis. In contrast to MPSS, it gives a complex representation of transcriptome as reliable as a LongSAGE library sequenced by the Sanger method.

Ultrastructural comparison of single dose hydroxyurea and ionizing radiation on mouse hair roots

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Pearson, R.W.; Malkinson, F.D.

1986-01-01

Growing mouse vibrissae were investigated by light and electron microscopy to compare the effects of hydroxyurea (1500 mgkg/sup -1/ intraperitoneally) and gamma radiation (10 Gy). In the case of the drug, specimens were obtained from 30 min to 9 days post-treatment. Irradiated specimens were taken at intervals up to 1.5 years post-irradiation. The morphological alterations were similar for both types of insult, but the time sequences of events were quite different. The post-irradiation recovery period was vastly extended compared with that of the hydroxyurea treated hair roots.

Ultrastructural comparison of single dose hydroxyurea and ionizing radiation on mouse hair roots

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pearson, R.W.; Malkinson, F.D.

1986-01-01

Growing mouse vibrissae were investigated by light and electron microscopy to compare the effects of hydroxyurea (1500 mgkg -1 intraperitoneally) and gamma radiation (10 Gy). In the case of the drug, specimens were obtained from 30 min to 9 days post-treatment. Irradiated specimens were taken at intervals up to 1.5 years post-irradiation. The morphological alterations were similar for both types of insult, but the time sequences of events were quite different. The post-irradiation recovery period was vastly extended compared with that of the hydroxyurea treated hair roots. (UK)

A catalog of the mouse gut metagenome

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Xiao, Liang; Feng, Qiang; Liang, Suisha

2015-01-01

laboratories and fed either a low-fat or high-fat diet. Similar to the human gut microbiome, >99% of the cataloged genes are bacterial. We identified 541 metagenomic species and defined a core set of 26 metagenomic species found in 95% of the mice. The mouse gut microbiome is functionally similar to its human......We established a catalog of the mouse gut metagenome comprising ∼2.6 million nonredundant genes by sequencing DNA from fecal samples of 184 mice. To secure high microbiome diversity, we used mouse strains of diverse genetic backgrounds, from different providers, kept in different housing...... counterpart, with 95.2% of its Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) orthologous groups in common. However, only 4.0% of the mouse gut microbial genes were shared (95% identity, 90% coverage) with those of the human gut microbiome. This catalog provides a useful reference for future studies....

Generation of Knock-in Mouse by Genome Editing.

Science.gov (United States)

Fujii, Wataru

2017-01-01

Knock-in mice are useful for evaluating endogenous gene expressions and functions in vivo. Instead of the conventional gene-targeting method using embryonic stem cells, an exogenous DNA sequence can be inserted into the target locus in the zygote using genome editing technology. In this chapter, I describe the generation of epitope-tagged mice using engineered endonuclease and single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotide through the mouse zygote as an example of how to generate a knock-in mouse by genome editing.

A cytocidal tissue kallikrein isolated from mouse submandibular glands.

Science.gov (United States)

Murakami, K; Ikigai, H; Nagumo, N; Tomita, M; Shimamura, T

1989-11-06

A cytocidal factor against mouse thymocytes was purified from the submandibular glands of female BALB/c mice using Sephadex G-50 gel filtration chromatography and reverse-phase HPLC. SDS-PAGE and amino acid sequence analysis revealed that the cytocidal factor was mouse glandular kallikrein (mGK)-6. mGK-6 showed an optimal enzyme activity at pH 10 and a cytocidal activity against thymocytes in a dose-dependent manner.

Sequence of human protamine 2 cDNA

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Domenjoud, L; Fronia, C; Uhde, F; Engel, W [Universitaet Goettingen (West Germany)

1988-08-11

The authors report the cloning and sequencing of a cDNA clone for human protamine 2 (hp2), isolated from a human testis cDNA library cloned in the vector {lambda}-gt11. A 66mer oligonucleotide, that corresponds to an amino acid sequence which is highly conserved between hp2 and mouse protamine 2 (mp2) served as hybridization probe. The homology between the amino acid sequence deduced from our cDNA and the published amino acid sequence for hp2 is 100%.

Introduction of the human proα1(I) collagen gene into proα1(I)-deficient Mov-13 mouse cells leads to formation of functional mouse-human hybrid type I collagen

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schnieke, A.; Dziadek, M.; Bateman, J.; Mascara, T.; Harbers, K.; Gelinas, R.; Jaenisch, R.

1987-01-01

The Mov-13 mouse strain carries a retroviral insertion in the proα1(I) collagen gene that prevents transcription of the gene. Cell lines derived from homozygous embryos do not express type I collagen although normal amounts of proα2 mRNA are synthesized. The authors have introduced genomic clones of either the human or mouse proα1(I) collagen gene into homozygous cell lines to assess whether the human or mouse proα1(I) chains can associate with the endogenous mouse proα2(I) chain to form stable type I collagen. The human gene under control of the simian virus 40 promoter was efficiently transcribed in the transfected cells. Protein analyses revealed that stable heterotrimers consisting of two human α1 chains and one mouse α2 chain were formed and that type I collagen was secreted by the transfected cells at normal rates. However, the electrophoretic migration of both α1(I) and α2(I) chains in the human-mouse hybrid molecules were retarded, compared to the α(I) chains in control mouse cells. Inhibition of the posttranslational hydroxylation of lysine and proline resulted in comigration of human and mouse α1 and α2 chains, suggesting that increased posttranslational modification caused the altered electrophoretic migration in the human-mouse hybrid molecules. Amino acid sequence differences between the mouse and human α chains may interfere with the normal rate of helix formation and increase the degree of posttranslational modifications similar to those observed in patients with lethal perinatal osteogenesis imperfecta. The Mov-13 mouse system should allow the authors to study the effect specific mutations introduced in transfected proα1(I) genes have on the synthesis, assembly, and function of collagen I

Technology development for gene discovery and full-length sequencing

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Marcelo Bento Soares

2004-07-19

In previous years, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy, we developed methods for construction of normalized and subtracted cDNA libraries, and constructed hundreds of high-quality libraries for production of Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs). Our clones were made widely available to the scientific community through the IMAGE Consortium, and millions of ESTs were produced from our libraries either by collaborators or by our own sequencing laboratory at the University of Iowa. During this grant period, we focused on (1) the development of a method for preferential cloning of tissue-specific and/or rare transcripts, (2) its utilization to expedite EST-based gene discovery for the NIH Mouse Brain Molecular Anatomy Project, (3) further development and optimization of a method for construction of full-length-enriched cDNA libraries, and (4) modification of a plasmid vector to maximize efficiency of full-length cDNA sequencing by the transposon-mediated approach. It is noteworthy that the technology developed for preferential cloning of rare mRNAs enabled identification of over 2,000 mouse transcripts differentially expressed in the hippocampus. In addition, the method that we optimized for construction of full-length-enriched cDNA libraries was successfully utilized for the production of approximately fifty libraries from the developing mouse nervous system, from which over 2,500 full-ORF-containing cDNAs have been identified and accurately sequenced in their entirety either by our group or by the NIH-Mammalian Gene Collection Program Sequencing Team.

Comparing methods of classifying life courses: Sequence analysis and latent class analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Elzinga, C.H.; Liefbroer, Aart C.; Han, Sapphire

2017-01-01

We compare life course typology solutions generated by sequence analysis (SA) and latent class analysis (LCA). First, we construct an analytic protocol to arrive at typology solutions for both methodologies and present methods to compare the empirical quality of alternative typologies. We apply this

Comparing methods of classifying life courses: sequence analysis and latent class analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Han, Y.; Liefbroer, A.C.; Elzinga, C.

2017-01-01

We compare life course typology solutions generated by sequence analysis (SA) and latent class analysis (LCA). First, we construct an analytic protocol to arrive at typology solutions for both methodologies and present methods to compare the empirical quality of alternative typologies. We apply this

The genomic sequence of ectromelia virus, the causative agent of mousepox

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen Nanhai; Danila, Maria I.; Feng Zehua; Buller, R. Mark L.; Wang Chunlin; Han Xiaosi; Lefkowitz, Elliot J.; Upton, Chris

2003-01-01

Ectromelia virus is the causative agent of mousepox, an acute exanthematous disease of mouse colonies in Europe, Japan, China, and the U.S. The Moscow, Hampstead, and NIH79 strains are the most thoroughly studied with the Moscow strain being the most infectious and virulent for the mouse. In the late 1940s mousepox was proposed as a model for the study of the pathogenesis of smallpox and generalized vaccinia in humans. Studies in the last five decades from a succession of investigators have resulted in a detailed description of the virologic and pathologic disease course in genetically susceptible and resistant inbred and out-bred mice. We report the DNA sequence of the left-hand end, the predicted right-hand terminal repeat, and central regions of the genome of the Moscow strain of ectromelia virus (approximately 177,500 bp), which together with the previously sequenced right-hand end, yields a genome of 209,771 bp. We identified 175 potential genes specifying proteins of between 53 and 1924 amino acids, and 29 regions containing sequences related to genes predicted in other poxviruses, but unlikely to encode for functional proteins in ectromelia virus. The translated protein sequences were compared with the protein database for structure/function relationships, and these analyses were used to investigate poxvirus evolution and to attempt to explain at the cellular and molecular level the well-characterized features of the ectromelia virus natural life cycle

Consensus coding sequence (CCDS) database: a standardized set of human and mouse protein-coding regions supported by expert curation.

Science.gov (United States)

Pujar, Shashikant; O'Leary, Nuala A; Farrell, Catherine M; Loveland, Jane E; Mudge, Jonathan M; Wallin, Craig; Girón, Carlos G; Diekhans, Mark; Barnes, If; Bennett, Ruth; Berry, Andrew E; Cox, Eric; Davidson, Claire; Goldfarb, Tamara; Gonzalez, Jose M; Hunt, Toby; Jackson, John; Joardar, Vinita; Kay, Mike P; Kodali, Vamsi K; Martin, Fergal J; McAndrews, Monica; McGarvey, Kelly M; Murphy, Michael; Rajput, Bhanu; Rangwala, Sanjida H; Riddick, Lillian D; Seal, Ruth L; Suner, Marie-Marthe; Webb, David; Zhu, Sophia; Aken, Bronwen L; Bruford, Elspeth A; Bult, Carol J; Frankish, Adam; Murphy, Terence; Pruitt, Kim D

2018-01-04

The Consensus Coding Sequence (CCDS) project provides a dataset of protein-coding regions that are identically annotated on the human and mouse reference genome assembly in genome annotations produced independently by NCBI and the Ensembl group at EMBL-EBI. This dataset is the product of an international collaboration that includes NCBI, Ensembl, HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee, Mouse Genome Informatics and University of California, Santa Cruz. Identically annotated coding regions, which are generated using an automated pipeline and pass multiple quality assurance checks, are assigned a stable and tracked identifier (CCDS ID). Additionally, coordinated manual review by expert curators from the CCDS collaboration helps in maintaining the integrity and high quality of the dataset. The CCDS data are available through an interactive web page (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CCDS/CcdsBrowse.cgi) and an FTP site (ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/CCDS/). In this paper, we outline the ongoing work, growth and stability of the CCDS dataset and provide updates on new collaboration members and new features added to the CCDS user interface. We also present expert curation scenarios, with specific examples highlighting the importance of an accurate reference genome assembly and the crucial role played by input from the research community. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research 2017.

Modulation of hepatocyte growth factor gene expression by estrogen in mouse ovary.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Y; Lin, L; Zarnegar, R

1994-09-01

Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is expressed in a variety of tissues and cell types under normal conditions and in response to various stimuli such as tissue injury. In the present study, we demonstrate that the transcription of the HGF gene is stimulated by estrogen in mouse ovary. A single injection of 17 beta-estradiol results in a dramatic and transient elevation of the levels of mouse HGF mRNA. Sequence analysis has found that two putative estrogen responsive elements (ERE) reside at -872 in the 5'-flanking region and at +511 in the first intron, respectively, of the mouse HGF gene. To test whether these ERE elements are responsible for estrogen induction of HGF gene expression, chimeric plasmids containing variable regions of the 5'-flanking sequence of HGF gene and the coding region for chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene were transiently transfected into both human endometrial carcinoma RL 95-2 cells and mouse fibroblast NIH 3T3 cells to assess hormone responsiveness. Transfection results indicate that the ERE elements of the mouse HGF gene can confer estrogen action to either homologous or heterologous promoters. Nuclear protein extracts either from RL95-2 cells transfected with the estrogen receptor expression vector or from mouse liver bound in vitro to ERE elements specifically, as shown by band shift assay. Therefore, our results demonstrate that the HGF gene is transcriptionally regulated by estrogen in mouse ovary; and such regulation is mediated via a direct interaction of the estrogen receptor complex with cis-acting ERE elements identified in the mouse HGF gene.

Comparative genome sequencing of drosophila pseudoobscura: Chromosomal, gene and cis-element evolution

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Richards, Stephen; Liu, Yue; Bettencourt, Brian R.; Hradecky, Pavel; Letovsky, Stan; Nielsen, Rasmus; Thornton, Kevin; Todd, Melissa J.; Chen, Rui; Meisel, Richard P.; Couronne, Olivier; Hua, Sujun; Smith, Mark A.; Bussemaker, Harmen J.; van Batenburg, Marinus F.; Howells, Sally L.; Scherer, Steven E.; Sodergren, Erica; Matthews, Beverly B.; Crosby, Madeline A.; Schroeder, Andrew J.; Ortiz-Barrientos, Daniel; Rives, Catherine M.; Metzker, Michael L.; Muzny, Donna M.; Scott, Graham; Steffen, David; Wheeler, David A.; Worley, Kim C.; Havlak, Paul; Durbin, K. James; Egan, Amy; Gill, Rachel; Hume, Jennifer; Morgan, Margaret B.; Miner, George; Hamilton, Cerissa; Huang, Yanmei; Waldron, Lenee; Verduzco, Daniel; Blankenburg, Kerstin P.; Dubchak, Inna; Noor, Mohamed A.F.; Anderson, Wyatt; White, Kevin P.; Clark, Andrew G.; Schaeffer, Stephen W.; Gelbart, William; Weinstock, George M.; Gibbs, Richard A.

2004-04-01

The genome sequence of a second fruit fly, D. pseudoobscura, presents an opportunity for comparative analysis of a primary model organism D. melanogaster. The vast majority of Drosophila genes have remained on the same arm, but within each arm gene order has been extensively reshuffled leading to the identification of approximately 1300 syntenic blocks. A repetitive sequence is found in the D. pseudoobscura genome at many junctions between adjacent syntenic blocks. Analysis of this novel repetitive element family suggests that recombination between offset elements may have given rise to many paracentric inversions, thereby contributing to the shuffling of gene order in the D. pseudoobscura lineage. Based on sequence similarity and synteny, 10,516 putative orthologs have been identified as a core gene set conserved over 35 My since divergence. Genes expressed in the testes had higher amino acid sequence divergence than the genome wide average consistent with the rapid evolution of sex-specific proteins. Cis-regulatory sequences are more conserved than control sequences between the species but the difference is slight, suggesting that the evolution of cis-regulatory elements is flexible. Overall, a picture of repeat mediated chromosomal rearrangement, and high co-adaptation of both male genes and cis-regulatory sequences emerges as important themes of genome divergence between these species of Drosophila.

Percoll gradient-centrifuged capacitated mouse sperm have increased fertilizing ability and higher contents of sulfogalactosylglycerolipid and docosahexaenoic acid-containing phosphatidylcholine compared to washed capacitated mouse sperm.

Science.gov (United States)

Furimsky, Anna; Vuong, Ngoc; Xu, Hongbin; Kumarathasan, Premkumari; Xu, Min; Weerachatyanukul, Wattana; Bou Khalil, Maroun; Kates, Morris; Tanphaichitr, Nongnuj

2005-03-01

Although Percoll gradient centrifugation has been used routinely to prepare motile human sperm, its use in preparing motile mouse sperm has been limited. Here, we showed that Percoll gradient-centrifuged (PGC) capacitated mouse sperm had markedly higher fertilizing ability (sperm-zona pellucida [ZP] binding and in vitro fertilization) than washed capacitated mouse sperm. We also showed that the lipid profiles of PGC capacitated sperm and washed capacitated sperm differed significantly. The PGC sperm had much lower contents of cholesterol and phospholipids. This resulted in relative enrichment of male germ cell-specific sulfogalactosylglycerolipid (SGG), a ZP-binding ligand, in PGC capacitated sperm, and this would explain, in part, their increased ZP-binding ability compared with that of washed capacitated sperm. Analyses of phospholipid fatty acyl chains revealed that PGC capacitated sperm were enriched in phosphatidylcholine (PC) molecular species containing highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFAs), with docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; C22: 6n-3) being the predominant HUFA (42% of total hydrocarbon chains of PC). In contrast, the level of PC-HUFAs comprising arachidonic acid (20:4n-6), docosapentaenoic acid (C22:5n-6), and DHA in washed capacitated sperm was only 27%. Having the highest unsaturation degree among all HUFAs in PC, DHA would enhance membrane fluidity to the uppermost. Therefore, membranes of PGC capacitated sperm would undergo fertilization-related fusion events at higher rates than washed capacitated sperm. These results suggested that PGC mouse sperm should be used in fertilization experiments and that SGG and DHA should be considered to be important biomarkers for sperm fertilizing ability.

Cloning, characterization and targeting of the mouse HEXA gene

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wakamatsu, N.; Trasler, J.M.; Gravel, R.A. [McGill Univ., Quebec (Canada)] [and others

1994-09-01

The HEXA gene, encoding the {alpha} subunit of {beta}-hexosaminidase A, is essential for the metabolism of ganglioside G{sub M2}, and defects in this gene cause Tay-Sachs disease in humans. To elucidate the role of the gene in the nervous system of the mouse and to establish a mouse model of Tay-Sachs disease, we have cloned and characterized the HEXA gene and targeted a disruption of the gene in mouse ES cells. The mouse HEXA gene spans {approximately}26 kb and consists of 14 exons, similar to the human gene. A heterogeneous transcription initiation site was identified 21-42 bp 5{prime} of the initiator ATG, with two of the sites fitting the consensus CTCA (A = start) as seen for some weak initiator systems. Promoter analysis showed that the first 150 bp 5{prime} of the ATG contained 85% of promoter activity observed in constructs containing up to 1050 bp of 5{prime} sequence. The active region contained a sequence matching that of the adenovirus major late promoter upstream element factor. A survey of mouse tissues showed that the highest mRNA levels were in (max to min): testis (5.5 x brain cortex), adrenal, epididymis, heart, brain, lung, kidney, and liver (0.3 x brain cortex). A 12 kb BstI/SalI fragment containing nine exons was disrupted with the insertion of the bacterial neo{sup r} gene in exon 11 and was targeted into 129/Sv ES cells by homologous recombination. Nine of 153 G418 resistant clones were correctly targeted as confirmed by Southern blotting. The heterozygous ES cells were microinjected into mouse blastocysts and implanted into pseudo-pregnant mice. Nine male chimeric mice, showing that 40-95% chimerism for the 129/Sv agouti coat color marker, are being bred in an effort to generate germline transmission of the disrupted HEXA gene.

Remarkable sequence conservation of the last intron in the PKD1 gene.

Science.gov (United States)

Rodova, Marianna; Islam, M Rafiq; Peterson, Kenneth R; Calvet, James P

2003-10-01

The last intron of the PKD1 gene (intron 45) was found to have exceptionally high sequence conservation across four mammalian species: human, mouse, rat, and dog. This conservation did not extend to the comparable intron in pufferfish. Pairwise comparisons for intron 45 showed 91% identity (human vs. dog) to 100% identity (mouse vs. rat) for an average for all four species of 94% identity. In contrast, introns 43 and 44 of the PKD1 gene had average pairwise identities of 57% and 54%, and exons 43, 44, and 45 and the coding region of exon 46 had average pairwise identities of 80%, 84%, 82%, and 80%. Intron 45 is 90 to 95 bp in length, with the major region of sequence divergence being in a central 4-bp to 9-bp variable region. RNA secondary structure analysis of intron 45 predicts a branching stem-loop structure in which the central variable region lies in one loop and the putative branch point sequence lies in another loop, suggesting that the intron adopts a specific stem-loop structure that may be important for its removal. Although intron 45 appears to conform to the class of small, G-triplet-containing introns that are spliced by a mechanism utilizing intron definition, its high sequence conservation may be a reflection of constraints imposed by a unique mechanism that coordinates splicing of this last PKD1 intron with polyadenylation.

Genome-wide identification of estrogen receptor alpha-binding sites in mouse liver

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gao, Hui; Fält, Susann; Sandelin, Albin

2007-01-01

We report the genome-wide identification of estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha)-binding regions in mouse liver using a combination of chromatin immunoprecipitation and tiled microarrays that cover all nonrepetitive sequences in the mouse genome. This analysis identified 5568 ERalpha-binding regions...... genes. The majority of ERalpha-binding regions lie in regions that are evolutionarily conserved between human and mouse. Motif-finding algorithms identified the estrogen response element, and variants thereof, together with binding sites for activator protein 1, basic-helix-loop-helix proteins, ETS...... signaling in mouse liver, by characterizing the first step in this signaling cascade, the binding of ERalpha to DNA in intact chromatin....

Comparative analyses of two Geraniaceae transcriptomes using next-generation sequencing.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Jin; Ruhlman, Tracey A; Mower, Jeffrey P; Jansen, Robert K

2013-12-29

Organelle genomes of Geraniaceae exhibit several unusual evolutionary phenomena compared to other angiosperm families including accelerated nucleotide substitution rates, widespread gene loss, reduced RNA editing, and extensive genomic rearrangements. Since most organelle-encoded proteins function in multi-subunit complexes that also contain nuclear-encoded proteins, it is likely that the atypical organellar phenomena affect the evolution of nuclear genes encoding organellar proteins. To begin to unravel the complex co-evolutionary interplay between organellar and nuclear genomes in this family, we sequenced nuclear transcriptomes of two species, Geranium maderense and Pelargonium x hortorum. Normalized cDNA libraries of G. maderense and P. x hortorum were used for transcriptome sequencing. Five assemblers (MIRA, Newbler, SOAPdenovo, SOAPdenovo-trans [SOAPtrans], Trinity) and two next-generation technologies (454 and Illumina) were compared to determine the optimal transcriptome sequencing approach. Trinity provided the highest quality assembly of Illumina data with the deepest transcriptome coverage. An analysis to determine the amount of sequencing needed for de novo assembly revealed diminishing returns of coverage and quality with data sets larger than sixty million Illumina paired end reads for both species. The G. maderense and P. x hortorum transcriptomes contained fewer transcripts encoding the PLS subclass of PPR proteins relative to other angiosperms, consistent with reduced mitochondrial RNA editing activity in Geraniaceae. In addition, transcripts for all six plastid targeted sigma factors were identified in both transcriptomes, suggesting that one of the highly divergent rpoA-like ORFs in the P. x hortorum plastid genome is functional. The findings support the use of the Illumina platform and assemblers optimized for transcriptome assembly, such as Trinity or SOAPtrans, to generate high-quality de novo transcriptomes with broad coverage. In addition

Catalog of Differentially Expressed Long Non-Coding RNA following Activation of Human and Mouse Innate Immune Response

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Benoit T. Roux

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Despite increasing evidence to indicate that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs are novel regulators of immunity, there has been no systematic attempt to identify and characterize the lncRNAs whose expression is changed following the induction of the innate immune response. To address this issue, we have employed next-generation sequencing data to determine the changes in the lncRNA profile in four human (monocytes, macrophages, epithelium, and chondrocytes and four mouse cell types (RAW 264.7 macrophages, bone marrow-derived macrophages, peritoneal macrophages, and splenic dendritic cells following exposure to the pro-inflammatory mediators, lipopolysaccharides (LPS, or interleukin-1β. We show differential expression of 204 human and 210 mouse lncRNAs, with positional analysis demonstrating correlation with immune-related genes. These lncRNAs are predominantly cell-type specific, composed of large regions of repeat sequences, and show poor evolutionary conservation. Comparison within the human and mouse sequences showed less than 1% sequence conservation, although we identified multiple conserved motifs. Of the 204 human lncRNAs, 21 overlapped with syntenic mouse lncRNAs, of which five were differentially expressed in both species. Among these syntenic lncRNA was IL7-AS (antisense, which was induced in multiple cell types and shown to regulate the production of the pro-inflammatory mediator interleukin-6 in both human and mouse cells. In summary, we have identified and characterized those lncRNAs that are differentially expressed following activation of the human and mouse innate immune responses and believe that these catalogs will provide the foundation for the future analysis of the role of lncRNAs in immune and inflammatory responses.

Plastome Sequence Determination and Comparative Analysis for Members of the Lolium-Festuca Grass Species Complex

Science.gov (United States)

Hand, Melanie L.; Spangenberg, German C.; Forster, John W.; Cogan, Noel O. I.

2013-01-01

Chloroplast genome sequences are of broad significance in plant biology, due to frequent use in molecular phylogenetics, comparative genomics, population genetics, and genetic modification studies. The present study used a second-generation sequencing approach to determine and assemble the plastid genomes (plastomes) of four representatives from the agriculturally important Lolium-Festuca species complex of pasture grasses (Lolium multiflorum, Festuca pratensis, Festuca altissima, and Festuca ovina). Total cellular DNA was extracted from either roots or leaves, was sequenced, and the output was filtered for plastome-related reads. A comparison between sources revealed fewer plastome-related reads from root-derived template but an increase in incidental bacterium-derived sequences. Plastome assembly and annotation indicated high levels of sequence identity and a conserved organization and gene content between species. However, frequent deletions within the F. ovina plastome appeared to contribute to a smaller plastid genome size. Comparative analysis with complete plastome sequences from other members of the Poaceae confirmed conservation of most grass-specific features. Detailed analysis of the rbcL–psaI intergenic region, however, revealed a “hot-spot” of variation characterized by independent deletion events. The evolutionary implications of this observation are discussed. The complete plastome sequences are anticipated to provide the basis for potential organelle-specific genetic modification of pasture grasses. PMID:23550121

Genomic sequence around butterfly wing development genes: annotation and comparative analysis.

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Inês C Conceição

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Analysis of genomic sequence allows characterization of genome content and organization, and access beyond gene-coding regions for identification of functional elements. BAC libraries, where relatively large genomic regions are made readily available, are especially useful for species without a fully sequenced genome and can increase genomic coverage of phylogenetic and biological diversity. For example, no butterfly genome is yet available despite the unique genetic and biological properties of this group, such as diversified wing color patterns. The evolution and development of these patterns is being studied in a few target species, including Bicyclus anynana, where a whole-genome BAC library allows targeted access to large genomic regions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We characterize ∼1.3 Mb of genomic sequence around 11 selected genes expressed in B. anynana developing wings. Extensive manual curation of in silico predictions, also making use of a large dataset of expressed genes for this species, identified repetitive elements and protein coding sequence, and highlighted an expansion of Alcohol dehydrogenase genes. Comparative analysis with orthologous regions of the lepidopteran reference genome allowed assessment of conservation of fine-scale synteny (with detection of new inversions and translocations and of DNA sequence (with detection of high levels of conservation of non-coding regions around some, but not all, developmental genes. CONCLUSIONS: The general properties and organization of the available B. anynana genomic sequence are similar to the lepidopteran reference, despite the more than 140 MY divergence. Our results lay the groundwork for further studies of new interesting findings in relation to both coding and non-coding sequence: 1 the Alcohol dehydrogenase expansion with higher similarity between the five tandemly-repeated B. anynana paralogs than with the corresponding B. mori orthologs, and 2 the high

Effects of Acanthopanax senticosus on Brain Injury Induced by Simulated Spatial Radiation in Mouse Model Based on Pharmacokinetics and Comparative Proteomics

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Yingyu Zhou

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The active compounds in Acanthopanax senticosus (AS have different pharmacokinetic characteristics in mouse models. Cmax and AUC of Acanthopanax senticosus polysaccharides (ASPS were significantly reduced in radiation-injured mice, suggesting that the blood flow of mouse was blocked or slowed, due to the pathological state of ischemia and hypoxia, which are caused by radiation. In contrast, the ability of various metabolizing enzymes to inactivate, capacity of biofilm transport decrease, and lessening of renal blood flow accounts for radiation, resulting in the accumulation of syringin and eleutheroside E in the irradiated mouse. Therefore, there were higher pharmacokinetic parameters—AUC, MRT, and t1/2 of the two compounds in radiation-injured mouse, when compared with normal mouse. In order to investigate the intrinsic mechanism of AS on radiation injury, AS extract’s protective effects on brain, the main part of mouse that suffered from radiation, were explored. The function of AS extract in repressing expression changes of radiation response proteins in prefrontal cortex (PFC of mouse brain included tubulin protein family (α-, β-tubulin subunits, dihydropyrimidinase-related protein 2 (CRMP2, γ-actin, 14-3-3 protein family (14-3-3ζ, ε, heat shock protein 90β (HSP90β, and enolase 2. The results demonstrated the AS extract had positive effects on nerve cells’ structure, adhesion, locomotion, fission, and phagocytosis, through regulating various action pathways, such as Hippo, phagosome, PI3K/Akt (phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase/protein kinase B, Neurotrophin, Rap1 (Ras-related protein RAP-1A, gap junction glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, and HIF-1 (Hypoxia-inducible factor 1 signaling pathways to maintain normal mouse neurological activity. All of the results indicated that AS may be a promising alternative medicine for the treatment of radiation injury in mouse brain. It would be tested that whether the bioactive ingredients of AS could

Comparative performance of double-digest RAD sequencing across divergent arachnid lineages.

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Burns, Mercedes; Starrett, James; Derkarabetian, Shahan; Richart, Casey H; Cabrero, Allan; Hedin, Marshal

2017-05-01

Next-generation sequencing technologies now allow researchers of non-model systems to perform genome-based studies without the requirement of a (often unavailable) closely related genomic reference. We evaluated the role of restriction endonuclease (RE) selection in double-digest restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing (ddRADseq) by generating reduced representation genome-wide data using four different RE combinations. Our expectation was that RE selections targeting longer, more complex restriction sites would recover fewer loci than RE with shorter, less complex sites. We sequenced a diverse sample of non-model arachnids, including five congeneric pairs of harvestmen (Opiliones) and four pairs of spiders (Araneae). Sample pairs consisted of either conspecifics or closely related congeneric taxa, and in total 26 sample pair analyses were tested. Sequence demultiplexing, read clustering and variant calling were performed in the pyRAD program. The 6-base pair cutter EcoRI combined with methylated site-specific 4-base pair cutter MspI produced, on average, the greatest numbers of intra-individual loci and shared loci per sample pair. As expected, the number of shared loci recovered for a sample pair covaried with the degree of genetic divergence, estimated with cytochrome oxidase I sequences, although this relationship was non-linear. Our comparative results will prove useful in guiding protocol selection for ddRADseq experiments on many arachnid taxa where reference genomes, even from closely related species, are unavailable. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Multiple RNAs from the mouse carboxypeptidase M locus: functional RNAs or transcription noise?

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Castilho Beatriz A

2009-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background A major effort of the scientific community has been to obtain complete pictures of the genomes of many organisms. This has been accomplished mainly by annotation of structural and functional elements in the genome sequence, a process that has been centred in the gene concept and, as a consequence, biased toward protein coding sequences. Recently, the explosion of transcriptome data generated and the discovery of many functional non-protein coding RNAs have painted a more detailed and complex scenario for the genome. Here we analyzed the mouse carboxypeptidase M locus in this broader perspective in order to define the mouse CPM gene structure and evaluate the existence of other transcripts from the same genomic region. Results Bioinformatic analysis of nucleotide sequences that map to the mouse CPM locus suggests that, in addition to the mouse CPM mRNA, it expresses at least 33 different transcripts, many of which seem to be non-coding RNAs. We randomly chose to evaluate experimentally four of these extra transcripts. They are expressed in a tissue specific manner, indicating that they are not artefacts or transcriptional noise. Furthermore, one of these four extra transcripts shows expression patterns that differed considerably from the other ones and from the mouse CPM gene, suggesting that there may be more than one transcriptional unit in this locus. In addition, we have confirmed the mouse CPM gene RefSeq sequence by rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE and directional cloning. Conclusion This study supports the recent view that the majority of the genome is transcribed and that many of the resulting transcripts seem to be non-coding RNAs from introns of genes or from independent transcriptional units. Although some of the information on the transcriptome of many organisms may actually be artefacts or transcriptional noise, we argue that it can be experimentally evaluated and used to find and define biological

Identifying novel genes for atherosclerosis through mouse-human comparative genetics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wang, XS; Ishimori, N; Korstanje, R; Rollins, J; Paigen, B

Susceptibility to atherosclerosis is determined by both environmental and genetic factors. Its genetic determinants have been studied by use of quantitative- trait - locus ( QTL) analysis. So far, 21 atherosclerosis QTLs have been identified in the mouse: 7 in a high- fat - diet model only, 9 in a

Mouse-tracking evidence for parallel anticipatory option evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Cranford, Edward A; Moss, Jarrod

2017-12-23

In fast-paced, dynamic tasks, the ability to anticipate the future outcome of a sequence of events is crucial to quickly selecting an appropriate course of action among multiple alternative options. There are two classes of theories that describe how anticipation occurs. Serial theories assume options are generated and evaluated one at a time, in order of quality, whereas parallel theories assume simultaneous generation and evaluation. The present research examined the option evaluation process during a task designed to be analogous to prior anticipation tasks, but within the domain of narrative text comprehension. Prior research has relied on indirect, off-line measurement of the option evaluation process during anticipation tasks. Because the movement of the hand can provide a window into underlying cognitive processes, online metrics such as continuous mouse tracking provide more fine-grained measurements of cognitive processing as it occurs in real time. In this study, participants listened to three-sentence stories and predicted the protagonists' final action by moving a mouse toward one of three possible options. Each story was presented with either one (control condition) or two (distractor condition) plausible ending options. Results seem most consistent with a parallel option evaluation process because initial mouse trajectories deviated further from the best option in the distractor condition compared to the control condition. It is difficult to completely rule out all possible serial processing accounts, although the results do place constraints on the time frame in which a serial processing explanation must operate.

Comparative Analysis of Pain Behaviours in Humanized Mouse Models of Sickle Cell Anemia.

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Jianxun Lei

Full Text Available Pain is a hallmark feature of sickle cell anemia (SCA but management of chronic as well as acute pain remains a major challenge. Mouse models of SCA are essential to examine the mechanisms of pain and develop novel therapeutics. To facilitate this effort, we compared humanized homozygous BERK and Townes sickle mice for the effect of gender and age on pain behaviors. Similar to previously characterized BERK sickle mice, Townes sickle mice show more mechanical, thermal, and deep tissue hyperalgesia with increasing age. Female Townes sickle mice demonstrate more hyperalgesia compared to males similar to that reported for BERK mice and patients with SCA. Mechanical, thermal and deep tissue hyperalgesia increased further after hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R treatment in Townes sickle mice. Together, these data show BERK sickle mice exhibit a significantly greater degree of hyperalgesia for all behavioral measures as compared to gender- and age-matched Townes sickle mice. However, the genetically distinct "knock-in" strategy of human α and β transgene insertion in Townes mice as compared to BERK mice, may provide relative advantage for further genetic manipulations to examine specific mechanisms of pain.

Binocular video ophthalmoscope for simultaneous recording of sequences of the human retina to compare dynamic parameters

Science.gov (United States)

Tornow, Ralf P.; Milczarek, Aleksandra; Odstrcilik, Jan; Kolar, Radim

2017-07-01

A parallel video ophthalmoscope was developed to acquire short video sequences (25 fps, 250 frames) of both eyes simultaneously with exact synchronization. Video sequences were registered off-line to compensate for eye movements. From registered video sequences dynamic parameters like cardiac cycle induced reflection changes and eye movements can be calculated and compared between eyes.

The proviral genome of radiation leukemia virus: Molecular cloning, nucleotide sequence of its long terminal repeat and integration in lymphoma cell DNA

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Janowski, M.; Merregaert, J.; Boniver, J.; Maisin, J.R.

1985-01-01

The proviral genome of a thymotropic and leukemogenic C57BL/Ka mouse retrovirus, RadLV/VL/sub 3/(T+L+), was cloned as a biologically active PstI insert in the bacterial plasmid pBR322. Its restriction map was compared to those, already known, of two nonthymotropic and nonleukemogenic viruses of the same mouse strain, the ecotropic BL/Ka(B) and the xenotropic constituent of the radiation leukemia virus complex (RadLV). Differences were observed in the pol gene and in the env gene. Moreover, the nucleotide sequence of the RadLV/VL/sub 3/(T+L+) long terminal repeat revealed the existence of two copies of a 42 bp long sequence, separated by 11 nucleotides and of which BL/Ka(B) possesses only one copy

Virulence Studies of Different Sequence Types and Geographical Origins of Streptococcus suis Serotype 2 in a Mouse Model of Infection

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Jean-Philippe Auger

2016-07-01

Full Text Available Multilocus sequence typing previously identified three predominant sequence types (STs of Streptococcus suis serotype 2: ST1 strains predominate in Eurasia while North American (NA strains are generally ST25 and ST28. However, ST25/ST28 and ST1 strains have also been isolated in Asia and NA, respectively. Using a well-standardized mouse model of infection, the virulence of strains belonging to different STs and different geographical origins was evaluated. Results demonstrated that although a certain tendency may be observed, S. suis serotype 2 virulence is difficult to predict based on ST and geographical origin alone; strains belonging to the same ST presented important differences of virulence and did not always correlate with origin. The only exception appears to be NA ST28 strains, which were generally less virulent in both systemic and central nervous system (CNS infection models. Persistent and high levels of bacteremia accompanied by elevated CNS inflammation are required to cause meningitis. Although widely used, in vitro tests such as phagocytosis and killing assays require further standardization in order to be used as predictive tests for evaluating virulence of strains. The use of strains other than archetypal strains has increased our knowledge and understanding of the S. suis serotype 2 population dynamics.

Mouse ENU Mutagenesis to Understand Immunity to Infection: Methods, Selected Examples, and Perspectives

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Grégory Caignard

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Infectious diseases are responsible for over 25% of deaths globally, but many more individuals are exposed to deadly pathogens. The outcome of infection results from a set of diverse factors including pathogen virulence factors, the environment, and the genetic make-up of the host. The completion of the human reference genome sequence in 2004 along with technological advances have tremendously accelerated and renovated the tools to study the genetic etiology of infectious diseases in humans and its best characterized mammalian model, the mouse. Advancements in mouse genomic resources have accelerated genome-wide functional approaches, such as gene-driven and phenotype-driven mutagenesis, bringing to the fore the use of mouse models that reproduce accurately many aspects of the pathogenesis of human infectious diseases. Treatment with the mutagen N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU has become the most popular phenotype-driven approach. Our team and others have employed mouse ENU mutagenesis to identify host genes that directly impact susceptibility to pathogens of global significance. In this review, we first describe the strategies and tools used in mouse genetics to understand immunity to infection with special emphasis on chemical mutagenesis of the mouse germ-line together with current strategies to efficiently identify functional mutations using next generation sequencing. Then, we highlight illustrative examples of genes, proteins, and cellular signatures that have been revealed by ENU screens and have been shown to be involved in susceptibility or resistance to infectious diseases caused by parasites, bacteria, and viruses.

Characterization of Liaoning cashmere goat transcriptome: sequencing, de novo assembly, functional annotation and comparative analysis.

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Hongliang Liu

Full Text Available Liaoning cashmere goat is a famous goat breed for cashmere wool. In order to increase the transcriptome data and accelerate genetic improvement for this breed, we performed de novo transcriptome sequencing to generate the first expressed sequence tag dataset for the Liaoning cashmere goat, using next-generation sequencing technology.Transcriptome sequencing of Liaoning cashmere goat on a Roche 454 platform yielded 804,601 high-quality reads. Clustering and assembly of these reads produced a non-redundant set of 117,854 unigenes, comprising 13,194 isotigs and 104,660 singletons. Based on similarity searches with known proteins, 17,356 unigenes were assigned to 6,700 GO categories, and the terms were summarized into three main GO categories and 59 sub-categories. 3,548 and 46,778 unigenes had significant similarity to existing sequences in the KEGG and COG databases, respectively. Comparative analysis revealed that 42,254 unigenes were aligned to 17,532 different sequences in NCBI non-redundant nucleotide databases. 97,236 (82.51% unigenes were mapped to the 30 goat chromosomes. 35,551 (30.17% unigenes were matched to 11,438 reported goat protein-coding genes. The remaining non-matched unigenes were further compared with cattle and human reference genes, 67 putative new goat genes were discovered. Additionally, 2,781 potential simple sequence repeats were initially identified from all unigenes.The transcriptome of Liaoning cashmere goat was deep sequenced, de novo assembled, and annotated, providing abundant data to better understand the Liaoning cashmere goat transcriptome. The potential simple sequence repeats provide a material basis for future genetic linkage and quantitative trait loci analyses.

Comparative analysis of MR sequences to detect structural brain lesions in tuberous sclerosis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pinto Gama, Hugo Pereira; Campos Meirelles, Rogerio Goncalves de; Mendonca do Rego, Jose Iram; Rocha, Antonio Jose da; Silva, Carlos Jorge da; Braga, Flavio Tulio; Martins Maia, Antonio Carlos; Lederman, Henrique Manoel

2006-01-01

Tuberous sclerosis (TS) is a neurocutaneous genetically inherited disease with variable penetrance characterized by dysplasias and hamartomas affecting multiple organs. MR is the imaging method of choice to demonstrate structural brain lesions in TS. To compare MR sequences and determine which is most useful for the demonstration of each type of brain lesion in TS patients. We reviewed MR scans of 18 TS patients for the presence of cortical tubers, white matter lesions (radial bands), subependymal nodules, and subependymal giant cell astrocytoma (SGCA) on the following sequences: (1) T1-weighted spin-echo (T1 SE) images before and after gadolinium (Gd) injection; (2) nonenhanced T1 SE sequence with an additional magnetization transfer contrast medium pulse on resonance (T1 SE/MTC); and (3) fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequence. Cortical tubers were found in significantly (P<0.05) larger numbers and more conspicuously in FLAIR and T1 SE/MTC sequences. The T1 SE/MTC sequence was far superior to other methods in detecting white matter lesions (P<0.01). There was no significant difference between the T1 SE/MTC and T1 SE (before and after Gd injection) sequences in the detection of subependymal nodules; FLAIR sequence showed less sensitivity than the others in identifying the nodules. T1 SE sequences after Gd injection demonstrated better the limits of the SGCA. We demonstrated the importance of appropriate MRI sequences for diagnosis of the most frequent brain lesions in TS. Our study reinforces the fact that each sequence has a particular application according to the type of TS lesion. Gd injection might be useful in detecting SGCA; however, the parameters of size and location are also important for a presumptive diagnosis of these tumors. (orig.)

The mouse-human anatomy ontology mapping project.

Science.gov (United States)

Hayamizu, Terry F; de Coronado, Sherri; Fragoso, Gilberto; Sioutos, Nicholas; Kadin, James A; Ringwald, Martin

2012-01-01

The overall objective of the Mouse-Human Anatomy Project (MHAP) was to facilitate the mapping and harmonization of anatomical terms used for mouse and human models by Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The anatomy resources designated for this study were the Adult Mouse Anatomy (MA) ontology and the set of anatomy concepts contained in the NCI Thesaurus (NCIt). Several methods and software tools were identified and evaluated, then used to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the anatomy ontologies. Matches between mouse and human anatomy terms were determined and validated, resulting in a highly curated set of mappings between the two ontologies that has been used by other resources. These mappings will enable linking of data from mouse and human. As the anatomy ontologies have been expanded and refined, the mappings have been updated accordingly. Insights are presented into the overall process of comparing and mapping between ontologies, which may prove useful for further comparative analyses and ontology mapping efforts, especially those involving anatomy ontologies. Finally, issues concerning further development of the ontologies, updates to the mapping files, and possible additional applications and significance were considered. DATABASE URL: http://obofoundry.org/cgi-bin/detail.cgi?id=ma2ncit.

Comparing sequencing assays and human-machine analyses in actionable genomics for glioblastoma.

Science.gov (United States)

Wrzeszczynski, Kazimierz O; Frank, Mayu O; Koyama, Takahiko; Rhrissorrakrai, Kahn; Robine, Nicolas; Utro, Filippo; Emde, Anne-Katrin; Chen, Bo-Juen; Arora, Kanika; Shah, Minita; Vacic, Vladimir; Norel, Raquel; Bilal, Erhan; Bergmann, Ewa A; Moore Vogel, Julia L; Bruce, Jeffrey N; Lassman, Andrew B; Canoll, Peter; Grommes, Christian; Harvey, Steve; Parida, Laxmi; Michelini, Vanessa V; Zody, Michael C; Jobanputra, Vaidehi; Royyuru, Ajay K; Darnell, Robert B

2017-08-01

To analyze a glioblastoma tumor specimen with 3 different platforms and compare potentially actionable calls from each. Tumor DNA was analyzed by a commercial targeted panel. In addition, tumor-normal DNA was analyzed by whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and tumor RNA was analyzed by RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). The WGS and RNA-seq data were analyzed by a team of bioinformaticians and cancer oncologists, and separately by IBM Watson Genomic Analytics (WGA), an automated system for prioritizing somatic variants and identifying drugs. More variants were identified by WGS/RNA analysis than by targeted panels. WGA completed a comparable analysis in a fraction of the time required by the human analysts. The development of an effective human-machine interface in the analysis of deep cancer genomic datasets may provide potentially clinically actionable calls for individual patients in a more timely and efficient manner than currently possible. NCT02725684.

Comparative analysis of complete chloroplast genome sequence and inversion variation in Lasthenia burkei (Madieae, Asteraceae).

Science.gov (United States)

Walker, Joseph F; Zanis, Michael J; Emery, Nancy C

2014-04-01

Complete chloroplast genome studies can help resolve relationships among large, complex plant lineages such as Asteraceae. We present the first whole plastome from the Madieae tribe and compare its sequence variation to other chloroplast genomes in Asteraceae. We used high throughput sequencing to obtain the Lasthenia burkei chloroplast genome. We compared sequence structure and rates of molecular evolution in the small single copy (SSC), large single copy (LSC), and inverted repeat (IR) regions to those for eight Asteraceae accessions and one Solanaceae accession. The chloroplast sequence of L. burkei is 150 746 bp and contains 81 unique protein coding genes and 4 coding ribosomal RNA sequences. We identified three major inversions in the L. burkei chloroplast, all of which have been found in other Asteraceae lineages, and a previously unreported inversion in Lactuca sativa. Regions flanking inversions contained tRNA sequences, but did not have particularly high G + C content. Substitution rates varied among the SSC, LSC, and IR regions, and rates of evolution within each region varied among species. Some observed differences in rates of molecular evolution may be explained by the relative proportion of coding to noncoding sequence within regions. Rates of molecular evolution vary substantially within and among chloroplast genomes, and major inversion events may be promoted by the presence of tRNAs. Collectively, these results provide insight into different mechanisms that may promote intramolecular recombination and the inversion of large genomic regions in the plastome.

FANTOM5 CAGE profiles of human and mouse samples

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Noguchi, Shuhei; Arakawa, Takahiro; Fukuda, Shiro; Furuno, Masaaki; Hasegawa, Akira; Hori, Fumi; Ishikawa-Kato, Sachi; Kaida, Kaoru; Kaiho, Ai; Kanamori-Katayama, Mutsumi; Kawashima, Tsugumi; Kojima, Miki; Kubosaki, Atsutaka; Manabe, Ri-ichiroh; Murata, Mitsuyoshi; Nagao-Sato, Sayaka; Nakazato, Kenichi; Ninomiya, Noriko; Nishiyori-Sueki, Hiromi; Noma, Shohei; Saijyo, Eri; Saka, Akiko; Sakai, Mizuho; Simon, Christophe; Suzuki, Naoko; Tagami, Michihira; Watanabe, Shoko; Yoshida, Shigehiro; Arner, Peter; Axton, Richard A.; Babina, Magda; Baillie, J. Kenneth; Barnett, Timothy C.; Beckhouse, Anthony G.; Blumenthal, Antje; Bodega, Beatrice; Bonetti, Alessandro; Briggs, James; Brombacher, Frank; Carlisle, Ailsa J.; Clevers, Hans C.; Davis, Carrie A.; Detmar, Michael; Dohi, Taeko; Edge, Albert S. B.; Edinger, Matthias; Ehrlund, Anna; Ekwall, Karl; Endoh, Mitsuhiro; Enomoto, Hideki; Eslami, Afsaneh; Fagiolini, Michela; Fairbairn, Lynsey; Farach-Carson, Mary C.; Faulkner, Geoffrey J.; Ferrai, Carmelo; Fisher, Malcolm E.; Forrester, Lesley M.; Fujita, Rie; Furusawa, Jun-ichi; Geijtenbeek, Teunis B.; Gingeras, Thomas; Goldowitz, Daniel; Guhl, Sven; Guler, Reto; Gustincich, Stefano; Ha, Thomas J.; Hamaguchi, Masahide; Hara, Mitsuko; Hasegawa, Yuki; Herlyn, Meenhard; Heutink, Peter; Hitchens, Kelly J.; Hume, David A.; Ikawa, Tomokatsu; Ishizu, Yuri; Kai, Chieko; Kawamoto, Hiroshi; Kawamura, Yuki I.; Kempfle, Judith S.; Kenna, Tony J.; Kere, Juha; Khachigian, Levon M.; Kitamura, Toshio; Klein, Sarah; Klinken, S. Peter; Knox, Alan J.; Kojima, Soichi; Koseki, Haruhiko; Koyasu, Shigeo; Lee, Weonju; Lennartsson, Andreas; Mackay-sim, Alan; Mejhert, Niklas; Mizuno, Yosuke; Morikawa, Hiromasa; Morimoto, Mitsuru; Moro, Kazuyo; Morris, Kelly J.; Motohashi, Hozumi; Mummery, Christine L.; Nakachi, Yutaka; Nakahara, Fumio; Nakamura, Toshiyuki; Nakamura, Yukio; Nozaki, Tadasuke; Ogishima, Soichi; Ohkura, Naganari; Ohno, Hiroshi; Ohshima, Mitsuhiro; Okada-Hatakeyama, Mariko; Okazaki, Yasushi; Orlando, Valerio; Ovchinnikov, Dmitry A.; Passier, Robert; Patrikakis, Margaret; Pombo, Ana; Pradhan-Bhatt, Swati; Qin, Xian-Yang; Rehli, Michael; Rizzu, Patrizia; Roy, Sugata; Sajantila, Antti; Sakaguchi, Shimon; Sato, Hiroki; Satoh, Hironori; Savvi, Suzana; Saxena, Alka; Schmidl, Christian; Schneider, Claudio; Schulze-Tanzil, Gundula G.; Schwegmann, Anita; Sheng, Guojun; Shin, Jay W.; Sugiyama, Daisuke; Sugiyama, Takaaki; Summers, Kim M.; Takahashi, Naoko; Takai, Jun; Tanaka, Hiroshi; Tatsukawa, Hideki; Tomoiu, Andru; Toyoda, Hiroo; van de Wetering, Marc; van den Berg, Linda M.; Verardo, Roberto; Vijayan, Dipti; Wells, Christine A.; Winteringham, Louise N.; Wolvetang, Ernst; Yamaguchi, Yoko; Yamamoto, Masayuki; Yanagi-Mizuochi, Chiyo; Yoneda, Misako; Yonekura, Yohei; Zhang, Peter G.; Zucchelli, Silvia; Abugessaisa, Imad; Arner, Erik; Harshbarger, Jayson; Kondo, Atsushi; Lassmann, Timo; Lizio, Marina; Sahin, Serkan; Sengstag, Thierry; Severin, Jessica; Shimoji, Hisashi; Suzuki, Masanori; Suzuki, Harukazu; Kawai, Jun; Kondo, Naoto; Itoh, Masayoshi; Daub, Carsten O.; Kasukawa, Takeya; Kawaji, Hideya; Carninci, Piero; Forrest, Alistair R. R.; Hayashizaki, Yoshihide

2017-01-01

In the FANTOM5 project, transcription initiation events across the human and mouse genomes were mapped at a single base-pair resolution and their frequencies were monitored by CAGE (Cap Analysis of Gene Expression) coupled with single-molecule sequencing. Approximately three thousands of samples,

Composition and immuno-stimulatory properties of extracellular DNA from mouse gut flora.

Science.gov (United States)

Qi, Ce; Li, Ya; Yu, Ren-Qiang; Zhou, Sheng-Li; Wang, Xing-Guo; Le, Guo-Wei; Jin, Qing-Zhe; Xiao, Hang; Sun, Jin

2017-11-28

To demonstrate that specific bacteria might release bacterial extracellular DNA (eDNA) to exert immunomodulatory functions in the mouse small intestine. Extracellular DNA was extracted using phosphate buffered saline with 0.5 mmol/L dithiothreitol combined with two phenol extractions. TOTO-1 iodide, a cell-impermeant and high-affinity nucleic acid stain, was used to confirm the existence of eDNA in the mucus layers of the small intestine and colon in healthy Male C57BL/6 mice. Composition difference of eDNA and intracellular DNA (iDNA) of the small intestinal mucus was studied by Illumina sequencing and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP). Stimulation of cytokine production by eDNA was studied in RAW264.7 cells in vitro . TOTO-1 iodide staining confirmed existence of eDNA in loose mucus layer of the mouse colon and thin surface mucus layer of the small intestine. Illumina sequencing analysis and T-RFLP revealed that the composition of the eDNA in the small intestinal mucus was significantly different from that of the iDNA of the small intestinal mucus bacteria. Illumina Miseq sequencing showed that the eDNA sequences came mainly from Gram-negative bacteria of Bacteroidales S24-7. By contrast, predominant bacteria of the small intestinal flora comprised Gram-positive bacteria. Both eDNA and iDNA were added to native or lipopolysaccharide-stimulated Raw267.4 macrophages, respectively. The eDNA induced significantly lower tumor necrosis factor-α/interleukin-10 (IL-10) and IL-6/IL-10 ratios than iDNA, suggesting the predominance for maintaining immune homeostasis of the gut. Our results indicated that degraded bacterial genomic DNA was mainly released by Gram-negative bacteria, especially Bacteroidales-S24-7 and Stenotrophomonas genus in gut mucus of mice. They decreased pro-inflammatory activity compared to total gut flora genomic DNA.

Development of a Method to Implement Whole-Genome Bisulfite Sequencing of cfDNA from Cancer Patients and a Mouse Tumor Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elaine C. Maggi

2018-01-01

Full Text Available The goal of this study was to develop a method for whole genome cell-free DNA (cfDNA methylation analysis in humans and mice with the ultimate goal to facilitate the identification of tumor derived DNA methylation changes in the blood. Plasma or serum from patients with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors or lung cancer, and plasma from a murine model of pancreatic adenocarcinoma was used to develop a protocol for cfDNA isolation, library preparation and whole-genome bisulfite sequencing of ultra low quantities of cfDNA, including tumor-specific DNA. The protocol developed produced high quality libraries consistently generating a conversion rate >98% that will be applicable for the analysis of human and mouse plasma or serum to detect tumor-derived changes in DNA methylation.

An intron capture strategy used to identify and map a lysyl oxidase-like gene on chromosome 9 in the mouse

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wydner, K.S.; Passmore, H.C. [Rutgers Univ., Piscataway, NJ (United States); Kim, Houngho; Csiszar, K.; Boyd, C.D. [UMDNJ, New Brunswick, NJ (United States)

1997-03-01

An intron capture strategy involving use of polymerase chain reaction was used to identify and map the mouse homologue of a human lysyl oxidase-like gene (LOXL). Oligonucleotides complementary to conserved domains within exons 4 and 5 of the human lysyl oxidase-like gene were used to amplify the corresponding segment from mouse genomic DNA. Sequencing of the resulting mouse DNA fragment of approximately 1 kb revealed that the exon sequences at the ends of the amplified fragment are highly homologous (90% nucleotide identity) to exons 4 and 5 of the human lysyl oxidase-like gene. An AluI restriction site polymorphism within intron 4 was used to map the mouse lysyl oxidase-like gene (Loxl) to mouse Chromosome 9 in a region that shares linkage conservation with human chromosome 15q24, to which the LOXL was recently mapped. 22 refs., 3 figs.

Structure and inhibition analysis of the mouse SAD-B C-terminal fragment.

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Hui; Wu, Jing-Xiang; Wang, Jue; Wang, Zhi-Xin; Wu, Jia-Wei

2016-10-01

The SAD (synapses of amphids defective) kinases, including SAD-A and SAD-B, play important roles in the regulation of neuronal development, cell cycle, and energy metabolism. Our recent study of mouse SAD-A identified a unique autoinhibitory sequence (AIS), which binds at the junction of the kinase domain (KD) and the ubiquitin-associated (UBA) domain and exerts autoregulation in cooperation with UBA. Here, we report the crystal structure of the mouse SAD-B C-terminal fragment including the AIS and the kinase-associated domain 1 (KA1) at 2.8 Å resolution. The KA1 domain is structurally conserved, while the isolated AIS sequence is highly flexible and solvent-accessible. Our biochemical studies indicated that the SAD-B AIS exerts the same autoinhibitory role as that in SAD-A. We believe that the flexible isolated AIS sequence is readily available for interaction with KD-UBA and thus inhibits SAD-B activity.

Extensive Mobilome-Driven Genome Diversification in Mouse Gut-Associated Bacteroides vulgatus mpk.

Science.gov (United States)

Lange, Anna; Beier, Sina; Steimle, Alex; Autenrieth, Ingo B; Huson, Daniel H; Frick, Julia-Stefanie

2016-04-25

Like many other Bacteroides species, Bacteroides vulgatus strain mpk, a mouse fecal isolate which was shown to promote intestinal homeostasis, utilizes a variety of mobile elements for genome evolution. Based on sequences collected by Pacific Biosciences SMRT sequencing technology, we discuss the challenges of assembling and studying a bacterial genome of high plasticity. Additionally, we conducted comparative genomics comparing this commensal strain with the B. vulgatus type strain ATCC 8482 as well as multiple other Bacteroides and Parabacteroides strains to reveal the most important differences and identify the unique features of B. vulgatus mpk. The genome of B. vulgatus mpk harbors a large and diverse set of mobile element proteins compared with other sequenced Bacteroides strains. We found evidence of a number of different horizontal gene transfer events and a genome landscape that has been extensively altered by different mobilization events. A CRISPR/Cas system could be identified that provides a possible mechanism for preventing the integration of invading external DNA. We propose that the high genome plasticity and the introduced genome instabilities of B. vulgatus mpk arising from the various mobilization events might play an important role not only in its adaptation to the challenging intestinal environment in general, but also in its ability to interact with the gut microbiota. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.

FANTOM5 CAGE profiles of human and mouse samples

KAUST Repository

Noguchi, Shuhei

2017-08-29

In the FANTOM5 project, transcription initiation events across the human and mouse genomes were mapped at a single base-pair resolution and their frequencies were monitored by CAGE (Cap Analysis of Gene Expression) coupled with single-molecule sequencing. Approximately three thousands of samples, consisting of a variety of primary cells, tissues, cell lines, and time series samples during cell activation and development, were subjected to a uniform pipeline of CAGE data production. The analysis pipeline started by measuring RNA extracts to assess their quality, and continued to CAGE library production by using a robotic or a manual workflow, single molecule sequencing, and computational processing to generate frequencies of transcription initiation. Resulting data represents the consequence of transcriptional regulation in each analyzed state of mammalian cells. Non-overlapping peaks over the CAGE profiles, approximately 200,000 and 150,000 peaks for the human and mouse genomes, were identified and annotated to provide precise location of known promoters as well as novel ones, and to quantify their activities.

FANTOM5 CAGE profiles of human and mouse samples

KAUST Repository

Noguchi, Shuhei; Arakawa, Takahiro; Fukuda, Shiro; Furuno, Masaaki; Hasegawa, Akira; Hori, Fumi; Ishikawa-Kato, Sachi; Kaida, Kaoru; Kaiho, Ai; Kanamori-Katayama, Mutsumi; Kawashima, Tsugumi; Sakai, Mizuho; Simon, Christophe; Suzuki, Naoko; Tagami, Michihira; Watanabe, Shoko; Yoshida, Shigehiro; Arner, Peter; Axton, Richard A.; Babina, Magda; Baillie, J. Kenneth; Mummery, Christine L.; Barnett, Timothy C.; Beckhouse, Anthony G.; Blumenthal, Antje; Bodega, Beatrice; Bonetti, Alessandro; Briggs, James; Brombacher, Frank; Carlisle, Ailsa J.; Clevers, Hans C.; Davis, Carrie A.; Nakachi, Yutaka; Detmar, Michael; Dohi, Taeko; Edge, Albert S.B.; Edinger, Matthias; Ehrlund, Anna; Ekwall, Karl; Endoh, Mitsuhiro; Enomoto, Hideki; Eslami, Afsaneh; Fagiolini, Michela; Nakahara, Fumio; Fairbairn, Lynsey; Farach-Carson, Mary C.; Faulkner, Geoffrey J.; Ferrai, Carmelo; Fisher, Malcolm E.; Forrester, Lesley M.; Fujita, Rie; Furusawa, Jun-ichi; Geijtenbeek, Teunis B.; Gingeras, Thomas; Nakamura, Toshiyuki; Goldowitz, Daniel; Guhl, Sven; Guler, Reto; Gustincich, Stefano; Ha, Thomas J.; Hamaguchi, Masahide; Hara, Mitsuko; Hasegawa, Yuki; Herlyn, Meenhard; Heutink, Peter; Nakamura, Yukio; Hitchens, Kelly J.; Hume, David A.; Ikawa, Tomokatsu; Orlando, Valerio; Kai, Chieko; Kawamoto, Hiroshi; Kawamura, Yuki I.; Kempfle, Judith S.; Kenna, Tony J.; Kere, Juha; Nozaki, Tadasuke; Khachigian, Levon M.; Kitamura, Toshio; Klein, Sarah; Klinken, S. Peter; Knox, Alan J.; Kojima, Soichi; Koseki, Haruhiko; Koyasu, Shigeo; Lee, Weonju; Lennartsson, Andreas; Ogishima, Soichi; Mackay-sim, Alan; Mejhert, Niklas; Mizuno, Yosuke; Morikawa, Hiromasa; Morimoto, Mitsuru; Moro, Kazuyo; Morris, Kelly J.; Motohashi, Hozumi; Ohkura, Naganari; Ohno, Hiroshi; Ohshima, Mitsuhiro; Kojima, Miki; Okada-Hatakeyama, Mariko; Okazaki, Yasushi; Orlando, Valerio; Ovchinnikov, Dmitry A.; Passier, Robert; Patrikakis, Margaret; Pombo, Ana; Pradhan-Bhatt, Swati; Qin, Xian-Yang; Rehli, Michael; Kubosaki, Atsutaka; Rizzu, Patrizia; Roy, Sugata; Sajantila, Antti; Sakaguchi, Shimon; Sato, Hiroki; Satoh, Hironori; Savvi, Suzana; Saxena, Alka; Schmidl, Christian; Schneider, Claudio; Manabe, Ri-ichiroh; Schulze-Tanzil, Gundula G.; Schwegmann, Anita; Sheng, Guojun; Shin, Jay W.; Sugiyama, Daisuke; Sugiyama, Takaaki; Summers, Kim M.; Takahashi, Naoko; Takai, Jun; Tanaka, Hiroshi; Murata, Mitsuyoshi; Tatsukawa, Hideki; Tomoiu, Andru; Toyoda, Hiroo; van de Wetering, Marc; van den Berg, Linda M.; Verardo, Roberto; Vijayan, Dipti; Wells, Christine A.; Winteringham, Louise N.; Wolvetang, Ernst; Nagao-Sato, Sayaka; Yamaguchi, Yoko; Yamamoto, Masayuki; Yanagi-Mizuochi, Chiyo; Yoneda, Misako; Yonekura, Yohei; Zhang, Peter G.; Zucchelli, Silvia; Abugessaisa, Imad; Arner, Erik; Harshbarger, Jayson; Nakazato, Kenichi; Kondo, Atsushi; Lassmann, Timo; Lizio, Marina; Sahin, Serkan; Sengstag, Thierry; Severin, Jessica; Shimoji, Hisashi; Suzuki, Masanori; Suzuki, Harukazu; Kawai, Jun; Ninomiya, Noriko; Kondo, Naoto; Itoh, Masayoshi; Daub, Carsten O.; Kasukawa, Takeya; Kawaji, Hideya; Carninci, Piero; Forrest, Alistair R.R.; Hayashizaki, Yoshihide; Nishiyori-Sueki, Hiromi; Noma, Shohei; Saijyo, Eri; Saka, Akiko

2017-01-01

In the FANTOM5 project, transcription initiation events across the human and mouse genomes were mapped at a single base-pair resolution and their frequencies were monitored by CAGE (Cap Analysis of Gene Expression) coupled with single-molecule sequencing. Approximately three thousands of samples, consisting of a variety of primary cells, tissues, cell lines, and time series samples during cell activation and development, were subjected to a uniform pipeline of CAGE data production. The analysis pipeline started by measuring RNA extracts to assess their quality, and continued to CAGE library production by using a robotic or a manual workflow, single molecule sequencing, and computational processing to generate frequencies of transcription initiation. Resulting data represents the consequence of transcriptional regulation in each analyzed state of mammalian cells. Non-overlapping peaks over the CAGE profiles, approximately 200,000 and 150,000 peaks for the human and mouse genomes, were identified and annotated to provide precise location of known promoters as well as novel ones, and to quantify their activities.

Burn mouse models

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Calum, Henrik; Høiby, Niels; Moser, Claus

2014-01-01

Severe thermal injury induces immunosuppression, involving all parts of the immune system, especially when large fractions of the total body surface area are affected. An animal model was established to characterize the burn-induced immunosuppression. In our novel mouse model a 6 % third-degree b......Severe thermal injury induces immunosuppression, involving all parts of the immune system, especially when large fractions of the total body surface area are affected. An animal model was established to characterize the burn-induced immunosuppression. In our novel mouse model a 6 % third...... with infected burn wound compared with the burn wound only group. The burn mouse model resembles the clinical situation and provides an opportunity to examine or develop new strategies like new antibiotics and immune therapy, in handling burn wound victims much....

Microbiological profile of chicken carcasses: A comparative analysis using shotgun metagenomic sequencing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alessandra De Cesare

2018-04-01

Full Text Available In the last few years metagenomic and 16S rRNA sequencing have completly changed the microbiological investigations of food products. In this preliminary study, the microbiological profile of chicken carcasses collected from animals fed with different diets were tested by using shotgun metagenomic sequencing. A total of 15 carcasses have been collected at the slaughetrhouse at the end of the refrigeration tunnel from chickens reared for 35 days and fed with a control diet (n=5, a diet supplemented with 1500 FTU/kg of commercial phytase (n=5 and a diet supplemented with 1500 FTU/kg of commercial phytase and 3g/kg of inositol (n=5. Ten grams of neck and breast skin were obtained from each carcass and submited to total DNA extraction by using the DNeasy Blood & Tissue Kit (Qiagen. Sequencing libraries have been prepared by using the Nextera XT DNA Library Preparation Kit (Illumina and sequenced in a HiScanSQ (Illumina at 100 bp in paired ends. A number of sequences ranging between 5 and 9 million was obtained for each sample. Sequence analysis showed that Proteobacteria and Firmicutes represented more than 98% of whole bacterial populations associated to carcass skin in all groups but their abundances were different between groups. Moraxellaceae and other degradative bacteria showed a significantly higher abundance in the control compared to the treated groups. Furthermore, Clostridium perfringens showed a relative frequency of abundance significantly higher in the group fed with phytase and Salmonella enterica in the group fed with phytase plus inositol. The results of this preliminary study showed that metagenome sequencing is suitable to investigate and monitor carcass microbiota in order to detect specific pathogenic and/or degradative populations.

Comparative high-throughput transcriptome sequencing and development of SiESTa, the Silene EST annotation database

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Marais Gabriel AB

2011-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The genus Silene is widely used as a model system for addressing ecological and evolutionary questions in plants, but advances in using the genus as a model system are impeded by the lack of available resources for studying its genome. Massively parallel sequencing cDNA has recently developed into an efficient method for characterizing the transcriptomes of non-model organisms, generating massive amounts of data that enable the study of multiple species in a comparative framework. The sequences generated provide an excellent resource for identifying expressed genes, characterizing functional variation and developing molecular markers, thereby laying the foundations for future studies on gene sequence and gene expression divergence. Here, we report the results of a comparative transcriptome sequencing study of eight individuals representing four Silene and one Dianthus species as outgroup. All sequences and annotations have been deposited in a newly developed and publicly available database called SiESTa, the Silene EST annotation database. Results A total of 1,041,122 EST reads were generated in two runs on a Roche GS-FLX 454 pyrosequencing platform. EST reads were analyzed separately for all eight individuals sequenced and were assembled into contigs using TGICL. These were annotated with results from BLASTX searches and Gene Ontology (GO terms, and thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs were characterized. Unassembled reads were kept as singletons and together with the contigs contributed to the unigenes characterized in each individual. The high quality of unigenes is evidenced by the proportion (49% that have significant hits in similarity searches with the A. thaliana proteome. The SiESTa database is accessible at http://www.siesta.ethz.ch. Conclusion The sequence collections established in the present study provide an important genomic resource for four Silene and one Dianthus species and will help to

Comparative high-throughput transcriptome sequencing and development of SiESTa, the Silene EST annotation database

Science.gov (United States)

2011-01-01

Background The genus Silene is widely used as a model system for addressing ecological and evolutionary questions in plants, but advances in using the genus as a model system are impeded by the lack of available resources for studying its genome. Massively parallel sequencing cDNA has recently developed into an efficient method for characterizing the transcriptomes of non-model organisms, generating massive amounts of data that enable the study of multiple species in a comparative framework. The sequences generated provide an excellent resource for identifying expressed genes, characterizing functional variation and developing molecular markers, thereby laying the foundations for future studies on gene sequence and gene expression divergence. Here, we report the results of a comparative transcriptome sequencing study of eight individuals representing four Silene and one Dianthus species as outgroup. All sequences and annotations have been deposited in a newly developed and publicly available database called SiESTa, the Silene EST annotation database. Results A total of 1,041,122 EST reads were generated in two runs on a Roche GS-FLX 454 pyrosequencing platform. EST reads were analyzed separately for all eight individuals sequenced and were assembled into contigs using TGICL. These were annotated with results from BLASTX searches and Gene Ontology (GO) terms, and thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were characterized. Unassembled reads were kept as singletons and together with the contigs contributed to the unigenes characterized in each individual. The high quality of unigenes is evidenced by the proportion (49%) that have significant hits in similarity searches with the A. thaliana proteome. The SiESTa database is accessible at http://www.siesta.ethz.ch. Conclusion The sequence collections established in the present study provide an important genomic resource for four Silene and one Dianthus species and will help to further develop Silene as a

Optimal choice of word length when comparing two Markov sequences using a χ 2-statistic.

Science.gov (United States)

Bai, Xin; Tang, Kujin; Ren, Jie; Waterman, Michael; Sun, Fengzhu

2017-10-03

Alignment-free sequence comparison using counts of word patterns (grams, k-tuples) has become an active research topic due to the large amount of sequence data from the new sequencing technologies. Genome sequences are frequently modelled by Markov chains and the likelihood ratio test or the corresponding approximate χ 2 -statistic has been suggested to compare two sequences. However, it is not known how to best choose the word length k in such studies. We develop an optimal strategy to choose k by maximizing the statistical power of detecting differences between two sequences. Let the orders of the Markov chains for the two sequences be r 1 and r 2 , respectively. We show through both simulations and theoretical studies that the optimal k= max(r 1 ,r 2 )+1 for both long sequences and next generation sequencing (NGS) read data. The orders of the Markov chains may be unknown and several methods have been developed to estimate the orders of Markov chains based on both long sequences and NGS reads. We study the power loss of the statistics when the estimated orders are used. It is shown that the power loss is minimal for some of the estimators of the orders of Markov chains. Our studies provide guidelines on choosing the optimal word length for the comparison of Markov sequences.

A comparative analysis of double inversion recovery TFE and TSE sequences on carotid artery wall imaging

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen Jun; Di Yujin; Bu Chunqing; Zhang Yanfeng; Li Shuhua

2012-01-01

Objective: To analyze the characteristics of double inversion recovery (DIR) turbo field echo (TFE) and turbo spin echo (TSE) sequences and explore the value of double inversion recovery TFE sequence on carotid artery wall imaging. Patients and methods: 56 patients (32 males and 24 females, aged 31–76 years with a mean age of 53 years) were performed with DIR TFE and DIR TSE T1 weighted imaging (T1WI) sequences on carotid artery bifurcations. Image quality acquired by different techniques were evaluated and scored by two physicians. Whether there is significant difference is determined by SPSS 11.0 software. Paired-samples t test was used for statistics. Results: There was no significant difference in the image quality scores between two sequences (t = 0.880, P = 0.383 > 0.05). Conclusions: DIR TFE sequence has short scanning time and high spatial resolution. DIR TFE sequence can be used as the preferred sequence for screening carotid atherosclerotic plaque compared with DIR TSE sequence.

Allergen and Epitope Targets of Mouse-Specific T Cell Responses in Allergy and Asthma

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Véronique Schulten

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Mouse allergy has become increasingly common, mainly affecting laboratory workers and inner-city households. To date, only one major allergen, namely Mus m 1, has been described. We sought to identify T cell targets in mouse allergic patients. PBMC from allergic donors were expanded with either murine urine or epithelial extract and subsequently screened for cytokine production (IL-5 and IFNγ in response to overlapping peptides spanning the entire Mus m 1 sequence, peptides from various Mus m 1 isoforms [major urinary proteins (MUPs], peptides from mouse orthologs of known allergens from other mammalian species and peptides from proteins identified by immunoproteomic analysis of IgE/IgG immunoblots of mouse urine and epithelial extracts. This approach let to the identification of 106 non-redundant T cell epitopes derived from 35 antigens. Three major T cell-activating regions were defined in Mus m 1 alone. Moreover, our data show that immunodominant epitopes were largely shared between Mus m 1 and other MUPs even from different species, suggesting that sequence conservation in different allergens is a determinant for immunodominance. We further identified several novel mouse T cell antigens based on their homology to known mammalian allergens. Analysis of cohort-specific T cell responses revealed that rhinitis and asthmatic patients recognized different epitope repertoires. Epitopes defined herein can be formulated into an epitope “megapool” used to diagnose mouse allergy and study mouse-specific T cell responses directly ex vivo. This analysis of T cell epitopes provides a good basis for future studies to increase our understanding of the immunopathology associated with MO-allergy and asthma.

Characterizing embryonic gene expression patterns in the mouse using nonredundant sequence-based selection

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sousa-Nunes, Rita; Rana, Amer Ahmed; Kettleborough, Ross

2003-01-01

This article investigates the expression patterns of 160 genes that are expressed during early mouse development. The cDNAs were isolated from 7.5 d postcoitum (dpc) endoderm, a region that comprises visceral endoderm (VE), definitive endoderm, and the node-tissues that are required for the initi...

Construction of RNAi lentiviral vector targeting mouse Islet-1 gene

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shen-shen ZHI

2011-02-01

Full Text Available Objective To construct and select RNAi lentiviral vectors that can silence mouse Islet-1 gene effectively.Methods Three groups of RNAi-target of mouse Islet-1 gene were designed,and corresponding shRNA oligo(sh1,sh2 and sh3 were synthesized,and then they were respectively inserted to the PLVTHM vector that had been digested by endonuclease.Agarose gel electrophoresis and sequencing were used to select and indentify the positive clones.The positive clones were extracted and then mixed with E.coli to amplify positive clones.The amplified clones were then infected into 293T along with the other 3 helper plasmids to produce lentiviral vector.After the construction of the lentiviral vector,plaque formation test was performed to determine the titer of lentiviral vector.The lentiviral vectors were then infected into C3H10T1/2 cells.The transfect efficiency of the lentiviral vectors was determined with flow cytometry with detection of green fluorescent protein(GFP.Q-PCR was employed to detect the RNAi efficiency of the lentiviral vectors.Results Agarose gel electrophoresis analysis showed that the clones with right gene at the target size were successfully established;gene sequencing showed that the right DNA fragments had been inserted;plaque formation test showed that the titer of the virus solution was 3.87×108TU/ml;the transfect efficiency of the lentiviral vector infected into C3H10T1/2 cells was 90.36%.All the 3 groups of shRNA targets(sh1,sh2 and sh3 showed an inhibitory effect on Islet-1 gene,and the sh1 showed the highest inhibitory effect(76.8%,as compared with that of normal cells(P < 0.05.Conclusion The RNAi lentiviral vector that can effectively silence the mouse Islet-1 gene has been constructed successfully,which may lay a foundation for further investigation of Islet-1 gene.

Characterization and mapping of the mouse NDP (Norrie disease) locus (Ndp).

Science.gov (United States)

Battinelli, E M; Boyd, Y; Craig, I W; Breakefield, X O; Chen, Z Y

1996-02-01

Norrie disease is a severe X-linked recessive neurological disorder characterized by congenital blindness with progressive loss of hearing. Over half of Norrie patients also manifest different degrees of mental retardation. The gene for Norrie disease (NDP) has recently been cloned and characterized. With the human NDP cDNA, mouse genomic phage libraries were screened for the homolog of the gene. Comparison between mouse and human genomic DNA blots hybridized with the NDP cDNA, as well as analysis of phage clones, shows that the mouse NDP gene is 29 kb in size (28 kb for the human gene). The organization in the two species is very similar. Both have three exons with similar-sized introns and identical exon-intron boundaries between exon 2 and 3. The mouse open reading frame is 393 bp and, like the human coding sequence, is encoded in exons 2 and 3. The absence of six nucleotides in the second mouse exon results in the encoded protein being two amino acids smaller than its human counterpart. The overall homology between the human and mouse NDP protein is 95% and is particularly high (99%) in exon 3, consistent with the apparent functional importance of this region. Analysis of transcription initiation sites suggests the presence of multiple start sites associated with expression of the mouse NDP gene. Pedigree analysis of an interspecific mouse backcross localizes the mouse NDP gene close to Maoa in the conserved segment, which runs from CYBB to PFC in both human and mouse.

Plastome Sequence Determination and Comparative Analysis for Members of the Lolium-Festuca Grass Species Complex

OpenAIRE

Hand, Melanie L.; Spangenberg, German C.; Forster, John W.; Cogan, Noel O. I.

2013-01-01

Chloroplast genome sequences are of broad significance in plant biology, due to frequent use in molecular phylogenetics, comparative genomics, population genetics, and genetic modification studies. The present study used a second-generation sequencing approach to determine and assemble the plastid genomes (plastomes) of four representatives from the agriculturally important Lolium-Festuca species complex of pasture grasses (Lolium multiflorum, Festuca pratensis, Festuca altissima, and Festuca...

Comparative sequence analysis of Sordaria macrospora and Neurospora crassa as a means to improve genome annotation.

Science.gov (United States)

Nowrousian, Minou; Würtz, Christian; Pöggeler, Stefanie; Kück, Ulrich

2004-03-01

One of the most challenging parts of large scale sequencing projects is the identification of functional elements encoded in a genome. Recently, studies of genomes of up to six different Saccharomyces species have demonstrated that a comparative analysis of genome sequences from closely related species is a powerful approach to identify open reading frames and other functional regions within genomes [Science 301 (2003) 71, Nature 423 (2003) 241]. Here, we present a comparison of selected sequences from Sordaria macrospora to their corresponding Neurospora crassa orthologous regions. Our analysis indicates that due to the high degree of sequence similarity and conservation of overall genomic organization, S. macrospora sequence information can be used to simplify the annotation of the N. crassa genome.

Nucleotide sequence of a cDNA coding for the amino-terminal region of human prepro. alpha. 1(III) collagen

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Toman, P D; Ricca, G A [Rorer Biotechnology, Inc., Springfield, VA (USA); de Crombrugghe, B [National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD (USA)

1988-07-25

Type III Collagen is synthesized in a variety of tissues as a precursor macromolecule containing a leader sequence, a N-propeptide, a N-telopeptide, the triple helical region, a C-telopeptide, and C-propeptide. To further characterize the human type III collagen precursor, a human placental cDNA library was constructed in gt11 using an oligonucleotide derived from a partial cDNA sequence corresponding to the carboxy-terminal part of the 1(III) collagen. A cDNA was identified which contains the leader sequence, the N-propeptide and N-telopeptide regions. The DNA sequence of these regions are presented here. The triple helical, C-telopeptide and C-propeptide amino acid sequence for human type III collagen has been determined previously. A comparison of the human amino acid sequence with mouse, chicken, and calf sequence shows 81%, 81%, and 92% similarity, respectively. At the DNA level, the sequence similarity between human and mouse or chicken type III collagen sequences in this area is 82% and 77%, respectively.

Clonal outbreaks of [ Pasteurella] pneumotropica biovar Heyl in two mouse colonies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Adhikary, Sadhana; Bisgaard, Magne; Dagnæs-Hansen, Frederik

2017-01-01

The aim of this study was to document the pathogenic role of biovar Heyl of [Pasteurella] pneumotropica in mouse colonies. Fifty-three isolates associated with mastitis and orbital, cutaneous and vaginal abscesses as well as isolates from the nose and vagina of healthy mice were investigated...... strains with the same rpoB sequence type, as shown by the PFGE profiles. The investigation documented that members of biovar Heyl of [P.] pneumotropica caused disease outbreaks in mouse colonies since the clonality indicated a primary role of [P.] pneumotropica biovar Heyl in the infections observed....

Genome-wide ENU mutagenesis in combination with high density SNP analysis and exome sequencing provides rapid identification of novel mouse models of developmental disease.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Georgina Caruana

Full Text Available Mice harbouring gene mutations that cause phenotypic abnormalities during organogenesis are invaluable tools for linking gene function to normal development and human disorders. To generate mouse models harbouring novel alleles that are involved in organogenesis we conducted a phenotype-driven, genome-wide mutagenesis screen in mice using the mutagen N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU.ENU was injected into male C57BL/6 mice and the mutations transmitted through the germ-line. ENU-induced mutations were bred to homozygosity and G3 embryos screened at embryonic day (E 13.5 and E18.5 for abnormalities in limb and craniofacial structures, skin, blood, vasculature, lungs, gut, kidneys, ureters and gonads. From 52 pedigrees screened 15 were detected with anomalies in one or more of the structures/organs screened. Using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP-based linkage analysis in conjunction with candidate gene or next-generation sequencing (NGS we identified novel recessive alleles for Fras1, Ift140 and Lig1.In this study we have generated mouse models in which the anomalies closely mimic those seen in human disorders. The association between novel mutant alleles and phenotypes will lead to a better understanding of gene function in normal development and establish how their dysfunction causes human anomalies and disease.

Estimating and comparing microbial diversity in the presence of sequencing errors

Science.gov (United States)

Chiu, Chun-Huo

2016-01-01

Estimating and comparing microbial diversity are statistically challenging due to limited sampling and possible sequencing errors for low-frequency counts, producing spurious singletons. The inflated singleton count seriously affects statistical analysis and inferences about microbial diversity. Previous statistical approaches to tackle the sequencing errors generally require different parametric assumptions about the sampling model or about the functional form of frequency counts. Different parametric assumptions may lead to drastically different diversity estimates. We focus on nonparametric methods which are universally valid for all parametric assumptions and can be used to compare diversity across communities. We develop here a nonparametric estimator of the true singleton count to replace the spurious singleton count in all methods/approaches. Our estimator of the true singleton count is in terms of the frequency counts of doubletons, tripletons and quadrupletons, provided these three frequency counts are reliable. To quantify microbial alpha diversity for an individual community, we adopt the measure of Hill numbers (effective number of taxa) under a nonparametric framework. Hill numbers, parameterized by an order q that determines the measures’ emphasis on rare or common species, include taxa richness (q = 0), Shannon diversity (q = 1, the exponential of Shannon entropy), and Simpson diversity (q = 2, the inverse of Simpson index). A diversity profile which depicts the Hill number as a function of order q conveys all information contained in a taxa abundance distribution. Based on the estimated singleton count and the original non-singleton frequency counts, two statistical approaches (non-asymptotic and asymptotic) are developed to compare microbial diversity for multiple communities. (1) A non-asymptotic approach refers to the comparison of estimated diversities of standardized samples with a common finite sample size or sample completeness. This

MetaPro-IQ: a universal metaproteomic approach to studying human and mouse gut microbiota.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Xu; Ning, Zhibin; Mayne, Janice; Moore, Jasmine I; Li, Jennifer; Butcher, James; Deeke, Shelley Ann; Chen, Rui; Chiang, Cheng-Kang; Wen, Ming; Mack, David; Stintzi, Alain; Figeys, Daniel

2016-06-24

The gut microbiota has been shown to be closely associated with human health and disease. While next-generation sequencing can be readily used to profile the microbiota taxonomy and metabolic potential, metaproteomics is better suited for deciphering microbial biological activities. However, the application of gut metaproteomics has largely been limited due to the low efficiency of protein identification. Thus, a high-performance and easy-to-implement gut metaproteomic approach is required. In this study, we developed a high-performance and universal workflow for gut metaproteome identification and quantification (named MetaPro-IQ) by using the close-to-complete human or mouse gut microbial gene catalog as database and an iterative database search strategy. An average of 38 and 33 % of the acquired tandem mass spectrometry (MS) spectra was confidently identified for the studied mouse stool and human mucosal-luminal interface samples, respectively. In total, we accurately quantified 30,749 protein groups for the mouse metaproteome and 19,011 protein groups for the human metaproteome. Moreover, the MetaPro-IQ approach enabled comparable identifications with the matched metagenome database search strategy that is widely used but needs prior metagenomic sequencing. The response of gut microbiota to high-fat diet in mice was then assessed, which showed distinct metaproteome patterns for high-fat-fed mice and identified 849 proteins as significant responders to high-fat feeding in comparison to low-fat feeding. We present MetaPro-IQ, a metaproteomic approach for highly efficient intestinal microbial protein identification and quantification, which functions as a universal workflow for metaproteomic studies, and will thus facilitate the application of metaproteomics for better understanding the functions of gut microbiota in health and disease.

Comparative histology of mouse, rat, and human pelvic ligaments.

Science.gov (United States)

Iwanaga, Ritsuko; Orlicky, David J; Arnett, Jameson; Guess, Marsha K; Hurt, K Joseph; Connell, Kathleen A

2016-11-01

The uterosacral (USL) and cardinal ligaments (CL) provide support to the uterus and pelvic organs, and the round ligaments (RL) maintain their position in the pelvis. In women with pelvic organ prolapse (POP), the connective tissue, smooth muscle, vasculature, and innervation of the pelvic support structures are altered. Rodents are commonly used animal models for POP research. However, the pelvic ligaments have not been defined in these animals. In this study, we hypothesized that the gross anatomy and histological composition of pelvic ligaments in rodents and humans are similar. We performed an extensive literature search for anatomical and histological descriptions of the pelvic support ligaments in rodents. We also performed anatomical dissections of the pelvis to define anatomical landmarks in relation to the ligaments. In addition, we identified the histological components of the pelvic ligaments and performed quantitative analysis of the smooth muscle bundles and connective tissue of the USL and RL. The anatomy of the USL, CL, and RL and their anatomical landmarks are similar in mice, rats, and humans. All species contain the same cellular components and have similar histological architecture. However, the cervical portion of the mouse USL and RL contain more smooth muscle and less connective tissue compared with rat and human ligaments. The pelvic support structures of rats and mice are anatomically and histologically similar to those of humans. We propose that both mice and rats are appropriate, cost-effective models for directed studies in POP research.

Localization and regulation of mouse pantothenate kinase 2 [The PanK2 Genes of Mouse and Human Specify Proteins with Distinct Subcellular Locations

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Leonardi, Roberta [St. Jude Children' s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN (United States); Zhang, Yong-Mei [St. Jude Children' s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN (United States); Lykidis, Athanasios [DOE Joint Genome Inst., Walnut Creek, CA (United States); Rock, Charles O. [St. Jude Children' s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN (United States); Jackowski, Suzanne [St. Jude Children' s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN (United States)

2007-09-07

Coenzyme A (CoA) biosynthesis is initiated by pantothenatekinase (PanK) and CoA levels are controlled through differentialexpression and feedback regulation of PanK isoforms. PanK2 is amitochondrial protein in humans, but comparative genomics revealed thatacquisition of a mitochondrial targeting signal was limited to primates.Human and mouse PanK2 possessed similar biochemical properties, withinhibition by acetylCoA and activation by palmitoylcarnitine. Mouse PanK2localized in the cytosol, and the expression of PanK2 was higher in humanbrain compared to mouse brain. Differences in expression and subcellularlocalization should be considered in developing a mouse model for humanPanK2 deficiency.

Recombinational hotspot specific to female meiosis in the mouse major histocompatibility complex.

Science.gov (United States)

Shiroishi, T; Hanzawa, N; Sagai, T; Ishiura, M; Gojobori, T; Steinmetz, M; Moriwaki, K

1990-01-01

The wm7 haplotype of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), derived from the Japanese wild mouse Mus musculus molossinus, enhances recombination specific to female meiosis in the K/A beta interval of the MHC. We have mapped crossover points of fifteen independent recombinants from genetic crosses of the wm7 and laboratory haplotypes. Most of them were confined to a short segment of approximately 1 kilobase (kb) of DNA between the A beta 3 and A beta 2 genes, indicating the presence of a female-specific recombinational hotspot. Its location overlaps with a sex-independent hotspot previously identified in the Mus musculus castaneus CAS3 haplotype. We have cloned and sequenced DNA fragments surrounding the hotspot from the wm7 haplotype and the corresponding regions from the hotspot-negative B10.A and C57BL/10 strains. There is no significant difference between the sequences of these three strains, or between these and the published sequences of the CAS3 and C57BL/6 strains. However, a comparison of this A beta 3/A beta 2 hotspot with a previously characterized hotspot in the E beta gene revealed that they have a very similar molecular organization. Each hotspot consists of two elements, the consensus sequence of the mouse middle repetitive MT family and the tetrameric repeated sequences, which are separated by 1 kb of DNA.

¹H MRS characterization of neurochemical profiles in orthotopic mouse models of human brain tumors.

Science.gov (United States)

Hulsey, Keith M; Mashimo, Tomoyuki; Banerjee, Abhishek; Soesbe, Todd C; Spence, Jeffrey S; Vemireddy, Vamsidhara; Maher, Elizabeth A; Bachoo, Robert M; Choi, Changho

2015-01-01

Glioblastoma (GBM), the most common primary brain tumor, is resistant to currently available treatments. The development of mouse models of human GBM has provided a tool for studying mechanisms involved in tumor initiation and growth as well as a platform for preclinical investigation of new drugs. In this study we used (1) H MR spectroscopy to study the neurochemical profile of a human orthotopic tumor (HOT) mouse model of human GBM. The goal of this study was to evaluate differences in metabolite concentrations in the GBM HOT mice when compared with normal mouse brain in order to determine if MRS could reliably differentiate tumor from normal brain. A TE =19 ms PRESS sequence at 9.4 T was used for measuring metabolite levels in 12 GBM mice and 8 healthy mice. Levels for 12 metabolites and for lipids/macromolecules at 0.9 ppm and at 1.3 ppm were reliably detected in all mouse spectra. The tumors had significantly lower concentrations of total creatine, GABA, glutamate, total N-acetylaspartate, aspartate, lipids/macromolecules at 0.9 ppm, and lipids/macromolecules at 1.3 ppm than did the brains of normal mice. The concentrations of glycine and lactate, however, were significantly higher in tumors than in normal brain. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Incorrect strain information for mouse cell lines: sequential influence of misidentification on sublines

OpenAIRE

Uchio-Yamada, Kozue; Kasai, Fumio; Ozawa, Midori; Kohara, Arihiro

2016-01-01

Misidentification or cross-contamination of cell lines can cause serious issues. Human cell lines have been authenticated by short tandem repeat profiling; however, mouse cell lines have not been adequately assessed. In this study, mouse cell lines registered with the JCRB cell bank were examined by simple sequence length polymorphism (SSLP) analysis to identify their strains. Based on comparisons with 7 major inbred strains, our results revealed their strains in 80 of 90 cell lines. However,...

Post-contrast T1-weighted sequences in pediatric abdominal imaging: comparative analysis of three different sequences and imaging approach

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Roque, Andreia; Ramalho, Miguel; AlObaidy, Mamdoh; Heredia, Vasco; Burke, Lauren M.; De Campos, Rafael O.P.; Semelka, Richard C. [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Radiology, Chapel Hill, NC (United States)

2014-10-15

Post-contrast T1-weighted imaging is an essential component of a comprehensive pediatric abdominopelvic MR examination. However, consistent good image quality is challenging, as respiratory motion in sedated children can substantially degrade the image quality. To compare the image quality of three different post-contrast T1-weighted imaging techniques - standard three-dimensional gradient-echo (3-D-GRE), magnetization-prepared gradient-recall echo (MP-GRE) and 3-D-GRE with radial data sampling (radial 3-D-GRE) - acquired in pediatric patients younger than 5 years of age. Sixty consecutive exams performed in 51 patients (23 females, 28 males; mean age 2.5 ± 1.4 years) constituted the final study population. Thirty-nine scans were performed at 3 T and 21 scans were performed at 1.5 T. Two different reviewers independently and blindly qualitatively evaluated all sequences to determine image quality and extent of artifacts. MP-GRE and radial 3-D-GRE sequences had the least respiratory motion (P < 0.0001). Standard 3-D-GRE sequences displayed the lowest average score ratings in hepatic and pancreatic edge definition, hepatic vessel clarity and overall image quality. Radial 3-D-GRE sequences showed the highest scores ratings in overall image quality. Our preliminary results support the preference of fat-suppressed radial 3-D-GRE as the best post-contrast T1-weighted imaging approach for patients under the age of 5 years, when dynamic imaging is not essential. (orig.)

Sequencing, Characterization, and Comparative Analyses of the Plastome of Caragana rosea var. rosea

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mei Jiang

2018-05-01

Full Text Available To exploit the drought-resistant Caragana species, we performed a comparative study of the plastomes from four species: Caragana rosea, C. microphylla, C. kozlowii, and C. Korshinskii. The complete plastome sequence of the C. rosea was obtained using the next generation DNA sequencing technology. The genome is a circular structure of 133,122 bases and it lacks inverted repeat. It contains 111 unique genes, including 76 protein-coding, 30 tRNA, and four rRNA genes. Repeat analyses obtained 239, 244, 258, and 246 simple sequence repeats in C. rosea, C. microphylla, C. kozlowii, and C. korshinskii, respectively. Analyses of sequence divergence found two intergenic regions: trnI-CAU-ycf2 and trnN-GUU-ycf1, exhibiting a high degree of variations. Phylogenetic analyses showed that the four Caragana species belong to a monophyletic clade. Analyses of Ka/Ks ratios revealed that five genes: rpl16, rpl20, rps11, rps7, and ycf1 and several sites having undergone strong positive selection in the Caragana branch. The results lay the foundation for the development of molecular markers and the understanding of the evolutionary process for drought-resistant characteristics.

Chromosome-scale comparative sequence analysis unravels molecular mechanisms of genome evolution between two wheat cultivars

KAUST Repository

Thind, Anupriya Kaur

2018-02-08

Background: Recent improvements in DNA sequencing and genome scaffolding have paved the way to generate high-quality de novo assemblies of pseudomolecules representing complete chromosomes of wheat and its wild relatives. These assemblies form the basis to compare the evolutionary dynamics of wheat genomes on a megabase-scale. Results: Here, we provide a comparative sequence analysis of the 700-megabase chromosome 2D between two bread wheat genotypes, the old landrace Chinese Spring and the elite Swiss spring wheat line CH Campala Lr22a. There was a high degree of sequence conservation between the two chromosomes. Analysis of large structural variations revealed four large insertions/deletions (InDels) of >100 kb. Based on the molecular signatures at the breakpoints, unequal crossing over and double-strand break repair were identified as the evolutionary mechanisms that caused these InDels. Three of the large InDels affected copy number of NLRs, a gene family involved in plant immunity. Analysis of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) density revealed three haploblocks of 8 Mb, 9 Mb and 48 Mb with a 35-fold increased SNP density compared to the rest of the chromosome. Conclusions: This comparative analysis of two high-quality chromosome assemblies enabled a comprehensive assessment of large structural variations. The insight obtained from this analysis will form the basis of future wheat pan-genome studies.

Chromosomal localization of the human and mouse hyaluronan synthase genes

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Spicer, A.P.; McDonald, J.A. [Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, AZ (United States); Seldin, M.F. [Univ. of California Davis, CA (United States)] [and others

1997-05-01

We have recently identified a new vertebrate gene family encoding putative hyaluronan (HA) synthases. Three highly conserved related genes have been identified, designated HAS1, HAS2, and HAS3 in humans and Has1, Has2, and Has3 in the mouse. All three genes encode predicted plasma membrane proteins with multiple transmembrane domains and approximately 25% amino acid sequence identity to the Streptococcus pyogenes HA synthase, HasA. Furthermore, expression of any one HAS gene in transfected mammalian cells leads to high levels of HA biosynthesis. We now report the chromosomal localization of the three HAS genes in human and in mouse. The genes localized to three different positions within both the human and the mouse genomes. HAS1 was localized to the human chromosome 19q13.3-q13.4 boundary and Has1 to mouse Chr 17. HAS2 was localized to human chromosome 8q24.12 and Has2 to mouse Chr 15. HAS3 was localized to human chromosome 16q22.1 and Has3 to mouse Chr 8. The map position for HAS1 reinforces the recently reported relationship between a small region of human chromosome 19q and proximal mouse chromosome 17. HAS2 mapped outside the predicted critical region delineated for the Langer-Giedion syndrome and can thus be excluded as a candidate gene for this genetic syndrome. 33 refs., 2 figs.

Exploratory Bioinformatics Study of lncRNAs in Alzheimer’s Disease mRNA Sequences with Application to Drug Development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T. Holden

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA within mRNA sequences of Alzheimer’s disease genes, namely, APP, APOE, PSEN1, and PSEN2, has been analyzed using fractal dimension (FD computation and correlation analysis. We examined lncRNA by comparing mRNA FD to corresponding coding DNA sequences (CDSs FD. APP, APOE, and PSEN1 CDSs select slightly higher FDs compared to the mRNA, while PSEN2 CDSs FDs are lower. The correlation coefficient for these sequences is 0.969. A comparative study of differentially expressed MAPK signaling pathway lncRNAs in pancreatic cancer cells shows a correlation of 0.771. Selection of higher FD CDSs could indicate interaction of Alzheimer’s gene products APP, APOE, and PSEN1. Including hypocretin sequences (where all CDSs have higher fractal dimensions than mRNA in the APP, APOE, and PSEN1 sequence analyses improves correlation, but the inclusion of erythropoietin (where all CDSs have higher FD than mRNA would suppress correlation, suggesting that HCRT, a hypothalamus neurotransmitter related to the wake/sleep cycle, might be better when compared to EPO, a glycoprotein hormone, for targeting Alzheimer’s disease drug development. Fractal dimension and entropy correlation have provided supporting evidence, consistent with evolutionary studies, for using a zebrafish model together with a mouse model, in HCRT drug development.

Production of peptide antisera specific for mouse and rat proinsulin C-peptide 2

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Blume, N; Madsen, O D; Kofod, Hans

1990-01-01

for antibody binding to the immunizing antigen. Antisera to C-peptide 2, stained islet beta-cells on mouse and rat, but not monkey pancreas sections in immunocytochemical analysis. Preabsorption to the synthetic C-peptide 2, but not the synthetic mouse and rat C-peptide 1 abolished staining. In conclusion we......Mice and rats have two functional non-allelic insulin genes. By using a synthetic peptide representing a common sequence in mouse and rat C-peptide 2 as antigen, we have produced rabbit antisera specific for an epitope which is not present in mouse or rat C-peptide 1. Long-term immunization did...... not seem to increase the end point titre as tested in direct ELISA. The specificity of the antiserum was determined by competitive ELISA and histochemistry on pancreas sections. Only the synthetic C-peptide 2, but not the homologous synthetic C-peptide 1 from mouse and rat competed efficiently in ELISA...

Mapping the transcription termination region of the mouse immunoglobulin kappa gene

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xu, M.; Garrard, W.T.

1986-01-01

To define the transcription termination region of the mouse immunoglobulin kappa gene, they have subcloned single copy DNA sequences corresponding to both the template and the non-template strands of this locus. In vitro nuclear transcription with isolated MPC-11 nuclei was performed and the resulting 32 P-labeled RNA was hybridized to slot-blotted, single-stranded M13 probes covering regions within and flanking the kappa gene. The hybridization pattern for the template-strand reveals that transcription terminates within the region between 1.1 to 2.3 kb downstream from the poly(A) site. Ten different short sequences (8-13 bp) reside within 460 bp of this region that exhibit homology with sequences found in the termination regions of mouse β-globin and chicken ovalbumin genes. Transcription of the non-template strand occurs on either side of this termination region. They note that no transcription is detectable on the non-template strand downstream of the enhancer, indicating that if RNA polymerase II enters at this site, it does not initiate transcription during transit to the promoter region. They conclude that transcription of the kappa gene passes the poly(A) addition site and terminates within 2.3 Kb downstream

Hybridization-based reconstruction of small non-coding RNA transcripts from deep sequencing data.

Science.gov (United States)

Ragan, Chikako; Mowry, Bryan J; Bauer, Denis C

2012-09-01

Recent advances in RNA sequencing technology (RNA-Seq) enables comprehensive profiling of RNAs by producing millions of short sequence reads from size-fractionated RNA libraries. Although conventional tools for detecting and distinguishing non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) from reference-genome data can be applied to sequence data, ncRNA detection can be improved by harnessing the full information content provided by this new technology. Here we present NorahDesk, the first unbiased and universally applicable method for small ncRNAs detection from RNA-Seq data. NorahDesk utilizes the coverage-distribution of small RNA sequence data as well as thermodynamic assessments of secondary structure to reliably predict and annotate ncRNA classes. Using publicly available mouse sequence data from brain, skeletal muscle, testis and ovary, we evaluated our method with an emphasis on the performance for microRNAs (miRNAs) and piwi-interacting small RNA (piRNA). We compared our method with Dario and mirDeep2 and found that NorahDesk produces longer transcripts with higher read coverage. This feature makes it the first method particularly suitable for the prediction of both known and novel piRNAs.

Astonishing advances in mouse genetic tools for biomedical research.

Science.gov (United States)

Kaczmarczyk, Lech; Jackson, Walker S

2015-01-01

The humble house mouse has long been a workhorse model system in biomedical research. The technology for introducing site-specific genome modifications led to Nobel Prizes for its pioneers and opened a new era of mouse genetics. However, this technology was very time-consuming and technically demanding. As a result, many investigators continued to employ easier genome manipulation methods, though resulting models can suffer from overlooked or underestimated consequences. Another breakthrough, invaluable for the molecular dissection of disease mechanisms, was the invention of high-throughput methods to measure the expression of a plethora of genes in parallel. However, the use of samples containing material from multiple cell types could obfuscate data, and thus interpretations. In this review we highlight some important issues in experimental approaches using mouse models for biomedical research. We then discuss recent technological advances in mouse genetics that are revolutionising human disease research. Mouse genomes are now easily manipulated at precise locations thanks to guided endonucleases, such as transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) or the CRISPR/Cas9 system, both also having the potential to turn the dream of human gene therapy into reality. Newly developed methods of cell type-specific isolation of transcriptomes from crude tissue homogenates, followed by detection with next generation sequencing (NGS), are vastly improving gene regulation studies. Taken together, these amazing tools simplify the creation of much more accurate mouse models of human disease, and enable the extraction of hitherto unobtainable data.

Comparative study and application of MR sialography using different pulse sequences

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shi Ruihua; Qi Jianping; Feng Dingyi; Zou Mingli; Hu Junwu; Zhu Wenzhen; Xia Liming; Wang Chengyuan

2004-01-01

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of MR sialography in demonstrating the main salivary duct systems by using a series of pulse sequences and stimulation of salivation by vitamin C. Methods: MR sialography was prospectively performed with STIR, heavily T 2 weighted FSE, and SS FSE sequences in 17 patients suspected with salivary duct abnormalities and 13 volunteers, respectively, and MR sialography was further performed in 16 patients after vitamin C stimulation. The results of the above three sequences were compared with each other. Results: The main salivary gland duct was depicted in all cases by any of the mentioned sequence. The STIR images were significantly superior to SS FSE and heavily T 2 weighted FSE images for demonstrating the salivary duct system, followed by heavily T 2 weighted FSE images. On STIR images, first- and second- order intraglandular branches were clearly depicted in all cases, and the thinnest branches were about 0.8 mm. On heavily T 2 weighted FSE images, the first-order and the second-order intraglandular branches were delineated in 25 of 30 and 18 of 30 cases, respectively. But on SS FSE images, only 20 to 30 first-order and 10 of 30 second-order intraglandular branches could be detected. MR sialography with vitamin C stimulation revealed the good visualization of the salivary duct system, and the ducts became wider than before. In 7 cases with acute sialadenitis, the main duct became slightly wider and the distal ducts were dilated; In 7 cases with benign tumor, the ducts were displaced but remained continuous; The duct in one patients with submandibular gland cancer showed destruction and discontinuity. The ducts of one patient with Sjogren syndrome and one with sialidosis displayed normal. Conclusion: MR sialography with evoked salivation is noninvasive and allows delineation of both normal and abnormal parotid and submandibular gland duct systems, and the images are especially better on STIR sequence

Transcriptome sequencing and comparative transcriptome analysis of the scleroglucan producer Sclerotium rolfsii

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stahl Ulf

2010-05-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The plant pathogenic basidiomycete Sclerotium rolfsii produces the industrially exploited exopolysaccharide scleroglucan, a polymer that consists of (1 → 3-β-linked glucose with a (1 → 6-β-glycosyl branch on every third unit. Although the physicochemical properties of scleroglucan are well understood, almost nothing is known about the genetics of scleroglucan biosynthesis. Similarly, the biosynthetic pathway of oxalate, the main by-product during scleroglucan production, has not been elucidated yet. In order to provide a basis for genetic and metabolic engineering approaches, we studied scleroglucan and oxalate biosynthesis in S. rolfsii using different transcriptomic approaches. Results Two S. rolfsii transcriptomes obtained from scleroglucan-producing and scleroglucan-nonproducing conditions were pooled and sequenced using the 454 pyrosequencing technique yielding ~350,000 reads. These could be assembled into 21,937 contigs and 171,833 singletons, for which 6,951 had significant matches in public protein data bases. Sequence data were used to obtain first insights into the genomics of scleroglucan and oxalate production and to predict putative proteins involved in the synthesis of both metabolites. Using comparative transcriptomics, namely Agilent microarray hybridization and suppression subtractive hybridization, we identified ~800 unigenes which are differently expressed under scleroglucan-producing and non-producing conditions. From these, candidate genes were identified which could represent potential leads for targeted modification of the S. rolfsii metabolism for increased scleroglucan yields. Conclusions The results presented in this paper provide for the first time genomic and transcriptomic data about S. rolfsii and demonstrate the power and usefulness of combined transcriptome sequencing and comparative microarray analysis. The data obtained allowed us to predict the biosynthetic pathways of scleroglucan and

Lactobacillus apodemi sp. nov., a tannase-producing species isolated from wild mouse faeces.

Science.gov (United States)

Osawa, Ro; Fujisawa, Tomohiko; Pukall, Rüdiger

2006-07-01

A Gram-positive, rod-shaped, non-endospore-forming bacterium, strain ASB1(T), able to degrade tannin, was isolated from faeces of the Japanese large wood mouse, Apodemus speciosus. Comparative analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence revealed that the strain could be assigned as a member of the genus Lactobacillus. The nearest phylogenetic neighbours were determined as Lactobacillus animalis DSM 20602(T) (98.9 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity) and Lactobacillus murinus ASF 361 (98.9 %). Subsequent polyphasic analysis, including automated ribotyping and DNA-DNA hybridization experiments, confirmed that the isolate represents a novel species, for which the name Lactobacillus apodemi sp. nov. is proposed. The DNA G+C content of the novel strain is 38.5 mol%. The cell-wall peptidoglycan is of type A4alpha L-lys-D-asp. The type strain is ASB1(T) (=DSM 16634(T)=CIP 108913(T)).

Comparative pathogenicity of Coxsackievirus A16 circulating and noncirculating strains in vitro and in a neonatal mouse model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Huang, L.; Liu, X.; Li, J.L.; Chang, J.L.; Liu, G.C.; Yu, X.F.; Zhang, W.Y.

2015-01-01

An enterovirus 71 (EV71) vaccine for the prevention of hand, foot, and mouth disease (HMFD) is available, but it is not known whether the EV71 vaccine cross-protects against Coxsackievirus (CV) infection. Furthermore, although an inactivated circulating CVA16 Changchun 024 (CC024) strain vaccine candidate is effective in newborn mice, the CC024 strain causes severe lesions in muscle and lung tissues. Therefore, an effective CV vaccine with improved pathogenic safety is needed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the in vivo safety and in vitro replication capability of a noncirculating CVA16 SHZH05 strain. The replication capacity of circulating CVA16 strains CC024, CC045, CC090 and CC163 and the noncirculating SHZH05 strain was evaluated by cytopathic effect in different cell lines. The replication capacity and pathogenicity of the CC024 and SHZH05 strains were also evaluated in a neonatal mouse model. Histopathological and viral load analyses demonstrated that the SHZH05 strain had an in vitro replication capacity comparable to the four CC strains. The CC024, but not the SHZH05 strain, became distributed in a variety of tissues and caused severe lesions and mortality in neonatal mice. The differences in replication capacity and in vivo pathogenicity of the CC024 and SHZH05 strains may result from differences in the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of viral functional polyproteins P1, P2 and P3. Our findings suggest that the noncirculating SHZH05 strain may be a safer CV vaccine candidate than the CC024 strain

Comparative pathogenicity of Coxsackievirus A16 circulating and noncirculating strains in vitro and in a neonatal mouse model

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Huang, L. [Institute of Virology and AIDS Research, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun (China); The 208th Hospital of PLA, Changchun (China); Liu, X.; Li, J.L.; Chang, J.L.; Liu, G.C. [Institute of Virology and AIDS Research, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun (China); Yu, X.F. [Institute of Virology and AIDS Research, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun (China); Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD (United States); Zhang, W.Y. [Institute of Virology and AIDS Research, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun (China)

2015-03-27

An enterovirus 71 (EV71) vaccine for the prevention of hand, foot, and mouth disease (HMFD) is available, but it is not known whether the EV71 vaccine cross-protects against Coxsackievirus (CV) infection. Furthermore, although an inactivated circulating CVA16 Changchun 024 (CC024) strain vaccine candidate is effective in newborn mice, the CC024 strain causes severe lesions in muscle and lung tissues. Therefore, an effective CV vaccine with improved pathogenic safety is needed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the in vivo safety and in vitro replication capability of a noncirculating CVA16 SHZH05 strain. The replication capacity of circulating CVA16 strains CC024, CC045, CC090 and CC163 and the noncirculating SHZH05 strain was evaluated by cytopathic effect in different cell lines. The replication capacity and pathogenicity of the CC024 and SHZH05 strains were also evaluated in a neonatal mouse model. Histopathological and viral load analyses demonstrated that the SHZH05 strain had an in vitro replication capacity comparable to the four CC strains. The CC024, but not the SHZH05 strain, became distributed in a variety of tissues and caused severe lesions and mortality in neonatal mice. The differences in replication capacity and in vivo pathogenicity of the CC024 and SHZH05 strains may result from differences in the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of viral functional polyproteins P1, P2 and P3. Our findings suggest that the noncirculating SHZH05 strain may be a safer CV vaccine candidate than the CC024 strain.

Detection of herpes simplex virus-specific DNA sequences in latently infected mice and in humans.

Science.gov (United States)

Efstathiou, S; Minson, A C; Field, H J; Anderson, J R; Wildy, P

1986-02-01

Herpes simplex virus-specific DNA sequences have been detected by Southern hybridization analysis in both central and peripheral nervous system tissues of latently infected mice. We have detected virus-specific sequences corresponding to the junction fragment but not the genomic termini, an observation first made by Rock and Fraser (Nature [London] 302:523-525, 1983). This "endless" herpes simplex virus DNA is both qualitatively and quantitatively stable in mouse neural tissue analyzed over a 4-month period. In addition, examination of DNA extracted from human trigeminal ganglia has shown herpes simplex virus DNA to be present in an "endless" form similar to that found in the mouse model system. Further restriction enzyme analysis of latently infected mouse brainstem and human trigeminal DNA has shown that this "endless" herpes simplex virus DNA is present in all four isomeric configurations.

Draft Genome Sequencing and Comparative Analysis of Aspergillus sojae NBRC4239

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Sato, Atsushi; Oshima, Kenshiro; Noguchi, Hideki; Ogawa, Masahiro; Takahashi, Tadashi; Oguma, Tetsuya; Koyama, Yasuji; Itoh, Takehiko; Hattori, Masahira; Hanya, Yoshiki

2011-01-01

We conducted genome sequencing of the filamentous fungus Aspergillus sojae NBRC4239 isolated from the koji used to prepare Japanese soy sauce. We used the 454 pyrosequencing technology and investigated the genome with respect to enzymes and secondary metabolites in comparison with other Aspergilli sequenced. Assembly of 454 reads generated a non-redundant sequence of 39.5-Mb possessing 13 033 putative genes and 65 scaffolds composed of 557 contigs. Of the 2847 open reading frames with Pfam domain scores of >150 found in A. sojae NBRC4239, 81.7% had a high degree of similarity with the genes of A. oryzae. Comparative analysis identified serine carboxypeptidase and aspartic protease genes unique to A. sojae NBRC4239. While A. oryzae possessed three copies of α-amyalse gene, A. sojae NBRC4239 possessed only a single copy. Comparison of 56 gene clusters for secondary metabolites between A. sojae NBRC4239 and A. oryzae revealed that 24 clusters were conserved, whereas 32 clusters differed between them that included a deletion of 18 508 bp containing mfs1, mao1, dmaT, and pks-nrps for the cyclopiazonic acid (CPA) biosynthesis, explaining the no productivity of CPA in A. sojae. The A. sojae NBRC4239 genome data will be useful to characterize functional features of the koji moulds used in Japanese industries. PMID:21659486

The complete chloroplast genome sequence of Dodonaea viscosa: comparative and phylogenetic analyses.

Science.gov (United States)

Saina, Josphat K; Gichira, Andrew W; Li, Zhi-Zhong; Hu, Guang-Wan; Wang, Qing-Feng; Liao, Kuo

2018-02-01

The plant chloroplast (cp) genome is a highly conserved structure which is beneficial for evolution and systematic research. Currently, numerous complete cp genome sequences have been reported due to high throughput sequencing technology. However, there is no complete chloroplast genome of genus Dodonaea that has been reported before. To better understand the molecular basis of Dodonaea viscosa chloroplast, we used Illumina sequencing technology to sequence its complete genome. The whole length of the cp genome is 159,375 base pairs (bp), with a pair of inverted repeats (IRs) of 27,099 bp separated by a large single copy (LSC) 87,204 bp, and small single copy (SSC) 17,972 bp. The annotation analysis revealed a total of 115 unique genes of which 81 were protein coding, 30 tRNA, and four ribosomal RNA genes. Comparative genome analysis with other closely related Sapindaceae members showed conserved gene order in the inverted and single copy regions. Phylogenetic analysis clustered D. viscosa with other species of Sapindaceae with strong bootstrap support. Finally, a total of 249 SSRs were detected. Moreover, a comparison of the synonymous (Ks) and nonsynonymous (Ka) substitution rates in D. viscosa showed very low values. The availability of cp genome reported here provides a valuable genetic resource for comprehensive further studies in genetic variation, taxonomy and phylogenetic evolution of Sapindaceae family. In addition, SSR markers detected will be used in further phylogeographic and population structure studies of the species in this genus.

Genomic organization and phylogenetic utility of deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus lymphotoxin-alpha and lymphotoxin-beta

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Prescott Joseph

2008-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus are among the most common mammals in North America and are important reservoirs of several human pathogens, including Sin Nombre hantavirus (SNV. SNV can establish a life-long apathogenic infection in deer mice, which can shed virus in excrement for transmission to humans. Patients that die from hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS have been found to express several proinflammatory cytokines, including lymphotoxin (LT, in the lungs. It is thought that these cytokines contribute to the pathogenesis of HCPS. LT is not expressed by virus-specific CD4+ T cells from infected deer mice, suggesting a limited role for this pathway in reservoir responses to hantaviruses. Results We have cloned the genes encoding deer mouse LTα and LTβ and have found them to be highly similar to orthologous rodent sequences but with some differences in promoters elements. The phylogenetic analyses performed on the LTα, LTβ, and combined data sets yielded a strongly-supported sister-group relationship between the two murines (the house mouse and the rat. The deer mouse, a sigmodontine, appeared as the sister group to the murine clade in all of the analyses. High bootstrap values characterized the grouping of murids. Conclusion No conspicuous differences compared to other species are present in the predicted amino acid sequences of LTα or LTβ; however, some promoter differences were noted in LTβ. Although more extensive taxonomic sampling is required to confirm the results of our analyses, the preliminary findings indicate that both genes (analyzed both separately and in combination hold potential for resolving relationships among rodents and other mammals at the subfamily level.

PGC-1{beta} regulates mouse carnitine-acylcarnitine translocase through estrogen-related receptor {alpha}

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Gacias, Mar; Perez-Marti, Albert; Pujol-Vidal, Magdalena; Marrero, Pedro F. [Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Pharmacy and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB) (Spain); Haro, Diego, E-mail: dharo@ub.edu [Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Pharmacy and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB) (Spain); Relat, Joana [Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Pharmacy and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB) (Spain)

2012-07-13

Highlights: Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer The Cact gene is induced in mouse skeletal muscle after 24 h of fasting. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer The Cact gene contains a functional consensus sequence for ERR. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer This sequence binds ERR{alpha} both in vivo and in vitro. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer This ERRE is required for the activation of Cact expression by the PGC-1/ERR axis. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Our results add Cact as a genuine gene target of these transcriptional regulators. -- Abstract: Carnitine/acylcarnitine translocase (CACT) is a mitochondrial-membrane carrier proteins that mediates the transport of acylcarnitines into the mitochondrial matrix for their oxidation by the mitochondrial fatty acid-oxidation pathway. CACT deficiency causes a variety of pathological conditions, such as hypoketotic hypoglycemia, cardiac arrest, hepatomegaly, hepatic dysfunction and muscle weakness, and it can be fatal in newborns and infants. Here we report that expression of the Cact gene is induced in mouse skeletal muscle after 24 h of fasting. To gain insight into the control of Cact gene expression, we examine the transcriptional regulation of the mouse Cact gene. We show that the 5 Prime -flanking region of this gene is transcriptionally active and contains a consensus sequence for the estrogen-related receptor (ERR), a member of the nuclear receptor family of transcription factors. This sequence binds ERR{alpha}in vivo and in vitro and is required for the activation of Cact expression by the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator (PGC)-1/ERR axis. We also demonstrate that XTC790, the inverse agonist of ERR{alpha}, specifically blocks Cact activation by PGC-1{beta} in C2C12 cells.

PGC-1β regulates mouse carnitine–acylcarnitine translocase through estrogen-related receptor α

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gacias, Mar; Pérez-Martí, Albert; Pujol-Vidal, Magdalena; Marrero, Pedro F.; Haro, Diego; Relat, Joana

2012-01-01

Highlights: ► The Cact gene is induced in mouse skeletal muscle after 24 h of fasting. ► The Cact gene contains a functional consensus sequence for ERR. ► This sequence binds ERRα both in vivo and in vitro. ► This ERRE is required for the activation of Cact expression by the PGC-1/ERR axis. ► Our results add Cact as a genuine gene target of these transcriptional regulators. -- Abstract: Carnitine/acylcarnitine translocase (CACT) is a mitochondrial-membrane carrier proteins that mediates the transport of acylcarnitines into the mitochondrial matrix for their oxidation by the mitochondrial fatty acid-oxidation pathway. CACT deficiency causes a variety of pathological conditions, such as hypoketotic hypoglycemia, cardiac arrest, hepatomegaly, hepatic dysfunction and muscle weakness, and it can be fatal in newborns and infants. Here we report that expression of the Cact gene is induced in mouse skeletal muscle after 24 h of fasting. To gain insight into the control of Cact gene expression, we examine the transcriptional regulation of the mouse Cact gene. We show that the 5′-flanking region of this gene is transcriptionally active and contains a consensus sequence for the estrogen-related receptor (ERR), a member of the nuclear receptor family of transcription factors. This sequence binds ERRαin vivo and in vitro and is required for the activation of Cact expression by the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator (PGC)-1/ERR axis. We also demonstrate that XTC790, the inverse agonist of ERRα, specifically blocks Cact activation by PGC-1β in C2C12 cells.

DNA sequence responsible for the amplification of adjacent genes.

Science.gov (United States)

Pasion, S G; Hartigan, J A; Kumar, V; Biswas, D K

1987-10-01

A 10.3-kb DNA fragment in the 5'-flanking region of the rat prolactin (rPRL) gene was isolated from F1BGH(1)2C1, a strain of rat pituitary tumor cells (GH cells) that produces prolactin in response to 5-bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU). Following transfection and integration into genomic DNA of recipient mouse L cells, this DNA induced amplification of the adjacent thymidine kinase gene from Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1TK). We confirmed the ability of this "Amplicon" sequence to induce amplification of other linked or unlinked genes in DNA-mediated gene transfer studies. When transferred into the mouse L cells with the 10.3-5'rPRL gene sequence of BrdU-responsive cells, both the human growth hormone and the HSV1TK genes are amplified in response to 5-bromodeoxyuridine. This observation is substantiated by BrdU-induced amplification of the cotransferred bacterial Neo gene. Cotransfection studies reveal that the BrdU-induced amplification capability is associated with a 4-kb DNA sequence in the 5'-flanking region of the rPRL gene of BrdU-responsive cells. These results demonstrate that genes of heterologous origin, linked or unlinked, and selected or unselected, can be coamplified when located within the amplification boundary of the Amplicon sequence.

The Mouse Lemur, a Genetic Model Organism for Primate Biology, Behavior, and Health.

Science.gov (United States)

Ezran, Camille; Karanewsky, Caitlin J; Pendleton, Jozeph L; Sholtz, Alex; Krasnow, Maya R; Willick, Jason; Razafindrakoto, Andriamahery; Zohdy, Sarah; Albertelli, Megan A; Krasnow, Mark A

2017-06-01

Systematic genetic studies of a handful of diverse organisms over the past 50 years have transformed our understanding of biology. However, many aspects of primate biology, behavior, and disease are absent or poorly modeled in any of the current genetic model organisms including mice. We surveyed the animal kingdom to find other animals with advantages similar to mice that might better exemplify primate biology, and identified mouse lemurs ( Microcebus spp.) as the outstanding candidate. Mouse lemurs are prosimian primates, roughly half the genetic distance between mice and humans. They are the smallest, fastest developing, and among the most prolific and abundant primates in the world, distributed throughout the island of Madagascar, many in separate breeding populations due to habitat destruction. Their physiology, behavior, and phylogeny have been studied for decades in laboratory colonies in Europe and in field studies in Malagasy rainforests, and a high quality reference genome sequence has recently been completed. To initiate a classical genetic approach, we developed a deep phenotyping protocol and have screened hundreds of laboratory and wild mouse lemurs for interesting phenotypes and begun mapping the underlying mutations, in collaboration with leading mouse lemur biologists. We also seek to establish a mouse lemur gene "knockout" library by sequencing the genomes of thousands of mouse lemurs to identify null alleles in most genes from the large pool of natural genetic variants. As part of this effort, we have begun a citizen science project in which students across Madagascar explore the remarkable biology around their schools, including longitudinal studies of the local mouse lemurs. We hope this work spawns a new model organism and cultivates a deep genetic understanding of primate biology and health. We also hope it establishes a new and ethical method of genetics that bridges biological, behavioral, medical, and conservation disciplines, while

Design and Generation of Humanized Single-chain Fv Derived from Mouse Hybridoma for Potential Targeting Application.

Science.gov (United States)

Khantasup, Kannika; Chantima, Warangkana; Sangma, Chak; Poomputsa, Kanokwan; Dharakul, Tararaj

2015-12-01

Single-chain variable antibody fragments (scFvs) are attractive candidates for targeted immunotherapy in several human diseases. In this study, a concise humanization strategy combined with an optimized production method for humanizing scFvs was successfully employed. Two antibody clones, one directed against the hemagglutinin of H5N1 influenza virus, the other against EpCAM, a cancer biomarker, were used to demonstrate the validity of the method. Heavy chain (VH) and light chain (VL) variable regions of immunoglobulin genes from mouse hybridoma cells were sequenced and subjected to the construction of mouse scFv 3-D structure. Based on in silico modeling, the humanized version of the scFv was designed via complementarity-determining region (CDR) grafting with the retention of mouse framework region (FR) residues identified by primary sequence analysis. Root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) value between mouse and humanized scFv structures was calculated to evaluate the preservation of CDR conformation. Mouse and humanized scFv genes were then constructed and expressed in Escherichia coli. Using this method, we successfully generated humanized scFvs that retained the targeting activity of their respective mouse scFv counterparts. In addition, the humanized scFvs were engineered with a C-terminal cysteine residue (hscFv-C) for site-directed conjugation for use in future targeting applications. The hscFv-C expression was extensively optimized to improve protein production yield. The protocol yielded a 20-fold increase in production of hscFv-Cs in E. coli periplasm. The strategy described in this study may be applicable in the humanization of other antibodies derived from mouse hybridoma.

Comparing Whole-Genome Sequencing with Sanger Sequencing for spa Typing of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bartels, Mette Damkjaer; Petersen, Andreas; Worning, Peder

2014-01-01

spa typing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has traditionally been done by PCR amplification and Sanger sequencing of the spa repeat region. At Hvidovre Hospital, Denmark, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of all MRSA isolates has been performed routinely since January 2013, and ...

Mutation of miRNA target sequences during human evolution

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gardner, Paul P; Vinther, Jeppe

2008-01-01

It has long-been hypothesized that changes in non-protein-coding genes and the regulatory sequences controlling expression could undergo positive selection. Here we identify 402 putative microRNA (miRNA) target sequences that have been mutated specifically in the human lineage and show that genes...... containing such deletions are more highly expressed than their mouse orthologs. Our findings indicate that some miRNA target mutations are fixed by positive selection and might have been involved in the evolution of human-specific traits....

Sequence-based comparative study of classical swine fever virus genogroup 2.2 isolate with pestivirus reference strains.

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Ravi; Rajak, Kaushal Kishor; Chandra, Tribhuwan; Muthuchelvan, Dhanavelu; Saxena, Arpit; Chaudhary, Dheeraj; Kumar, Ajay; Pandey, Awadh Bihari

2015-09-01

This study was undertaken with the aim to compare and establish the genetic relatedness between classical swine fever virus (CSFV) genogroup 2.2 isolate and pestivirus reference strains. The available complete genome sequences of CSFV/IND/UK/LAL-290 strain and other pestivirus reference strains were retrieved from GenBank. The complete genome sequence, complete open reading frame, 5' and 3' non-coding region (NCR) sequences were analyzed and compared with reference pestiviruses strains. Clustal W model in MegAlign program of Lasergene 6.0 software was used for analysis of genetic heterogeneity. Phylogenetic analysis was carried out using MEGA 6.06 software package. The complete genome sequence alignment of CSFV/IND/UK/LAL-290 isolate and reference pestivirus strains showed 58.9-72% identities at the nucleotide level and 50.3-76.9% at amino acid level. Sequence homology of 5' and 3' NCRs was found to be 64.1-82.3% and 22.9-71.4%, respectively. In phylogenetic analysis, overall tree topology was found similar irrespective of sequences used in this study; however, whole genome phylogeny of pestivirus formed two main clusters, which further distinguished into the monophyletic clade of each pestivirus species. CSFV/IND/UK/LAL-290 isolate placed with the CSFV Eystrup strain in the same clade with close proximity to border disease virus and Aydin strains. CSFV/IND/UK/LAL-290 exhibited the analogous genomic organization to those of all reference pestivirus strains. Based on sequence identity and phylogenetic analysis, the isolate showed close homology to Aydin/04-TR virus and distantly related to Bungowannah virus.

Structural and functional analysis of mouse Msx1 gene promoter: sequence conservation with human MSX1 promoter points at potential regulatory elements.

Science.gov (United States)

Gonzalez, S M; Ferland, L H; Robert, B; Abdelhay, E

1998-06-01

Vertebrate Msx genes are related to one of the most divergent homeobox genes of Drosophila, the muscle segment homeobox (msh) gene, and are expressed in a well-defined pattern at sites of tissue interactions. This pattern of expression is conserved in vertebrates as diverse as quail, zebrafish, and mouse in a range of sites including neural crest, appendages, and craniofacial structures. In the present work, we performed structural and functional analyses in order to identify potential cis-acting elements that may be regulating Msx1 gene expression. To this end, a 4.9-kb segment of the 5'-flanking region was sequenced and analyzed for transcription-factor binding sites. Four regions showing a high concentration of these sites were identified. Transfection assays with fragments of regulatory sequences driving the expression of the bacterial lacZ reporter gene showed that a region of 4 kb upstream of the transcription start site contains positive and negative elements responsible for controlling gene expression. Interestingly, a fragment of 130 bp seems to contain the minimal elements necessary for gene expression, as its removal completely abolishes gene expression in cultured cells. These results are reinforced by comparison of this region with the human Msx1 gene promoter, which shows extensive conservation, including many consensus binding sites, suggesting a regulatory role for them.

Comparative Genome Viewer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Molineris, I.; Sales, G.

2009-01-01

The amount of information about genomes, both in the form of complete sequences and annotations, has been exponentially increasing in the last few years. As a result there is the need for tools providing a graphical representation of such information that should be comprehensive and intuitive. Visual representation is especially important in the comparative genomics field since it should provide a combined view of data belonging to different genomes. We believe that existing tools are limited in this respect as they focus on a single genome at a time (conservation histograms) or compress alignment representation to a single dimension. We have therefore developed a web-based tool called Comparative Genome Viewer (Cgv): it integrates a bidimensional representation of alignments between two regions, both at small and big scales, with the richness of annotations present in other genome browsers. We give access to our system through a web-based interface that provides the user with an interactive representation that can be updated in real time using the mouse to move from region to region and to zoom in on interesting details.

Sequence analysis of chromosome 1 revealed different selection patterns between Chinese wild mice and laboratory strains.

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Xu, Fuyi; Hu, Shixian; Chao, Tianzhu; Wang, Maochun; Li, Kai; Zhou, Yuxun; Xu, Hongyan; Xiao, Junhua

2017-10-01

Both natural and artificial selection play a critical role in animals' adaptation to the environment. Detection of the signature of selection in genomic regions can provide insights for understanding the function of specific phenotypes. It is generally assumed that laboratory mice may experience intense artificial selection while wild mice more natural selection. However, the differences of selection signature in the mouse genome and underlying genes between wild and laboratory mice remain unclear. In this study, we used two mouse populations: chromosome 1 (Chr 1) substitution lines (C1SLs) derived from Chinese wild mice and mouse genome project (MGP) sequenced inbred strains and two selection detection statistics: Fst and Tajima's D to identify the signature of selection footprint on Chr 1. For the differentiation between the C1SLs and MGP, 110 candidate selection regions containing 47 protein coding genes were detected. A total of 149 selection regions which encompass 7.215 Mb were identified in the C1SLs by Tajima's D approach. While for the MGP, we identified nearly twice selection regions (243) compared with the C1SLs which accounted for 13.27 Mb Chr 1 sequence. Through functional annotation, we identified several biological processes with significant enrichment including seven genes in the olfactory transduction pathway. In addition, we searched the phenotypes associated with the 47 candidate selection genes identified by Fst. These genes were involved in behavior, growth or body weight, mortality or aging, and immune systems which align well with the phenotypic differences between wild and laboratory mice. Therefore, the findings would be helpful for our understanding of the phenotypic differences between wild and laboratory mice and applications for using this new mouse resource (C1SLs) for further genetics studies.

Determinism and randomness in the evolution of introns and sine inserts in mouse and human mitochondrial solute carrier and cytokine receptor genes.

Science.gov (United States)

Cianciulli, Antonia; Calvello, Rosa; Panaro, Maria A

2015-04-01

In the homologous genes studied, the exons and introns alternated in the same order in mouse and human. We studied, in both species: corresponding short segments of introns, whole corresponding introns and complete homologous genes. We considered the total number of nucleotides and the number and orientation of the SINE inserts. Comparisons of mouse and human data series showed that at the level of individual relatively short segments of intronic sequences the stochastic variability prevails in the local structuring, but at higher levels of organization a deterministic component emerges, conserved in mouse and human during the divergent evolution, despite the ample re-editing of the intronic sequences and the fact that processes such as SINE spread had taken place in an independent way in the two species. Intron conservation is negatively correlated with the SINE occupancy, suggesting that virus inserts interfere with the conservation of the sequences inherited from the common ancestor. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Complete sequence and comparative analysis of the chloroplast genome of Plinia trunciflora

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Maria Eguiluz

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract Plinia trunciflora is a Brazilian native fruit tree from the Myrtaceae family, also known as jaboticaba. This species has great potential by its fruit production. Due to the high content of essential oils in their leaves and of anthocyanins in the fruits, there is also an increasing interest by the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless, there are few studies focusing on its molecular biology and genetic characterization. We herein report the complete chloroplast (cp genome of P. trunciflora using high-throughput sequencing and compare it to other previously sequenced Myrtaceae genomes. The cp genome of P. trunciflora is 159,512 bp in size, comprising inverted repeats of 26,414 bp and single-copy regions of 88,097 bp (LSC and 18,587 bp (SSC. The genome contains 111 single-copy genes (77 protein-coding, 30 tRNA and four rRNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis using 57 cp protein-coding genes demonstrated that P. trunciflora, Eugenia uniflora and Acca sellowiana form a cluster with closer relationship to Syzygium cumini than with Eucalyptus. The complete cp sequence reported here can be used in evolutionary and population genetics studies, contributing to resolve the complex taxonomy of this species and fill the gap in genetic characterization.

Complete sequence and comparative analysis of the chloroplast genome of Plinia trunciflora

Science.gov (United States)

Eguiluz, Maria; Yuyama, Priscila Mary; Guzman, Frank; Rodrigues, Nureyev Ferreira; Margis, Rogerio

2017-01-01

Abstract Plinia trunciflora is a Brazilian native fruit tree from the Myrtaceae family, also known as jaboticaba. This species has great potential by its fruit production. Due to the high content of essential oils in their leaves and of anthocyanins in the fruits, there is also an increasing interest by the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless, there are few studies focusing on its molecular biology and genetic characterization. We herein report the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of P. trunciflora using high-throughput sequencing and compare it to other previously sequenced Myrtaceae genomes. The cp genome of P. trunciflora is 159,512 bp in size, comprising inverted repeats of 26,414 bp and single-copy regions of 88,097 bp (LSC) and 18,587 bp (SSC). The genome contains 111 single-copy genes (77 protein-coding, 30 tRNA and four rRNA genes). Phylogenetic analysis using 57 cp protein-coding genes demonstrated that P. trunciflora, Eugenia uniflora and Acca sellowiana form a cluster with closer relationship to Syzygium cumini than with Eucalyptus. The complete cp sequence reported here can be used in evolutionary and population genetics studies, contributing to resolve the complex taxonomy of this species and fill the gap in genetic characterization. PMID:29111566

Complete sequence and comparative analysis of the chloroplast genome of Plinia trunciflora.

Science.gov (United States)

Eguiluz, Maria; Yuyama, Priscila Mary; Guzman, Frank; Rodrigues, Nureyev Ferreira; Margis, Rogerio

2017-01-01

Plinia trunciflora is a Brazilian native fruit tree from the Myrtaceae family, also known as jaboticaba. This species has great potential by its fruit production. Due to the high content of essential oils in their leaves and of anthocyanins in the fruits, there is also an increasing interest by the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless, there are few studies focusing on its molecular biology and genetic characterization. We herein report the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of P. trunciflora using high-throughput sequencing and compare it to other previously sequenced Myrtaceae genomes. The cp genome of P. trunciflora is 159,512 bp in size, comprising inverted repeats of 26,414 bp and single-copy regions of 88,097 bp (LSC) and 18,587 bp (SSC). The genome contains 111 single-copy genes (77 protein-coding, 30 tRNA and four rRNA genes). Phylogenetic analysis using 57 cp protein-coding genes demonstrated that P. trunciflora, Eugenia uniflora and Acca sellowiana form a cluster with closer relationship to Syzygium cumini than with Eucalyptus. The complete cp sequence reported here can be used in evolutionary and population genetics studies, contributing to resolve the complex taxonomy of this species and fill the gap in genetic characterization.

Zebrafish syntenic relationship to human/mouse genomes revealed by radiation hybrid mapping

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Samonte, Irene E.

2007-01-01

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an excellent model system for vertebrate developmental analysis and a new model for human disorders. In this study, however, zebrafish was used to determine its syntenic relationship to human/mouse genomes using the zebrafish-hamster radiation hybrid panel. The focus was on genes residing on chromosomes 6 and 17 of human and mouse, respectively, and some other genes of either immunologic or evolutionary importance. Gene sequences of interest and zebrafish expressed sequence tags deposited in the GenBank were used in identifying zebrafish homologs. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification, cloning and subcloning, sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis were done to confirm the homology of the candidate genes in zebrafish. The promising markers were then tested in the 94 zebrafish-hamster radiation hybrid panel cell lines and submitted for logarithm of the odds (LOD) score analysis to position genes on the zebrafish map. A total of 19 loci were successfully mapped to zebrafish linkage groups 1, 14, 15, 19, and 20. Four of these loci were positioned in linkage group 20, whereas, 3 more loci were added in linkage group 19, thus increasing to 34 loci the number of human genes syntenic to the group. With the sequencing of the zebrafish genome, about 20 more MHC genes were reported linked on the same group. (Author)

Comparative Transcriptomes and EVO-DEVO Studies Depending on Next Generation Sequencing

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Tiancheng Liu

2015-01-01

Full Text Available High throughput technology has prompted the progressive omics studies, including genomics and transcriptomics. We have reviewed the improvement of comparative omic studies, which are attributed to the high throughput measurement of next generation sequencing technology. Comparative genomics have been successfully applied to evolution analysis while comparative transcriptomics are adopted in comparison of expression profile from two subjects by differential expression or differential coexpression, which enables their application in evolutionary developmental biology (EVO-DEVO studies. EVO-DEVO studies focus on the evolutionary pressure affecting the morphogenesis of development and previous works have been conducted to illustrate the most conserved stages during embryonic development. Old measurements of these studies are based on the morphological similarity from macro view and new technology enables the micro detection of similarity in molecular mechanism. Evolutionary model of embryo development, which includes the “funnel-like” model and the “hourglass” model, has been evaluated by combination of these new comparative transcriptomic methods with prior comparative genomic information. Although the technology has promoted the EVO-DEVO studies into a new era, technological and material limitation still exist and further investigations require more subtle study design and procedure.

Comparative glycopattern analysis of mucins in the Brunner's glands of the guinea-pig and the house mouse (Rodentia).

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Scillitani, Giovanni; Mentino, Donatella

2015-09-01

The mucins secreted by the Brunner's glands and the duodenal goblet cells of the Guinea-pig and the house mouse were compared by conventional and FITC-conjugated lectin histochemistry. Methylation/saponification and sialidase digestion were performed prior to lectin binding to detect the residues subterminal to sulfated groups and sialic acid, respectively. In the Guinea-pig the Brunner's glands produce class-III stable sulfosialomucins. Sialic acid is mostly 2,6-linked to galactose or to N-acetylgalactosamine and is in part O-acetylated in C7, C8, and C9. Sulfated groups are probably linked to sialic acid and N-acetylgalactosamine. Terminal residuals of N-acetylglucosamine, galactose, N-acetylgalactosamine and fucose linked in α1,2, α1,3, and α1,4 are also present. Duodenal goblet cells of the Guinea-pig present a lower number of residuals in respect to the Brunner's glandular ones, with sialic acid and N-acetylgalactosamine subterminal to sulfated groups. In the house mouse the Brunner's glands produce class-III stable neutral mucins, binding to same lectins as in the Guinea-pig except for those specific to sialic acid. A diversity of fucosylated residuals higher than in the Guinea-pig is observed. The mouse duodenal goblet cells lack stable class-III mucins, have little sialic acid and present a lower number of residuals in respect to the correspondent Brunner's glands. Regulation of the acidic intestinal microenvironment, prevention of pathologies and hosting of microflora can explain the observed results and the differences observed between the two rodents. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Next Generation Semiconductor Based Sequencing of the Donkey (Equus asinus) Genome Provided Comparative Sequence Data against the Horse Genome and a Few Millions of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms

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Bertolini, Francesca; Scimone, Concetta; Geraci, Claudia; Schiavo, Giuseppina; Utzeri, Valerio Joe; Chiofalo, Vincenzo; Fontanesi, Luca

2015-01-01

Few studies investigated the donkey (Equus asinus) at the whole genome level so far. Here, we sequenced the genome of two male donkeys using a next generation semiconductor based sequencing platform (the Ion Proton sequencer) and compared obtained sequence information with the available donkey draft genome (and its Illumina reads from which it was originated) and with the EquCab2.0 assembly of the horse genome. Moreover, the Ion Torrent Personal Genome Analyzer was used to sequence reduced representation libraries (RRL) obtained from a DNA pool including donkeys of different breeds (Grigio Siciliano, Ragusano and Martina Franca). The number of next generation sequencing reads aligned with the EquCab2.0 horse genome was larger than those aligned with the draft donkey genome. This was due to the larger N50 for contigs and scaffolds of the horse genome. Nucleotide divergence between E. caballus and E. asinus was estimated to be ~ 0.52-0.57%. Regions with low nucleotide divergence were identified in several autosomal chromosomes and in the whole chromosome X. These regions might be evolutionally important in equids. Comparing Y-chromosome regions we identified variants that could be useful to track donkey paternal lineages. Moreover, about 4.8 million of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the donkey genome were identified and annotated combining sequencing data from Ion Proton (whole genome sequencing) and Ion Torrent (RRL) runs with Illumina reads. A higher density of SNPs was present in regions homologous to horse chromosome 12, in which several studies reported a high frequency of copy number variants. The SNPs we identified constitute a first resource useful to describe variability at the population genomic level in E. asinus and to establish monitoring systems for the conservation of donkey genetic resources. PMID:26151450

Next Generation Semiconductor Based Sequencing of the Donkey (Equus asinus Genome Provided Comparative Sequence Data against the Horse Genome and a Few Millions of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms.

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Francesca Bertolini

Full Text Available Few studies investigated the donkey (Equus asinus at the whole genome level so far. Here, we sequenced the genome of two male donkeys using a next generation semiconductor based sequencing platform (the Ion Proton sequencer and compared obtained sequence information with the available donkey draft genome (and its Illumina reads from which it was originated and with the EquCab2.0 assembly of the horse genome. Moreover, the Ion Torrent Personal Genome Analyzer was used to sequence reduced representation libraries (RRL obtained from a DNA pool including donkeys of different breeds (Grigio Siciliano, Ragusano and Martina Franca. The number of next generation sequencing reads aligned with the EquCab2.0 horse genome was larger than those aligned with the draft donkey genome. This was due to the larger N50 for contigs and scaffolds of the horse genome. Nucleotide divergence between E. caballus and E. asinus was estimated to be ~ 0.52-0.57%. Regions with low nucleotide divergence were identified in several autosomal chromosomes and in the whole chromosome X. These regions might be evolutionally important in equids. Comparing Y-chromosome regions we identified variants that could be useful to track donkey paternal lineages. Moreover, about 4.8 million of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs in the donkey genome were identified and annotated combining sequencing data from Ion Proton (whole genome sequencing and Ion Torrent (RRL runs with Illumina reads. A higher density of SNPs was present in regions homologous to horse chromosome 12, in which several studies reported a high frequency of copy number variants. The SNPs we identified constitute a first resource useful to describe variability at the population genomic level in E. asinus and to establish monitoring systems for the conservation of donkey genetic resources.

Comparative genomics and repetitive sequence divergence in the species of diploid Nicotiana section Alatae.

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Lim, K Yoong; Kovarik, Ales; Matyasek, Roman; Chase, Mark W; Knapp, Sandra; McCarthy, Elizabeth; Clarkson, James J; Leitch, Andrew R

2006-12-01

Combining phylogenetic reconstructions of species relationships with comparative genomic approaches is a powerful way to decipher evolutionary events associated with genome divergence. Here, we reconstruct the history of karyotype and tandem repeat evolution in species of diploid Nicotiana section Alatae. By analysis of plastid DNA, we resolved two clades with high bootstrap support, one containing N. alata, N. langsdorffii, N. forgetiana and N. bonariensis (called the n = 9 group) and another containing N. plumbaginifolia and N. longiflora (called the n = 10 group). Despite little plastid DNA sequence divergence, we observed, via fluorescent in situ hybridization, substantial chromosomal repatterning, including altered chromosome numbers, structure and distribution of repeats. Effort was focussed on 35S and 5S nuclear ribosomal DNA (rDNA) and the HRS60 satellite family of tandem repeats comprising the elements HRS60, NP3R and NP4R. We compared divergence of these repeats in diploids and polyploids of Nicotiana. There are dramatic shifts in the distribution of the satellite repeats and complete replacement of intergenic spacers (IGSs) of 35S rDNA associated with divergence of the species in section Alatae. We suggest that sequence homogenization has replaced HRS60 family repeats at sub-telomeric regions, but that this process may not occur, or occurs more slowly, when the repeats are found at intercalary locations. Sequence homogenization acts more rapidly (at least two orders of magnitude) on 35S rDNA than 5S rDNA and sub-telomeric satellite sequences. This rapid rate of divergence is analogous to that found in polyploid species, and is therefore, in plants, not only associated with polyploidy.

High-precision spatial localization of mouse vocalizations during social interaction.

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Heckman, Jesse J; Proville, Rémi; Heckman, Gert J; Azarfar, Alireza; Celikel, Tansu; Englitz, Bernhard

2017-06-07

Mice display a wide repertoire of vocalizations that varies with age, sex, and context. Especially during courtship, mice emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) of high complexity, whose detailed structure is poorly understood. As animals of both sexes vocalize, the study of social vocalizations requires attributing single USVs to individuals. The state-of-the-art in sound localization for USVs allows spatial localization at centimeter resolution, however, animals interact at closer ranges, involving tactile, snout-snout exploration. Hence, improved algorithms are required to reliably assign USVs. We develop multiple solutions to USV localization, and derive an analytical solution for arbitrary vertical microphone positions. The algorithms are compared on wideband acoustic noise and single mouse vocalizations, and applied to social interactions with optically tracked mouse positions. A novel, (frequency) envelope weighted generalised cross-correlation outperforms classical cross-correlation techniques. It achieves a median error of ~1.4 mm for noise and ~4-8.5 mm for vocalizations. Using this algorithms in combination with a level criterion, we can improve the assignment for interacting mice. We report significant differences in mean USV properties between CBA mice of different sexes during social interaction. Hence, the improved USV attribution to individuals lays the basis for a deeper understanding of social vocalizations, in particular sequences of USVs.

Gene expression and functional annotation of the human and mouse choroid plexus epithelium.

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Sarah F Janssen

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The choroid plexus epithelium (CPE is a lobed neuro-epithelial structure that forms the outer blood-brain barrier. The CPE protrudes into the brain ventricles and produces the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF, which is crucial for brain homeostasis. Malfunction of the CPE is possibly implicated in disorders like Alzheimer disease, hydrocephalus or glaucoma. To study human genetic diseases and potential new therapies, mouse models are widely used. This requires a detailed knowledge of similarities and differences in gene expression and functional annotation between the species. The aim of this study is to analyze and compare gene expression and functional annotation of healthy human and mouse CPE. METHODS: We performed 44k Agilent microarray hybridizations with RNA derived from laser dissected healthy human and mouse CPE cells. We functionally annotated and compared the gene expression data of human and mouse CPE using the knowledge database Ingenuity. We searched for common and species specific gene expression patterns and function between human and mouse CPE. We also made a comparison with previously published CPE human and mouse gene expression data. RESULTS: Overall, the human and mouse CPE transcriptomes are very similar. Their major functionalities included epithelial junctions, transport, energy production, neuro-endocrine signaling, as well as immunological, neurological and hematological functions and disorders. The mouse CPE presented two additional functions not found in the human CPE: carbohydrate metabolism and a more extensive list of (neural developmental functions. We found three genes specifically expressed in the mouse CPE compared to human CPE, being ACE, PON1 and TRIM3 and no human specifically expressed CPE genes compared to mouse CPE. CONCLUSION: Human and mouse CPE transcriptomes are very similar, and display many common functionalities. Nonetheless, we also identified a few genes and pathways which suggest that the CPE

Molecular cloning, expression, and characterization of mouse amine N-sulfotransferases

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Takahashi, Saki; Sakakibara, Yoichi; Mishiro, Emi; Kouriki, Haruna; Nobe, Rika; Kurogi, Katsuhisa; Yasuda, Shin; Liu, M.-C.; Suiko, Masahito

2008-01-01

By searching the GenBank database, we recently identified a novel mouse cytosolic sulfotransferase (SULT) cDNA (IMAGE Clone ID 679629) and a novel mouse SULT gene (LOC 215895). Sequence analysis revealed that both mouse SULTs belong to the cytosolic SULT3 gene family. The recombinant form of these two newly identified SULTs, designated SULT3A1 and SULT3A2, were expressed using the pGEX-4T-1 glutathione S-transferase fusion system and purified from transformed BL21 Escherichia coli cells. Both purified SULT3A1 and SULT3A2 exhibited strong amine N-sulfonating activities toward 1-naphthylamine among a variety of endogenous and xenobiotic compounds tested as substrates. Kinetic constants of the sulfation of 1-naphthylamine and 1-naphthol by these two enzymes were determined. Collectively, these results imply that these two amine-sulfonating SULT3s may play essential roles in the metabolism and detoxification of aromatic amine compounds in the body

Aberrant splicing in transgenes containing introns, exons, and V5 epitopes: lessons from developing an FSHD mouse model expressing a D4Z4 repeat with flanking genomic sequences.

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Eugénie Ansseau

Full Text Available The DUX4 gene, encoded within D4Z4 repeats on human chromosome 4q35, has recently emerged as a key factor in the pathogenic mechanisms underlying Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD. This recognition prompted development of animal models expressing the DUX4 open reading frame (ORF alone or embedded within D4Z4 repeats. In the first published model, we used adeno-associated viral vectors (AAV and strong viral control elements (CMV promoter, SV40 poly A to demonstrate that the DUX4 cDNA caused dose-dependent toxicity in mouse muscles. As a follow-up, we designed a second generation of DUX4-expressing AAV vectors to more faithfully genocopy the FSHD-permissive D4Z4 repeat region located at 4q35. This new vector (called AAV.D4Z4.V5.pLAM contained the D4Z4/DUX4 promoter region, a V5 epitope-tagged DUX4 ORF, and the natural 3' untranslated region (pLAM harboring two small introns, DUX4 exons 2 and 3, and the non-canonical poly A signal required for stabilizing DUX4 mRNA in FSHD. AAV.D4Z4.V5.pLAM failed to recapitulate the robust pathology of our first generation vectors following delivery to mouse muscle. We found that the DUX4.V5 junction sequence created an unexpected splice donor in the pre-mRNA that was preferentially utilized to remove the V5 coding sequence and DUX4 stop codon, yielding non-functional DUX4 protein with 55 additional residues on its carboxyl-terminus. Importantly, we further found that aberrant splicing could occur in any expression construct containing a functional splice acceptor and sequences resembling minimal splice donors. Our findings represent an interesting case study with respect to AAV.D4Z4.V5.pLAM, but more broadly serve as a note of caution for designing constructs containing V5 epitope tags and/or transgenes with downstream introns and exons.

Biomolecule Sequencer: Next-Generation DNA Sequencing Technology for In-Flight Environmental Monitoring, Research, and Beyond

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Smith, David J.; Burton, Aaron; Castro-Wallace, Sarah; John, Kristen; Stahl, Sarah E.; Dworkin, Jason Peter; Lupisella, Mark L.

2016-01-01

On the International Space Station (ISS), technologies capable of rapid microbial identification and disease diagnostics are not currently available. NASA still relies upon sample return for comprehensive, molecular-based sample characterization. Next-generation DNA sequencing is a powerful approach for identifying microorganisms in air, water, and surfaces onboard spacecraft. The Biomolecule Sequencer payload, manifested to SpaceX-9 and scheduled on the Increment 4748 research plan (June 2016), will assess the functionality of a commercially-available next-generation DNA sequencer in the microgravity environment of ISS. The MinION device from Oxford Nanopore Technologies (Oxford, UK) measures picoamp changes in electrical current dependent on nucleotide sequences of the DNA strand migrating through nanopores in the system. The hardware is exceptionally small (9.5 x 3.2 x 1.6 cm), lightweight (120 grams), and powered only by a USB connection. For the ISS technology demonstration, the Biomolecule Sequencer will be powered by a Microsoft Surface Pro3. Ground-prepared samples containing lambda bacteriophage, Escherichia coli, and mouse genomic DNA, will be launched and stored frozen on the ISS until experiment initiation. Immediately prior to sequencing, a crew member will collect and thaw frozen DNA samples, connect the sequencer to the Surface Pro3, inject thawed samples into a MinION flow cell, and initiate sequencing. At the completion of the sequencing run, data will be downlinked for ground analysis. Identical, synchronous ground controls will be used for data comparisons to determine sequencer functionality, run-time sequence, current dynamics, and overall accuracy. We will present our latest results from the ISS flight experiment the first time DNA has ever been sequenced in space and discuss the many potential applications of the Biomolecule Sequencer for environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics, higher fidelity and more adaptable Space Biology Human

Chromosomal structures and repetitive sequences divergence in Cucumis species revealed by comparative cytogenetic mapping.

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Zhang, Yunxia; Cheng, Chunyan; Li, Ji; Yang, Shuqiong; Wang, Yunzhu; Li, Ziang; Chen, Jinfeng; Lou, Qunfeng

2015-09-25

Differentiation and copy number of repetitive sequences affect directly chromosome structure which contributes to reproductive isolation and speciation. Comparative cytogenetic mapping has been verified an efficient tool to elucidate the differentiation and distribution of repetitive sequences in genome. In present study, the distinct chromosomal structures of five Cucumis species were revealed through genomic in situ hybridization (GISH) technique and comparative cytogenetic mapping of major satellite repeats. Chromosome structures of five Cucumis species were investigated using GISH and comparative mapping of specific satellites. Southern hybridization was employed to study the proliferation of satellites, whose structural characteristics were helpful for analyzing chromosome evolution. Preferential distribution of repetitive DNAs at the subtelomeric regions was found in C. sativus, C hystrix and C. metuliferus, while majority was positioned at the pericentromeric heterochromatin regions in C. melo and C. anguria. Further, comparative GISH (cGISH) through using genomic DNA of other species as probes revealed high homology of repeats between C. sativus and C. hystrix. Specific satellites including 45S rDNA, Type I/II, Type III, Type IV, CentM and telomeric repeat were then comparatively mapped in these species. Type I/II and Type IV produced bright signals at the subtelomeric regions of C. sativus and C. hystrix simultaneously, which might explain the significance of their amplification in the divergence of Cucumis subgenus from the ancient ancestor. Unique positioning of Type III and CentM only at the centromeric domains of C. sativus and C. melo, respectively, combining with unique southern bands, revealed rapid evolutionary patterns of centromeric DNA in Cucumis. Obvious interstitial telomeric repeats were observed in chromosomes 1 and 2 of C. sativus, which might provide evidence of the fusion hypothesis of chromosome evolution from x = 12 to x = 7 in

Amino acid sequences mediating vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 binding to integrin alpha 4: homologous DSP sequence found for JC polyoma VP1 coat protein

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Michael Andrew Meyer

2013-07-01

Full Text Available The JC polyoma viral coat protein VP1 was analyzed for amino acid sequences homologies to the IDSP sequence which mediates binding of VLA-4 (integrin alpha 4 to vascular cell adhesion molecule 1. Although the full sequence was not found, a DSP sequence was located near the critical arginine residue linked to infectivity of the virus and binding to sialic acid containing molecules such as integrins (3. For the JC polyoma virus, a DSP sequence was found at residues 70, 71 and 72 with homology also noted for the mouse polyoma virus and SV40 virus. Three dimensional modeling of the VP1 molecule suggests that the DSP loop has an accessible site for interaction from the external side of the assembled viral capsid pentamer.

Circadian oscillators in the mouse brain

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rath, Martin F; Rovsing, Louise; Møller, Morten

2014-01-01

with conditional cell-specific clock gene deletions. This prompted us to analyze the molecular clockwork of the mouse neocortex and cerebellum in detail. Here, by use of in situ hybridization and quantitative RT-PCR, we show that clock genes are expressed in all six layers of the neocortex and the Purkinje...... and granular cell layers of the cerebellar cortex of the mouse brain. Among these, Per1, Per2, Cry1, Arntl, and Nr1d1 exhibit circadian rhythms suggesting that local running circadian oscillators reside within neurons of the mouse neocortex and cerebellar cortex. The temporal expression profiles of clock genes...... are similar in the neocortex and cerebellum, but they are delayed by 5 h as compared to the SCN, suggestively reflecting a master-slave relationship between the SCN and extra-hypothalamic oscillators. Furthermore, ARNTL protein products are detectable in neurons of the mouse neocortex and cerebellum...

Overexpression of mouse TTF-2 gene causes cleft palate

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Meng, Tian; Shi, Jia-Yu; Wu, Min; Wang, Yan; Li, Ling; Liu, Yan; Zheng, Qian; Huang, Lei; Shi, Bing

2012-01-01

In humans, mutations of the gene encoding for thyroid transcription factor-2 (TTF-2 or FOXE1) result in Bamforth syndrome. Bamforth syndrome is characterized by agenesis, cleft palate, spiky hair and choanal atresia. TTF-2 null mice (TTF-2−/−) also exhibit cleft palate, suggesting its involvement in the palatogenesis. However, the molecular pathology and genetic regulation by TTF2 remain largely unknown. In the present study, the recombinant expression vector pBROAD3-TTF-2 containing the promoter of the mouse ROSA26 gene was created to form the structural gene of mouse TTF-2 and was microinjected into the male pronuclei of fertilized ova. Sequence analysis confirmed that the TTF-2 transgenic mouse model was established successfully. The transgenic mice displayed a phenotype of cleft palate. In addition, we found that TTF-2 was highly expressed in the medial edge epithelium (MEE) from the embryonic day 12.5 (E12.5) to E14.5 in TTF-2 transgenic mice. These observations suggest that overexpression of TTF-2 during palatogenesis may contribute to formation of cleft palate. PMID:22304410

Cross-species functional analyses reveal shared and separate roles for Sox11 in frog primary neurogenesis and mouse cortical neuronal differentiation

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Chao Chen

2016-04-01

Full Text Available A well-functioning brain requires production of the correct number and types of cells during development; cascades of transcription factors are essential for cellular coordination. Sox proteins are transcription factors that affect various processes in the development of the nervous system. Sox11, a member of the SoxC family, is expressed in differentiated neurons and supports neuronal differentiation in several systems. To understand how generalizable the actions of Sox11 are across phylogeny, its function in the development of the frog nervous system and the mouse cerebral cortex were compared. Expression of Sox11 is largely conserved between these species; in the developing frog, Sox11 is expressed in the neural plate, neural tube and throughout the segmented brain, while in the mouse cerebral cortex, Sox11 is expressed in differentiated zones, including the preplate, subplate, marginal zone and cortical plate. In both frog and mouse, data demonstrate that Sox11 supports a role in promoting neuronal differentiation, with Sox11-positive cells expressing pan-neural markers and becoming morphologically complex. However, frog and mouse Sox11 cannot substitute for one another; a functional difference likely reflected in sequence divergence. Thus, Sox11 appears to act similarly in subserving neuronal differentiation but is species-specific in frog neural development and mouse corticogenesis.

Next generation sequencing and comparative analyses of Xenopus mitogenomes

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Lloyd Rhiannon E

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Mitochondrial genomes comprise a small but critical component of the total DNA in eukaryotic organisms. They encode several key proteins for the cell’s major energy producing apparatus, the mitochondrial respiratory chain. Additonally, their nucleotide and amino acid sequences are of great utility as markers for systematics, molecular ecology and forensics. Their characterization through nucleotide sequencing is a fundamental starting point in mitogenomics. Methods to amplify complete mitochondrial genomes rapidly and efficiently from microgram quantities of tissue of single individuals are, however, not always available. Here we validate two approaches, which combine long-PCR with Roche 454 pyrosequencing technology, to obtain two complete mitochondrial genomes from individual amphibian species. Results We obtained two new xenopus frogs (Xenopus borealis and X. victorianus complete mitochondrial genome sequences by means of long-PCR followed by 454 of individual genomes (approach 1 or of multiple pooled genomes (approach 2, the mean depth of coverage per nucleotide was 9823 and 186, respectively. We also characterised and compared the new mitogenomes against their sister taxa; X. laevis and Silurana tropicalis, two of the most intensely studied amphibians. Our results demonstrate how our approaches can be used to obtain complete amphibian mitogenomes with depths of coverage that far surpass traditional primer-walking strategies, at either the same cost or less. Our results also demonstrate: that the size, gene content and order are the same among xenopus mitogenomes and that S. tropicalis form a separate clade to the other xenopus, among which X. laevis and X. victorianus were most closely related. Nucleotide and amino acid diversity was found to vary across the xenopus mitogenomes, with the greatest diversity observed in the Complex 1 gene nad4l and the least diversity observed in Complex 4 genes (cox1-3. All protein

[Construction and selection of effective mouse Smad6 recombinant lenti-virus interference vectors].

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Yu, Jing; Qi, Mengchun; Deng, Jiupeng; Liu, Gang; Chen, Huaiqing

2010-10-01

This experiment was designed to construct mouse Smad6 recombinant RNA interference vectors and determine their interference effects on bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs). Three recombinant Smad6 RNA interference vectors were constructed by molecular clone techniques with a lenti-virus vector expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP), and the correctness of recombinant vectors was verified by DNA sequencing. Mouse BMSCs were used for transfection experiments and BMP-2 was in use for osteogenic induction of MSCs. The transfection efficiency of recombinant vectors was examined by Laser confocal scanning microscope and the interference effect of recombinant vectors on Smad6 gene expression was determined by real-time RT-PCR and Western blot, respectively. Three Smad6 recombinant RNA interference vectors were successfully constructed and their correctness was proved by DNA sequencing. After transfection, GFPs were effectively expressed in MSCs and all of three recombinant vectors gained high transfection efficiency (> 95%). Both real-time PCR and Western blot examination indicated that among three recombinant vectors, No. 2 Svector had the best interference effect and the interference effect was nearly 91% at protein level. In conclusion, Mouse recombinant Smad6 RNA interference (RNAi) vector was successfully constructed and it provided an effective tool for further studies on BMP signal pathways.

Comparative Sequence Analysis of Multidrug-Resistant IncA/C Plasmids from Salmonella enterica.

Science.gov (United States)

Hoffmann, Maria; Pettengill, James B; Gonzalez-Escalona, Narjol; Miller, John; Ayers, Sherry L; Zhao, Shaohua; Allard, Marc W; McDermott, Patrick F; Brown, Eric W; Monday, Steven R

2017-01-01

Determinants of multidrug resistance (MDR) are often encoded on mobile elements, such as plasmids, transposons, and integrons, which have the potential to transfer among foodborne pathogens, as well as to other virulent pathogens, increasing the threats these traits pose to human and veterinary health. Our understanding of MDR among Salmonella has been limited by the lack of closed plasmid genomes for comparisons across resistance phenotypes, due to difficulties in effectively separating the DNA of these high-molecular weight, low-copy-number plasmids from chromosomal DNA. To resolve this problem, we demonstrate an efficient protocol for isolating, sequencing and closing IncA/C plasmids from Salmonella sp. using single molecule real-time sequencing on a Pacific Biosciences (Pacbio) RS II Sequencer. We obtained six Salmonella enterica isolates from poultry, representing six different serovars, each exhibiting the MDR-Ampc resistance profile. Salmonella plasmids were obtained using a modified mini preparation and transformed with Escherichia coli DH10Br. A Qiagen Large-Construct kit™ was used to recover highly concentrated and purified plasmid DNA that was sequenced using PacBio technology. These six closed IncA/C plasmids ranged in size from 104 to 191 kb and shared a stable, conserved backbone containing 98 core genes, with only six differences among those core genes. The plasmids encoded a number of antimicrobial resistance genes, including those for quaternary ammonium compounds and mercury. We then compared our six IncA/C plasmid sequences: first with 14 IncA/C plasmids derived from S. enterica available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), and then with an additional 38 IncA/C plasmids derived from different taxa. These comparisons allowed us to build an evolutionary picture of how antimicrobial resistance may be mediated by this common plasmid backbone. Our project provides detailed genetic information about resistance genes in

Comparative Sequence Analysis of Multidrug-Resistant IncA/C Plasmids from Salmonella enterica

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Maria Hoffmann

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Determinants of multidrug resistance (MDR are often encoded on mobile elements, such as plasmids, transposons, and integrons, which have the potential to transfer among foodborne pathogens, as well as to other virulent pathogens, increasing the threats these traits pose to human and veterinary health. Our understanding of MDR among Salmonella has been limited by the lack of closed plasmid genomes for comparisons across resistance phenotypes, due to difficulties in effectively separating the DNA of these high-molecular weight, low-copy-number plasmids from chromosomal DNA. To resolve this problem, we demonstrate an efficient protocol for isolating, sequencing and closing IncA/C plasmids from Salmonella sp. using single molecule real-time sequencing on a Pacific Biosciences (Pacbio RS II Sequencer. We obtained six Salmonella enterica isolates from poultry, representing six different serovars, each exhibiting the MDR-Ampc resistance profile. Salmonella plasmids were obtained using a modified mini preparation and transformed with Escherichia coli DH10Br. A Qiagen Large-Construct kit™ was used to recover highly concentrated and purified plasmid DNA that was sequenced using PacBio technology. These six closed IncA/C plasmids ranged in size from 104 to 191 kb and shared a stable, conserved backbone containing 98 core genes, with only six differences among those core genes. The plasmids encoded a number of antimicrobial resistance genes, including those for quaternary ammonium compounds and mercury. We then compared our six IncA/C plasmid sequences: first with 14 IncA/C plasmids derived from S. enterica available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI, and then with an additional 38 IncA/C plasmids derived from different taxa. These comparisons allowed us to build an evolutionary picture of how antimicrobial resistance may be mediated by this common plasmid backbone. Our project provides detailed genetic information about

Characterization of Aeromonas hydrophila wound pathotypes by comparative genomic and functional analyses of virulence genes.

Science.gov (United States)

Grim, Christopher J; Kozlova, Elena V; Sha, Jian; Fitts, Eric C; van Lier, Christina J; Kirtley, Michelle L; Joseph, Sandeep J; Read, Timothy D; Burd, Eileen M; Tall, Ben D; Joseph, Sam W; Horneman, Amy J; Chopra, Ashok K; Shak, Joshua R

2013-04-23

Aeromonas hydrophila has increasingly been implicated as a virulent and antibiotic-resistant etiologic agent in various human diseases. In a previously published case report, we described a subject with a polymicrobial wound infection that included a persistent and aggressive strain of A. hydrophila (E1), as well as a more antibiotic-resistant strain of A. hydrophila (E2). To better understand the differences between pathogenic and environmental strains of A. hydrophila, we conducted comparative genomic and functional analyses of virulence-associated genes of these two wound isolates (E1 and E2), the environmental type strain A. hydrophila ATCC 7966(T), and four other isolates belonging to A. aquariorum, A. veronii, A. salmonicida, and A. caviae. Full-genome sequencing of strains E1 and E2 revealed extensive differences between the two and strain ATCC 7966(T). The more persistent wound infection strain, E1, harbored coding sequences for a cytotoxic enterotoxin (Act), a type 3 secretion system (T3SS), flagella, hemolysins, and a homolog of exotoxin A found in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Corresponding phenotypic analyses with A. hydrophila ATCC 7966(T) and SSU as reference strains demonstrated the functionality of these virulence genes, with strain E1 displaying enhanced swimming and swarming motility, lateral flagella on electron microscopy, the presence of T3SS effector AexU, and enhanced lethality in a mouse model of Aeromonas infection. By combining sequence-based analysis and functional assays, we characterized an A. hydrophila pathotype, exemplified by strain E1, that exhibited increased virulence in a mouse model of infection, likely because of encapsulation, enhanced motility, toxin secretion, and cellular toxicity. Aeromonas hydrophila is a common aquatic bacterium that has increasingly been implicated in serious human infections. While many determinants of virulence have been identified in Aeromonas, rapid identification of pathogenic versus nonpathogenic

Conservation of the primary structure, organization, and function of the human and mouse β-globin locus-activating regions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Moon, A.M.; Ley, T.J.

1990-01-01

DNA sequences located in a region 6-18 kilobases (kb) upstream from the human ε-globin gene are known as the locus-activating region (LAR) or dominant control region. This region is thought to play a key role in chromatin organization of the β-like globin gene cluster during erythroid development. Since the human β-globin LAR is functional in mice, the authors reasoned that critical LAR sequence elements might be conserved between mice and humans. They therefore cloned murine genomic sequences homologous to one portion of the human LAR. They found that this murine DNA fragment (mouse LAR site II) and sequences homologous to human LAR sites I and III are located upstream from the mouse β-like globin gene cluster and determined that their locations relative to the cluster are similar to that of their human counterparts. The homologous site II sequences are 70% identical between mice and humans over a stretch of ∼800 base pairs. These results suggest that primary structural elements endash and the spatial organization of these elements endash are important for function of the β-globin LAR

Isolation of three novel rat and mouse papillomaviruses and their genomic characterization.

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Eric Schulz

Full Text Available Despite a growing knowledge about the biological diversity of papillomaviruses (PV, only little is known about non-human PV in general and about PV mice models in particular. We cloned and sequenced the complete genomes of two novel PV types from the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus; RnPV2 and the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus; AsPV1 as well as a novel variant of the recently described MmuPV1 (originally designated as MusPV from a house mouse (Mus musculus; MmuPV1 variant. In addition, we conducted phylogenetic analyses using a systematically representative set of 79 PV types, including the novel sequences. As inferred from concatenated amino acid sequences of six proteins, MmuPV1 variant and AsPV1 nested within the Beta+Xi-PV super taxon as members of the Pi-PV. RnPV2 is a member of the Iota-PV that has a distant phylogenetic position from Pi-PV. The phylogenetic results support a complex scenario of PV diversification driven by different evolutionary forces including co-divergence with hosts and adaptive radiations to new environments. PV types particularly isolated from mice and rats are the basis for new animal models, which are valuable to study PV induced tumors and new treatment options.

Genetic analysis of radiation-induced mouse thymic lymphomas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kominami, R.; Wakabayashi, Y.; Niwa, O.

2003-01-01

Mouse thymic lymphomas are one of the classic models of radiation-induced malignancies, and the model has been used for the study of genes involved in carcinogenesis. ras oncogenes are the first isolate which undergoes mutations in 10 to 30 % of lymphomas, and p16INK4a and p19ARF in the INK4a-ARF locus are also frequently inactivated. In our previous study, the inactivation of Ikaros, a key regurator of lymphoid system, was found in those lymphomas, and it was suggested that there are other responsible genes yet to be discovered. On the other hand, genetic predisposition to radiation-induced lymphoma often differs in different strains, and this reflects the presence of low penetrance genes that can modify the impact of a given mutation. Little study of such modifiers or susceptibility genes has been performed, either. Recent availability of databases on mouse genome information and the power of mouse genetic system underline usefulness of the lymphoma model in search for novel genes involved, which may provide clues to molecular mechanisms of development of the radiogenic lymphoma and also genes involved in human lymphomas and other malignancies. Accordingly, we have carried out positional cloning for the two different types of tumor-related genes. In this symposium, our current progress is presented that includes genetic mapping of susceptibility/ resistance loci on mouse chromosomes 4, 5 and 19, and also functional analysis of a novel tumor suppressor gene, Rit1/Bcl11b, that has been isolated from allelic loss (LOH) mapping and sequence analysis for γ -ray induced mouse thymic lymphomas

SOLiD sequencing of four Vibrio vulnificus genomes enables comparative genomic analysis and identification of candidate clade-specific virulence genes

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Telonis-Scott Marina

2010-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Vibrio vulnificus is the leading cause of reported death from consumption of seafood in the United States. Despite several decades of research on molecular pathogenesis, much remains to be learned about the mechanisms of virulence of this opportunistic bacterial pathogen. The two complete and annotated genomic DNA sequences of V. vulnificus belong to strains of clade 2, which is the predominant clade among clinical strains. Clade 2 strains generally possess higher virulence potential in animal models of disease compared with clade 1, which predominates among environmental strains. SOLiD sequencing of four V. vulnificus strains representing different clades (1 and 2 and biotypes (1 and 2 was used for comparative genomic analysis. Results Greater than 4,100,000 bases were sequenced of each strain, yielding approximately 100-fold coverage for each of the four genomes. Although the read lengths of SOLiD genomic sequencing were only 35 nt, we were able to make significant conclusions about the unique and shared sequences among the genomes, including identification of single nucleotide polymorphisms. Comparative analysis of the newly sequenced genomes to the existing reference genomes enabled the identification of 3,459 core V. vulnificus genes shared among all six strains and 80 clade 2-specific genes. We identified 523,161 SNPs among the six genomes. Conclusions We were able to glean much information about the genomic content of each strain using next generation sequencing. Flp pili, GGDEF proteins, and genomic island XII were identified as possible virulence factors because of their presence in virulent sequenced strains. Genomic comparisons also point toward the involvement of sialic acid catabolism in pathogenesis.

Comparative genetics: synergizing human and NOD mouse studies for identifying genetic causation of type 1 diabetes.

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Driver, John P; Chen, Yi-Guang; Mathews, Clayton E

2012-01-01

Although once widely anticipated to unlock how human type 1 diabetes (T1D) develops, extensive study of the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse has failed to yield effective treatments for patients with the disease. This has led many to question the usefulness of this animal model. While criticism about the differences between NOD and human T1D is legitimate, in many cases disease in both species results from perturbations modulated by the same genes or different genes that function within the same biological pathways. Like in humans, unusual polymorphisms within an MHC class II molecule contributes the most T1D risk in NOD mice. This insight supports the validity of this model and suggests the NOD has been improperly utilized to study how to cure or prevent disease in patients. Indeed, clinical trials are far from administering T1D therapeutics to humans at the same concentration ranges and pathological states that inhibit disease in NOD mice. Until these obstacles are overcome it is premature to label the NOD mouse a poor surrogate to test agents that cure or prevent T1D. An additional criticism of the NOD mouse is the past difficulty in identifying genes underlying T1D using conventional mapping studies. However, most of the few diabetogenic alleles identified to date appear relevant to the human disorder. This suggests that rather than abandoning genetic studies in NOD mice, future efforts should focus on improving the efficiency with which diabetes susceptibility genes are detected. The current review highlights why the NOD mouse remains a relevant and valuable tool to understand the genes and their interactions that promote autoimmune diabetes and therapeutics that inhibit this disease. It also describes a new range of technologies that will likely transform how the NOD mouse is used to uncover the genetic causes of T1D for years to come.

Rhythmic expression of Nocturnin mRNA in multiple tissues of the mouse

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Green Carla B

2001-05-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Nocturnin was originally identified by differential display as a circadian clock regulated gene with high expression at night in photoreceptors of the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis. Although encoding a novel protein, the nocturnin cDNA had strong sequence similarity with a C-terminal domain of the yeast transcription factor CCR4, and with mouse and human ESTs. Since its original identification others have cloned mouse and human homologues of nocturnin/CCR4, and we have cloned a full-length cDNA from mouse retina, along with partial cDNAs from human, cow and chicken. The goal of this study was to determine the temporal pattern of nocturnin mRNA expression in multiple tissues of the mouse. Results cDNA sequence analysis revealed a high degree of conservation among vertebrate nocturnin/CCR4 homologues along with a possible homologue in Drosophila. Northern analysis of mRNA in C3H/He and C57/Bl6 mice revealed that the mNoc gene is expressed in a broad range of tissues, with greatest abundance in liver, kidney and testis. mNoc is also expressed in multiple brain regions including suprachiasmatic nucleus and pineal gland. Furthermore, mNoc exhibits circadian rhythmicity of mRNA abundance with peak levels at the time of light offset in the retina, spleen, heart, kidney and liver. Conclusion The widespread expression and rhythmicity of mNoc mRNA parallels the widespread expression of other circadian clock genes in mammalian tissues, and suggests that nocturnin plays an important role in clock function or as a circadian clock effector.

Comparative genome analysis of trypanotolerance QTL | Nganga ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Homologous sequences were used in the definition of synteny relationships and subsequent identification of the shared disease response genes. The homologous genes within the human genome were then identified and aligned to the bovine radiation hybrid map in order to identify the mouse/bovine homologous regions.

The European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax genome puzzle: comparative BAC-mapping and low coverage shotgun sequencing

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Volckaert Filip AM

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Food supply from the ocean is constrained by the shortage of domesticated and selected fish. Development of genomic models of economically important fishes should assist with the removal of this bottleneck. European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax L. (Moronidae, Perciformes, Teleostei is one of the most important fishes in European marine aquaculture; growing genomic resources put it on its way to serve as an economic model. Results End sequencing of a sea bass genomic BAC-library enabled the comparative mapping of the sea bass genome using the three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus genome as a reference. BAC-end sequences (102,690 were aligned to the stickleback genome. The number of mappable BACs was improved using a two-fold coverage WGS dataset of sea bass resulting in a comparative BAC-map covering 87% of stickleback chromosomes with 588 BAC-contigs. The minimum size of 83 contigs covering 50% of the reference was 1.2 Mbp; the largest BAC-contig comprised 8.86 Mbp. More than 22,000 BAC-clones aligned with both ends to the reference genome. Intra-chromosomal rearrangements between sea bass and stickleback were identified. Size distributions of mapped BACs were used to calculate that the genome of sea bass may be only 1.3 fold larger than the 460 Mbp stickleback genome. Conclusions The BAC map is used for sequencing single BACs or BAC-pools covering defined genomic entities by second generation sequencing technologies. Together with the WGS dataset it initiates a sea bass genome sequencing project. This will allow the quantification of polymorphisms through resequencing, which is important for selecting highly performing domesticated fish.

Sex-comparative study of mouse cerebellum physiology under adult-onset hypothyroidism: The significance of GC-MS metabolomic data normalization in meta-analysis.

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Maga-Nteve, Christoniki; Vasilopoulou, Catherine G; Constantinou, Caterina; Margarity, Marigoula; Klapa, Maria I

2017-01-15

A systematic data quality validation and normalization strategy is an important component of the omic profile meta-analysis, ensuring comparability of the profiles and exclusion of experimental biases from the derived biological conclusions. In this study, we present the normalization methodology applied on the sets of cerebellum gas chromatography-mass spectrometry metabolic profiles of 124days old male and female animals in an adult-onset-hypothyroidism (AOH) mouse model before combining them into a sex-comparative analysis. The employed AOH model concerns the monitoring of the brain physiology of Balb/cJ mice after eight-week administration of 1%w/v KClO 4 in the drinking water, initiated on the 60th day of their life. While originating from the same animal study, the tissues of the two sexes were processed and their profiles acquired and analyzed at different time periods. Hence, the previously published profile set of male mice was first re-annotated based on the presently available resources. Then, after being validated as acquired under the same analytical conditions, both profiles sets were corrected for derivatization biases and filtered for low-confidence measurements based on the same criteria. The final normalized 73-metabolite profiles contribute to the currently few available omic datasets of the AOH effect on brain molecular physiology, especially with respect to sex differentiation. Multivariate statistical analysis indicated one (unknown) and three (succinate, benzoate, myristate) metabolites with significantly higher and lower, respectively, cerebellum concentration in the hypothyroid compared to the euthyroid female mice. The respective numbers for the males were two and 24. Comparison of the euthyroid cerebellum metabolic profiles between the two sexes indicated 36 metabolites, including glucose, myo- and scyllo-inositol, with significantly lower concentration in the females versus the males. This implies that the female mouse cerebellum has

Mouse ribosomal RNA genes contain multiple differentially regulated variants.

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Hung Tseng

2008-03-01

Full Text Available Previous cytogenetic studies suggest that various rDNA chromosomal loci are not equally active in different cell types. Consistent with this variability, rDNA polymorphism is well documented in human and mouse. However, attempts to identify molecularly rDNA variant types, which are regulated individually (i.e., independent of other rDNA variants and tissue-specifically, have not been successful. We report here the molecular cloning and characterization of seven mouse rDNA variants (v-rDNA. The identification of these v-rDNAs was based on restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs, which are conserved among individuals and mouse strains. The total copy number of the identified variants is less than 100 and the copy number of each individual variant ranges from 4 to 15. Sequence analysis of the cloned v-rDNA identified variant-specific single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs in the transcribed region. These SNPs were used to develop a set of variant-specific PCR assays, which permitted analysis of the v-rDNAs' expression profiles in various tissues. These profiles show that three v-rDNAs are expressed in all tissues (constitutively active, two are expressed in some tissues (selectively active, and two are not expressed (silent. These expression profiles were observed in six individuals from three mouse strains, suggesting the pattern is not randomly determined. Thus, the mouse rDNA array likely consists of genetically distinct variants, and some are regulated tissue-specifically. Our results provide the first molecular evidence for cell-type-specific regulation of a subset of rDNA.

Epitopes of human testis-specific lactate dehydrogenase deduced from a cDNA sequence

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Millan, J.L.; Driscoll, C.E.; LeVan, K.M.; Goldberg, E.

1987-01-01

The sequence and structure of human testis-specific L-lactate dehydrogenase [LDHC 4 , LDHX; (L)-lactate:NAD + oxidoreductase, EC 1.1.1.27] has been derived from analysis of a complementary DNA (cDNA) clone comprising the complete protein coding region of the enzyme. From the deduced amino acid sequence, human LDHC 4 is as different from rodent LDHC 4 (73% homology) as it is from human LDHA 4 (76% homology) and porcine LDHB 4 (68% homology). Subunit homologies are consistent with the conclusion that the LDHC gene arose by at least two independent duplication events. Furthermore, the lower degree of homology between mouse and human LDHC 4 and the appearance of this isozyme late in evolution suggests a higher rate of mutation in the mammalian LDHC genes than in the LDHA and -B genes. Comparison of exposed amino acid residues of discrete anti-genic determinants of mouse and human LDHC 4 reveals significant differences. Knowledge of the human LDHC 4 sequence will help design human-specific peptides useful in the development of a contraceptive vaccine

Comparative analysis of function and interaction of transcription factors in nematodes: Extensive conservation of orthology coupled to rapid sequence evolution

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Singh Rama S

2008-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Much of the morphological diversity in eukaryotes results from differential regulation of gene expression in which transcription factors (TFs play a central role. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is an established model organism for the study of the roles of TFs in controlling the spatiotemporal pattern of gene expression. Using the fully sequenced genomes of three Caenorhabditid nematode species as well as genome information from additional more distantly related organisms (fruit fly, mouse, and human we sought to identify orthologous TFs and characterized their patterns of evolution. Results We identified 988 TF genes in C. elegans, and inferred corresponding sets in C. briggsae and C. remanei, containing 995 and 1093 TF genes, respectively. Analysis of the three gene sets revealed 652 3-way reciprocal 'best hit' orthologs (nematode TF set, approximately half of which are zinc finger (ZF-C2H2 and ZF-C4/NHR types and HOX family members. Examination of the TF genes in C. elegans and C. briggsae identified the presence of significant tandem clustering on chromosome V, the majority of which belong to ZF-C4/NHR family. We also found evidence for lineage-specific duplications and rapid evolution of many of the TF genes in the two species. A search of the TFs conserved among nematodes in Drosophila melanogaster, Mus musculus and Homo sapiens revealed 150 reciprocal orthologs, many of which are associated with important biological processes and human diseases. Finally, a comparison of the sequence, gene interactions and function indicates that nematode TFs conserved across phyla exhibit significantly more interactions and are enriched in genes with annotated mutant phenotypes compared to those that lack orthologs in other species. Conclusion Our study represents the first comprehensive genome-wide analysis of TFs across three nematode species and other organisms. The findings indicate substantial conservation of transcription

Centralized mouse repositories.

Science.gov (United States)

Donahue, Leah Rae; Hrabe de Angelis, Martin; Hagn, Michael; Franklin, Craig; Lloyd, K C Kent; Magnuson, Terry; McKerlie, Colin; Nakagata, Naomi; Obata, Yuichi; Read, Stuart; Wurst, Wolfgang; Hörlein, Andreas; Davisson, Muriel T

2012-10-01

Because the mouse is used so widely for biomedical research and the number of mouse models being generated is increasing rapidly, centralized repositories are essential if the valuable mouse strains and models that have been developed are to be securely preserved and fully exploited. Ensuring the ongoing availability of these mouse strains preserves the investment made in creating and characterizing them and creates a global resource of enormous value. The establishment of centralized mouse repositories around the world for distributing and archiving these resources has provided critical access to and preservation of these strains. This article describes the common and specialized activities provided by major mouse repositories around the world.

Comparative genomic sequence analysis of strawberry and other rosids reveals significant microsynteny

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Abbott Albert

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Fragaria belongs to the Rosaceae, an economically important family that includes a number of important fruit producing genera such as Malus and Prunus. Using genomic sequences from 50 Fragaria fosmids, we have examined the microsynteny between Fragaria and other plant models. Results In more than half of the strawberry fosmids, we found syntenic regions that are conserved in Populus, Vitis, Medicago and/or Arabidopsis with Populus containing the greatest number of syntenic regions with Fragaria. The longest syntenic region was between LG VIII of the poplar genome and the strawberry fosmid 72E18, where seven out of twelve predicted genes were collinear. We also observed an unexpectedly high level of conserved synteny between Fragaria (rosid I and Vitis (basal rosid. One of the strawberry fosmids, 34E24, contained a cluster of R gene analogs (RGAs with NBS and LRR domains. We detected clusters of RGAs with high sequence similarity to those in 34E24 in all the genomes compared. In the phylogenetic tree we have generated, all the NBS-LRR genes grouped together with Arabidopsis CNL-A type NBS-LRR genes. The Fragaria RGA grouped together with those of Vitis and Populus in the phylogenetic tree. Conclusions Our analysis shows considerable microsynteny between Fragaria and other plant genomes such as Populus, Medicago, Vitis, and Arabidopsis to a lesser degree. We also detected a cluster of NBS-LRR type genes that are conserved in all the genomes compared.

Comparative sequence analysis revealed altered chromosomal organization and a novel insertion sequence encoding DNA modification and potentially stress-related functions in an Escherichia coli O157:H7 foodborne isolate

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We recently described the complete genome of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157:H7 strain NADC 6564, an isolate of strain 86-24 linked to the 1986 disease outbreak. In the current study, we compared the chromosomal sequence of NADC 6564 to the well-characterized chromosomal sequences of ...

The genome sequence of Caenorhabditis briggsae: a platform for comparative genomics.

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Lincoln D Stein

2003-11-01

Full Text Available The soil nematodes Caenorhabditis briggsae and Caenorhabditis elegans diverged from a common ancestor roughly 100 million years ago and yet are almost indistinguishable by eye. They have the same chromosome number and genome sizes, and they occupy the same ecological niche. To explore the basis for this striking conservation of structure and function, we have sequenced the C. briggsae genome to a high-quality draft stage and compared it to the finished C. elegans sequence. We predict approximately 19,500 protein-coding genes in the C. briggsae genome, roughly the same as in C. elegans. Of these, 12,200 have clear C. elegans orthologs, a further 6,500 have one or more clearly detectable C. elegans homologs, and approximately 800 C. briggsae genes have no detectable matches in C. elegans. Almost all of the noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs known are shared between the two species. The two genomes exhibit extensive colinearity, and the rate of divergence appears to be higher in the chromosomal arms than in the centers. Operons, a distinctive feature of C. elegans, are highly conserved in C. briggsae, with the arrangement of genes being preserved in 96% of cases. The difference in size between the C. briggsae (estimated at approximately 104 Mbp and C. elegans (100.3 Mbp genomes is almost entirely due to repetitive sequence, which accounts for 22.4% of the C. briggsae genome in contrast to 16.5% of the C. elegans genome. Few, if any, repeat families are shared, suggesting that most were acquired after the two species diverged or are undergoing rapid evolution. Coclustering the C. elegans and C. briggsae proteins reveals 2,169 protein families of two or more members. Most of these are shared between the two species, but some appear to be expanding or contracting, and there seem to be as many as several hundred novel C. briggsae gene families. The C. briggsae draft sequence will greatly improve the annotation of the C. elegans genome. Based on similarity to C

Comparing an accelerated 3D fast spin-echo sequence (CS-SPACE) for knee 3-T magnetic resonance imaging with traditional 3D fast spin-echo (SPACE) and routine 2D sequences

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Altahawi, Faysal F.; Blount, Kevin J.; Omar, Imran M. [Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Department of Radiology, Chicago, IL (United States); Morley, Nicholas P. [Marshfield Clinic, Department of Radiology, Marshfield, WI (United States); Raithel, Esther [Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen (Germany)

2017-01-15

To compare a faster, new, high-resolution accelerated 3D-fast-spin-echo (3D-FSE) acquisition sequence (CS-SPACE) to traditional 2D and high-resolution 3D sequences for knee 3-T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Twenty patients received knee MRIs that included routine 2D (T1, PD ± FS, T2-FS; 0.5 x 0.5 x 3 mm{sup 3}; ∝10 min), traditional 3D FSE (SPACE-PD-FS; 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 mm{sup 3}; ∝7.5 min), and accelerated 3D-FSE prototype (CS-SPACE-PD-FS; 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 mm{sup 3}; ∝5 min) acquisitions on a 3-T MRI system (Siemens MAGNETOM Skyra). Three musculoskeletal radiologists (MSKRs) prospectively and independently reviewed the studies with graded surveys comparing image and diagnostic quality. Tissue-specific signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratios (CNR) were also compared. MSKR-perceived diagnostic quality of cartilage was significantly higher for CS-SPACE than for SPACE and 2D sequences (p < 0.001). Assessment of diagnostic quality of menisci and synovial fluid was higher for CS-SPACE than for SPACE (p < 0.001). CS-SPACE was not significantly different from SPACE but had lower assessments than 2D sequences for evaluation of bones, ligaments, muscles, and fat (p ≤ 0.004). 3D sequences had higher spatial resolution, but lower overall assessed contrast (p < 0.001). Overall image quality from CS-SPACE was assessed as higher than SPACE (p = 0.007), but lower than 2D sequences (p < 0.001). Compared to SPACE, CS-SPACE had higher fluid SNR and CNR against all other tissues (all p < 0.001). The CS-SPACE prototype allows for faster isotropic acquisitions of knee MRIs over currently used protocols. High fluid-to-cartilage CNR and higher spatial resolution over routine 2D sequences may present a valuable role for CS-SPACE in the evaluation of cartilage and menisci. (orig.)

Sex reversal in the mouse (Mus musculus) is caused by a recurrent nonreciprocal crossover involving the x and an aberrant y chromosome.

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Singh, L; Jones, K W

1982-02-01

Satellite DNA (Bkm) from the W sex-determining chromosome of snakes, which is related to sequences on the mouse Y chromosome, has been used to analyze the DNA and chromosomes of sex-reversed (Sxr) XXSxr male mice. Such mice exhibit a male-specific Southern blot Bkm hybridization pattern, consistent with the presence of Y-chromosome DNA. In situ hybridization of Bkm to chromosomes of XXSxr mice shows an aberrant concentration of related sequences on the distal terminus of a large mouse chromosome. The XYSxr carrier male, however, shows a pair of small chromosomes, which are presumed to be aberrant Y derivatives. Meiosis in the XYSxr mouse involves transfer of chromatin rich in Bkm-related DNA from the Y-Y1 complex to the X distal terminus. We suggest that this event is responsible for the transmission of the Sxr trait.

The MAGIC Touch: Combining MAGIC-Pointing with a Touch-Sensitive Mouse

Science.gov (United States)

Drewes, Heiko; Schmidt, Albrecht

In this paper, we show how to use the combination of eye-gaze and a touch-sensitive mouse to ease pointing tasks in graphical user interfaces. A touch of the mouse positions the mouse pointer at the current gaze position of the user. Thus, the pointer is always at the position where the user expects it on the screen. This approach changes the user experience in tasks that include frequent switching between keyboard and mouse input (e.g. working with spreadsheets). In a user study, we compared the touch-sensitive mouse with a traditional mouse and observed speed improvements for pointing tasks on complex backgrounds. For pointing task on plain backgrounds, performances with both devices were similar, but users perceived the gaze-sensitive interaction of the touch-sensitive mouse as being faster and more convenient. Our results show that using a touch-sensitive mouse that positions the pointer on the user’s gaze position reduces the need for mouse movements in pointing tasks enormously.

Thermodynamic Molecular Switch in Sequence-Specific Hydrophobic Interaction: Two Computational Models Compared

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Paul Chun

2003-01-01

Full Text Available We have shown in our published work the existence of a thermodynamic switch in biological systems wherein a change of sign in ΔCp°(Treaction leads to a true negative minimum in the Gibbs free energy change of reaction, and hence, a maximum in the related Keq. We have examined 35 pair-wise, sequence-specific hydrophobic interactions over the temperature range of 273–333 K, based on data reported by Nemethy and Scheraga in 1962. A closer look at a single example, the pair-wise hydrophobic interaction of leucine-isoleucine, will demonstrate the significant differences when the data are analyzed using the Nemethy-Scheraga model or treated by the Planck-Benzinger methodology which we have developed. The change in inherent chemical bond energy at 0 K, ΔH°(T0 is 7.53 kcal mol-1 compared with 2.4 kcal mol-1, while ‹ts› is 365 K as compared with 355 K, for the Nemethy-Scheraga and Planck-Benzinger model, respectively. At ‹tm›, the thermal agitation energy is about five times greater than ΔH°(T0 in the Planck-Benzinger model, that is 465 K compared to 497 K in the Nemethy-Scheraga model. The results imply that the negative Gibbs free energy minimum at a well-defined ‹ts›, where TΔS° = 0 at about 355 K, has its origin in the sequence-specific hydrophobic interactions, which are highly dependent on details of molecular structure. The Nemethy-Scheraga model shows no evidence of the thermodynamic molecular switch that we have found to be a universal feature of biological interactions. The Planck-Benzinger method is the best known for evaluating the innate temperature-invariant enthalpy, ΔH°(T0, and provides for better understanding of the heat of reaction for biological molecules.

[Comparative study of expression of homeobox gene Msx-1, Msx-2 mRNA during the hard tissue formation of mouse tooth development].

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Y; Wang, J; Gao, Y

2001-07-01

To observe and compare the expression pattern of Msx-1, Msx-2 mRNA during the different stages of hard tissue formation in the first mandibular molar of mouse and investigate the relationship between the two genes. First mandibular molar germs from 1, 3, 7 and 14-days old mouse were separated and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction was performed on the total RNA of them using Msx-1, Msx-2 specific primers separately. Expression of both genes were detected during the different stages of hard tissue formation in the mouse first mandibular molars, but there was some interesting differences in the quantitiy between the two genes. Msx-1 transcripts appeared at the 1 day postnatally, and increase through 3 day, 7 day, then maximally expressed at 14 days postnatally; while Msx-2 mRNA was seen and expressed maximally at the 3 days postnatally, then there was a gradual reduction at 7 days, and 14 days postnatally. The homeobox gene Msx-1, Msx-2 may play a role in the events of the hard tissue formation. The complementary expression pattern of them during the specific stage of hard tissue formation indicates that there may be some functional redundancy between them during the biomineralization.

Whole-Genome Sequencing and Comparative Genome Analysis of Bacillus subtilis Strains Isolated from Non-Salted Fermented Soybean Foods.

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Mayumi Kamada

Full Text Available Bacillus subtilis is the main component in the fermentation of soybeans. To investigate the genetics of the soybean-fermenting B. subtilis strains and its relationship with the productivity of extracellular poly-γ-glutamic acid (γPGA, we sequenced the whole genome of eight B. subtilis stains isolated from non-salted fermented soybean foods in Southeast Asia. Assembled nucleotide sequences were compared with those of a natto (fermented soybean food starter strain B. subtilis BEST195 and the laboratory standard strain B. subtilis 168 that is incapable of γPGA production. Detected variants were investigated in terms of insertion sequences, biotin synthesis, production of subtilisin NAT, and regulatory genes for γPGA synthesis, which were related to fermentation process. Comparing genome sequences, we found that the strains that produce γPGA have a deletion in a protein that constitutes the flagellar basal body, and this deletion was not found in the non-producing strains. We further identified diversity in variants of the bio operon, which is responsible for the biotin auxotrophism of the natto starter strains. Phylogenetic analysis using multilocus sequencing typing revealed that the B. subtilis strains isolated from the non-salted fermented soybeans were not clustered together, while the natto-fermenting strains were tightly clustered; this analysis also suggested that the strain isolated from "Tua Nao" of Thailand traces a different evolutionary process from other strains.

Comparing whole-genome sequencing with Sanger sequencing for spa typing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

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Bartels, Mette Damkjær; Petersen, Andreas; Worning, Peder; Nielsen, Jesper Boye; Larner-Svensson, Hanna; Johansen, Helle Krogh; Andersen, Leif Percival; Jarløv, Jens Otto; Boye, Kit; Larsen, Anders Rhod; Westh, Henrik

2014-12-01

spa typing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has traditionally been done by PCR amplification and Sanger sequencing of the spa repeat region. At Hvidovre Hospital, Denmark, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of all MRSA isolates has been performed routinely since January 2013, and an in-house analysis pipeline determines the spa types. Due to national surveillance, all MRSA isolates are sent to Statens Serum Institut, where the spa type is determined by PCR and Sanger sequencing. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability of the spa types obtained by 150-bp paired-end Illumina WGS. MRSA isolates from new MRSA patients in 2013 (n = 699) in the capital region of Denmark were included. We found a 97% agreement between spa types obtained by the two methods. All isolates achieved a spa type by both methods. Nineteen isolates differed in spa types by the two methods, in most cases due to the lack of 24-bp repeats in the whole-genome-sequenced isolates. These related but incorrect spa types should have no consequence in outbreak investigations, since all epidemiologically linked isolates, regardless of spa type, will be included in the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis. This will reveal the close relatedness of the spa types. In conclusion, our data show that WGS is a reliable method to determine the spa type of MRSA. Copyright © 2014, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Comparative molecular cytogenetics of major repetitive sequence families of three Dendrobium species (Orchidaceae) from Bangladesh

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Begum, Rabeya; Alam, Sheikh Shamimul; Menzel, Gerhard; Schmidt, Thomas

2009-01-01

Background and Aims Dendrobium species show tremendous morphological diversity and have broad geographical distribution. As repetitive sequence analysis is a useful tool to investigate the evolution of chromosomes and genomes, the aim of the present study was the characterization of repetitive sequences from Dendrobium moschatum for comparative molecular and cytogenetic studies in the related species Dendrobium aphyllum, Dendrobium aggregatum and representatives from other orchid genera. Methods In order to isolate highly repetitive sequences, a c0t-1 DNA plasmid library was established. Repeats were sequenced and used as probes for Southern hybridization. Sequence divergence was analysed using bioinformatic tools. Repetitive sequences were localized along orchid chromosomes by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Key Results Characterization of the c0t-1 library resulted in the detection of repetitive sequences including the (GA)n dinucleotide DmoO11, numerous Arabidopsis-like telomeric repeats and the highly amplified dispersed repeat DmoF14. The DmoF14 repeat is conserved in six Dendrobium species but diversified in representative species of three other orchid genera. FISH analyses showed the genome-wide distribution of DmoF14 in D. moschatum, D. aphyllum and D. aggregatum. Hybridization with the telomeric repeats demonstrated Arabidopsis-like telomeres at the chromosome ends of Dendrobium species. However, FISH using the telomeric probe revealed two pairs of chromosomes with strong intercalary signals in D. aphyllum. FISH showed the terminal position of 5S and 18S–5·8S–25S rRNA genes and a characteristic number of rDNA sites in the three Dendrobium species. Conclusions The repeated sequences isolated from D. moschatum c0t-1 DNA constitute major DNA families of the D. moschatum, D. aphyllum and D. aggregatum genomes with DmoF14 representing an ancient component of orchid genomes. Large intercalary telomere-like arrays suggest chromosomal

Human vs. Mouse Eosinophils: “That which we call an eosinophil, by any other name would stain as red”

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Lee, James J.; Jacobsen, Elizabeth A.; Ochkur, Sergei I; McGarry, Michael P.; Condjella, Rachel M.; Doyle, Alfred D.; Luo, Huijun; Zellner, Katie R.; Protheroe, Cheryl A.; Willetts, Lian; LeSuer, William E.; Colbert, Dana C.; Helmers, Richard A.; Lacy, Paige; Moqbel, Redwan; Lee, Nancy A.

2012-01-01

The respective life histories of humans and mice are well defined and describe a unique story of evolutionary conservation extending from sequence identity within the genome to the underpinnings of biochemical, cellular, and physiological pathways. As a consequence, the hematopoietic lineages of both species are invariantly maintained, each with identifiable eosinophils. This canonical presence nonetheless does not preclude disparities between human and mouse eosinophils and/or their effector functions. Indeed, many books and reviews dogmatically highlight differences, providing a rationale to discount the use of mouse models of human eosinophilic diseases. We suggest that this perspective is parochial and ignores the wealth of available studies and the consensus of the literature that overwhelming similarities (and not differences) exist between human and mouse eosinophils. The goal of this review is to summarize this literature and in some cases provide the experimental details, comparing and contrasting eosinophils and eosinophil effector functions in humans vs. mice. In particular, our review will provide a summation and an easy to use reference guide to important studies demonstrating that while differences exist, more often than not their consequences are unknown and do not necessarily reflect inherent disparities in eosinophil function, but instead, species-specific variations. The conclusion from this overview is that despite nominal differences, the vast similarities between human and mouse eosinophils provide important insights as to their roles in health and disease and, in turn, demonstrate the unique utility of mouse-based studies with an expectation of valid extrapolation to the understanding and treatment of patients. PMID:22935586

Insights into bacterioplankton community structure from Sundarbans mangrove ecoregion using Sanger and Illumina MiSeq sequencing approaches: A comparative analysis

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Anwesha Ghosh

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Next generation sequencing using platforms such as Illumina MiSeq provides a deeper insight into the structure and function of bacterioplankton communities in coastal ecosystems compared to traditional molecular techniques such as clone library approach which incorporates Sanger sequencing. In this study, structure of bacterioplankton communities was investigated from two stations of Sundarbans mangrove ecoregion using both Sanger and Illumina MiSeq sequencing approaches. The Illumina MiSeq data is available under the BioProject ID PRJNA35180 and Sanger sequencing data under accession numbers KX014101-KX014140 (Stn1 and KX014372-KX014410 (Stn3. Proteobacteria-, Firmicutes- and Bacteroidetes-like sequences retrieved from both approaches appeared to be abundant in the studied ecosystem. The Illumina MiSeq data (2.1 GB provided a deeper insight into the structure of bacterioplankton communities and revealed the presence of bacterial phyla such as Actinobacteria, Cyanobacteria, Tenericutes, Verrucomicrobia which were not recovered based on Sanger sequencing. A comparative analysis of bacterioplankton communities from both stations highlighted the presence of genera that appear in both stations and genera that occur exclusively in either station. However, both the Sanger sequencing and Illumina MiSeq data were coherent at broader taxonomic levels. Pseudomonas, Devosia, Hyphomonas and Erythrobacter-like sequences were the abundant bacterial genera found in the studied ecosystem. Both the sequencing methods showed broad coherence although as expected the Illumina MiSeq data helped identify rarer bacterioplankton groups and also showed the presence of unassigned OTUs indicating possible presence of novel bacterioplankton from the studied mangrove ecosystem.

Molecular glycopathology by capillary electrophoresis: Analysis of the N-glycome of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded mouse tissue samples.

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Donczo, Boglarka; Szarka, Mate; Tovari, Jozsef; Ostoros, Gyorgyi; Csanky, Eszter; Guttman, Andras

2017-06-01

Capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence (CE-LIF) detection was used to analyze endoglycosidase released and fluorophore-labeled N-glycans from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) mouse tissue samples of lung, brain, heart, spleen, liver, kidney and intestine. The FFPE samples were first deparaffinized followed by solubilization and glycoprotein retrieval. PNGase F mediated release of the N-linked oligosaccharides was followed by labeling with aminopyrene trisulfonate. After CE-LIF glycoprofiling of the FFPE mouse tissues, the N-glycan pool of the lung specimen was subject to further investigation by exoglycosidase array based carbohydrate sequencing. Structural assignment of the oligosaccharides was accomplished by the help of the GUcal software and the associated database, based on the mobility shifts after treatments with the corresponding exoglycosidase reaction mixtures. Sixteen major N-linked carbohydrate structures were sequenced from the mouse lung FFPE tissue glycome and identified, as high mannose (3) neutral biantennary (3) sialylated monoantennary (1) and sialylated bianennary (9) oligosaccharides. Two of these latter ones also possessed alpha(1-3) linked galactose residues. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

The Cu(II) affinity of the N-terminus of human copper transporter CTR1: Comparison of human and mouse sequences.

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Bossak, Karolina; Drew, Simon C; Stefaniak, Ewelina; Płonka, Dawid; Bonna, Arkadiusz; Bal, Wojciech

2018-05-01

Copper Transporter 1 (CTR1) is a homotrimeric membrane protein providing the main route of copper transport into eukaryotic cells from the extracellular milieu. Its N-terminal extracellular domain, rich in His and Met residues, is considered responsible for directing copper into the transmembrane channel. Most of vertebrate CTR1 proteins contain the His residue in position three from N-terminus, creating a well-known Amino Terminal Cu(II)- and Ni(II)-Binding (ATCUN) site. CTR1 from humans, primates and many other species contains the Met-Asp-His (MDH) sequence, while some rodents including mouse have the Met-Asn-His (MNH) N-terminal sequence. CTR1 is thought to collect Cu(II) ions from blood copper transport proteins, including albumin, but previous reports indicated that the affinity of N-terminal peptide/domain of CTR1 is significantly lower than that of albumin, casting serious doubt on this aspect of CTR1 function. Using potentiometry and spectroscopic techniques we demonstrated that MDH-amide, a tripeptide model of human CTR1 N-terminus, binds Cu(II) with K of 1.3 × 10 13  M -1 at pH 7.4, ~13 times stronger than Human Serum Albumin (HSA), and MNH-amide is even stronger, K of 3.2 × 10 14  M -1 at pH 7.4. These results indicate that the N-terminus of CTR1 may serve as intermediate binding site during Cu(II) transfer from blood copper carriers to the transporter. MDH-amide, but not MNH-amide also forms a low abundance complex with non-ATCUN coordination involving the Met amine, His imidazole and Asp carboxylate. This species might assist Cu(II) relay down the peptide chain or its reduction to Cu(I), both steps necessary for the CTR1 function. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

An Alignment-Free Algorithm in Comparing the Similarity of Protein Sequences Based on Pseudo-Markov Transition Probabilities among Amino Acids.

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Li, Yushuang; Song, Tian; Yang, Jiasheng; Zhang, Yi; Yang, Jialiang

2016-01-01

In this paper, we have proposed a novel alignment-free method for comparing the similarity of protein sequences. We first encode a protein sequence into a 440 dimensional feature vector consisting of a 400 dimensional Pseudo-Markov transition probability vector among the 20 amino acids, a 20 dimensional content ratio vector, and a 20 dimensional position ratio vector of the amino acids in the sequence. By evaluating the Euclidean distances among the representing vectors, we compare the similarity of protein sequences. We then apply this method into the ND5 dataset consisting of the ND5 protein sequences of 9 species, and the F10 and G11 datasets representing two of the xylanases containing glycoside hydrolase families, i.e., families 10 and 11. As a result, our method achieves a correlation coefficient of 0.962 with the canonical protein sequence aligner ClustalW in the ND5 dataset, much higher than those of other 5 popular alignment-free methods. In addition, we successfully separate the xylanases sequences in the F10 family and the G11 family and illustrate that the F10 family is more heat stable than the G11 family, consistent with a few previous studies. Moreover, we prove mathematically an identity equation involving the Pseudo-Markov transition probability vector and the amino acids content ratio vector.

mouseTube – a database to collaboratively unravel mouse ultrasonic communication [version 1; referees: 2 approved

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Nicolas Torquet

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Ultrasonic vocalisation is a broadly used proxy to evaluate social communication in mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders. The efficacy and robustness of testing these models suffer from limited knowledge of the structure and functions of these vocalisations as well as of the way to analyse the data. We created mouseTube, an open database with a web interface, to facilitate sharing and comparison of ultrasonic vocalisations data and metadata attached to a recording file. Metadata describe 1 the acquisition procedure, e.g., hardware, software, sampling frequency, bit depth; 2 the biological protocol used to elicit ultrasonic vocalisations; 3 the characteristics of the individual emitting ultrasonic vocalisations (e.g., strain, sex, age. To promote open science and enable reproducibility, data are made freely available. The website provides searching functions to facilitate the retrieval of recording files of interest. It is designed to enable comparisons of ultrasonic vocalisation emission between strains, protocols or laboratories, as well as to test different analysis algorithms and to search for protocols established to elicit mouse ultrasonic vocalisations. Over the long term, users will be able to download and compare different analysis results for each data file. Such application will boost the knowledge on mouse ultrasonic communication and stimulate sharing and comparison of automatic analysis methods to refine phenotyping techniques in mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Mouse Model Resources for Vision Research

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Jungyeon Won

2011-01-01

Full Text Available The need for mouse models, with their well-developed genetics and similarity to human physiology and anatomy, is clear and their central role in furthering our understanding of human disease is readily apparent in the literature. Mice carrying mutations that alter developmental pathways or cellular function provide model systems for analyzing defects in comparable human disorders and for testing therapeutic strategies. Mutant mice also provide reproducible, experimental systems for elucidating pathways of normal development and function. Two programs, the Eye Mutant Resource and the Translational Vision Research Models, focused on providing such models to the vision research community are described herein. Over 100 mutant lines from the Eye Mutant Resource and 60 mutant lines from the Translational Vision Research Models have been developed. The ocular diseases of the mutant lines include a wide range of phenotypes, including cataracts, retinal dysplasia and degeneration, and abnormal blood vessel formation. The mutations in disease genes have been mapped and in some cases identified by direct sequencing. Here, we report 3 novel alleles of Crxtvrm65, Rp1tvrm64, and Rpe65tvrm148 as successful examples of the TVRM program, that closely resemble previously reported knockout models.

Molecular cloning and sequence analysis of hamster CENP-A cDNA

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Valdivia Manuel M

2002-05-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The centromere is a specialized locus that mediates chromosome movement during mitosis and meiosis. This chromosomal domain comprises a uniquely packaged form of heterochromatin that acts as a nucleus for the assembly of the kinetochore a trilaminar proteinaceous structure on the surface of each chromatid at the primary constriction. Kinetochores mediate interactions with the spindle fibers of the mitotic apparatus. Centromere protein A (CENP-A is a histone H3-like protein specifically located to the inner plate of kinetochore at active centromeres. CENP-A works as a component of specialized nucleosomes at centromeres bound to arrays of repeat satellite DNA. Results We have cloned the hamster homologue of human and mouse CENP-A. The cDNA isolated was found to contain an open reading frame encoding a polypeptide consisting of 129 amino acid residues with a C-terminal histone fold domain highly homologous to those of CENP-A and H3 sequences previously released. However, significant sequence divergence was found at the N-terminal region of hamster CENP-A that is five and eleven residues shorter than those of mouse and human respectively. Further, a human serine 7 residue, a target site for Aurora B kinase phosphorylation involved in the mechanism of cytokinesis, was not found in the hamster protein. A human autoepitope at the N-terminal region of CENP-A described in autoinmune diseases is not conserved in the hamster protein. Conclusions We have cloned the hamster cDNA for the centromeric protein CENP-A. Significant differences on protein sequence were found at the N-terminal tail of hamster CENP-A in comparison with that of human and mouse. Our results show a high degree of evolutionary divergence of kinetochore CENP-A proteins in mammals. This is related to the high diverse nucleotide repeat sequences found at the centromere DNA among species and support a current centromere model for kinetochore function and structural

Comparative analysis of transcriptomes in aerial stems and roots of Ephedra sinica based on high-throughput mRNA sequencing

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Taketo Okada

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Ephedra plants are taxonomically classified as gymnosperms, and are medicinally important as the botanical origin of crude drugs and as bioresources that contain pharmacologically active chemicals. Here we show a comparative analysis of the transcriptomes of aerial stems and roots of Ephedra sinica based on high-throughput mRNA sequencing by RNA-Seq. De novo assembly of short cDNA sequence reads generated 23,358, 13,373, and 28,579 contigs longer than 200 bases from aerial stems, roots, or both aerial stems and roots, respectively. The presumed functions encoded by these contig sequences were annotated by BLAST (blastx. Subsequently, these contigs were classified based on gene ontology slims, Enzyme Commission numbers, and the InterPro database. Furthermore, comparative gene expression analysis was performed between aerial stems and roots. These transcriptome analyses revealed differences and similarities between the transcriptomes of aerial stems and roots in E. sinica. Deep transcriptome sequencing of Ephedra should open the door to molecular biological studies based on the entire transcriptome, tissue- or organ-specific transcriptomes, or targeted genes of interest.

Incorrect strain information for mouse cell lines: sequential influence of misidentification on sublines.

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Uchio-Yamada, Kozue; Kasai, Fumio; Ozawa, Midori; Kohara, Arihiro

2017-03-01

Misidentification or cross-contamination of cell lines can cause serious issues. Human cell lines have been authenticated by short tandem repeat profiling; however, mouse cell lines have not been adequately assessed. In this study, mouse cell lines registered with the JCRB cell bank were examined by simple sequence length polymorphism (SSLP) analysis to identify their strains. Based on comparisons with 7 major inbred strains, our results revealed their strains in 80 of 90 cell lines. However, 12 of the 80 cell lines (15%) were found to differ from registered information. Of them, 4 cell lines originated from the same mouse, which had been generated through mating between two different inbred strains. The genotype of the mouse sample had not been examined after the backcross, leading to strain misidentification in those cell lines. Although 8 other cell lines had been established as sublines of a BALB/c cell line, their SSLP profiles are similar to a Swiss cell line. This affects differences in genotypes between inbred and outbred strains. Because the use of inbred samples and interbreeding between strains are not involved in human materials, our results suggest that the cause and influence of misidentification in mouse cell lines are different from those in human.

A Humanized Mouse Model Generated Using Surplus Neonatal Tissue

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Matthew E. Brown

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Summary: Here, we describe the NeoThy humanized mouse model created using non-fetal human tissue sources, cryopreserved neonatal thymus and umbilical cord blood hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs. Conventional humanized mouse models are made by engrafting human fetal thymus and HSCs into immunocompromised mice. These mice harbor functional human T cells that have matured in the presence of human self-peptides and human leukocyte antigen molecules. Neonatal thymus tissue is more abundant and developmentally mature and allows for creation of up to ∼50-fold more mice per donor compared with fetal tissue models. The NeoThy has equivalent frequencies of engrafted human immune cells compared with fetal tissue humanized mice and exhibits T cell function in assays of ex vivo cell proliferation, interferon γ secretion, and in vivo graft infiltration. The NeoThy model may provide significant advantages for induced pluripotent stem cell immunogenicity studies, while bypassing the requirement for fetal tissue. : Corresponding author William Burlingham and colleagues created a humanized mouse model called the NeoThy. The NeoThy uses human neonatal, rather than fetal, tissue sources for generating a human immune system within immunocompromised mouse hosts. NeoThy mice are an attractive alternative to conventional humanized mouse models, as they enable robust and reproducible iPSC immunogenicity experiments in vivo. Keywords: NeoThy, humanized mouse, iPSC, PSC, immunogenicity, transplantation, immunology, hematopoietic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, thymus

Sequence and comparative analysis of Leuconostoc dairy bacteriophages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kot, Witold; Hansen, Lars Henrik; Neve, Horst

2014-01-01

Bacteriophages attacking Leuconostoc species may significantly influence the quality of the final product. There is however limited knowledge of this group of phages in the literature. We have determined the complete genome sequences of nine Leuconostoc bacteriophages virulent to either Leuconostoc...

The functional landscape of mouse gene expression

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Zhang Wen

2004-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Large-scale quantitative analysis of transcriptional co-expression has been used to dissect regulatory networks and to predict the functions of new genes discovered by genome sequencing in model organisms such as yeast. Although the idea that tissue-specific expression is indicative of gene function in mammals is widely accepted, it has not been objectively tested nor compared with the related but distinct strategy of correlating gene co-expression as a means to predict gene function. Results We generated microarray expression data for nearly 40,000 known and predicted mRNAs in 55 mouse tissues, using custom-built oligonucleotide arrays. We show that quantitative transcriptional co-expression is a powerful predictor of gene function. Hundreds of functional categories, as defined by Gene Ontology 'Biological Processes', are associated with characteristic expression patterns across all tissues, including categories that bear no overt relationship to the tissue of origin. In contrast, simple tissue-specific restriction of expression is a poor predictor of which genes are in which functional categories. As an example, the highly conserved mouse gene PWP1 is widely expressed across different tissues but is co-expressed with many RNA-processing genes; we show that the uncharacterized yeast homolog of PWP1 is required for rRNA biogenesis. Conclusions We conclude that 'functional genomics' strategies based on quantitative transcriptional co-expression will be as fruitful in mammals as they have been in simpler organisms, and that transcriptional control of mammalian physiology is more modular than is generally appreciated. Our data and analyses provide a public resource for mammalian functional genomics.

Human versus mouse eosinophils: "that which we call an eosinophil, by any other name would stain as red".

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, James J; Jacobsen, Elizabeth A; Ochkur, Sergei I; McGarry, Michael P; Condjella, Rachel M; Doyle, Alfred D; Luo, Huijun; Zellner, Katie R; Protheroe, Cheryl A; Willetts, Lian; Lesuer, William E; Colbert, Dana C; Helmers, Richard A; Lacy, Paige; Moqbel, Redwan; Lee, Nancy A

2012-09-01

The respective life histories of human subjects and mice are well defined and describe a unique story of evolutionary conservation extending from sequence identity within the genome to the underpinnings of biochemical, cellular, and physiologic pathways. As a consequence, the hematopoietic lineages of both species are invariantly maintained, each with identifiable eosinophils. This canonical presence nonetheless does not preclude disparities between human and mouse eosinophils, their effector functions, or both. Indeed, many books and reviews dogmatically highlight differences, providing a rationale to discount the use of mouse models of human eosinophilic diseases. We suggest that this perspective is parochial and ignores the wealth of available studies and the consensus of the literature that overwhelming similarities (and not differences) exist between human and mouse eosinophils. The goal of this review is to summarize this literature and in some cases provide experimental details comparing and contrasting eosinophils and eosinophil effector functions in human subjects versus mice. In particular, our review will provide a summation and an easy-to-use reference guide to important studies demonstrating that although differences exist, more often than not, their consequences are unknown and do not necessarily reflect inherent disparities in eosinophil function but instead species-specific variations. The conclusion from this overview is that despite nominal differences, the vast similarities between human and mouse eosinophils provide important insights as to their roles in health and disease and, in turn, demonstrate the unique utility of mouse-based studies with an expectation of valid extrapolation to the understanding and treatment of patients. Copyright © 2012 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Charles River altered Schaedler flora (CRASF) remained stable for four years in a mouse colony housed in individually ventilated cages.

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Stehr, Matthias; Greweling, Marina C; Tischer, Sabine; Singh, Mahavir; Blöcker, Helmut; Monner, David A; Müller, Werner

2009-10-01

As recommendations for specific pathogen-free housing change, mouse facilities need to re-derive their colonies repeatedly in order to eliminate specified bacteria or viruses. This paper describes the establishment of a new mouse facility using as starting point a small colony of CD-1 mice colonized with the Charles River altered Schaedler flora (CRASF) housed in individually ventilated cages (IVCs). The import of new strains was performed exclusively via embryo transfer using CD-1 mice as recipients. The integrity of the CRASF in caecum samples of the original CD-1 colony and of three inbred mouse lines imported into the colony was proven by a quantitative realtime polymerase chain reaction approach. Furthermore, we searched for bacterial contaminants in the gut flora using non-specific 16S rRNA primers. The bacterial sequences found were closely related to but not exclusively sequences of altered Schaedler flora (ASF) members, suggesting that the ASF is heterogeneous rather than restricted to the eight defined bacteria. Moreover, no pathogens were found, neither using the non-specific 16S rRNA primers nor in routine quarterly health monitoring. As one effect of this defined gut flora, interleukin-10 knockout mice are devoid of colitis in our facility. In conclusion, our approach building up a mouse facility using foster mothers and embryo transfer as well as a strict barrier system and IVCs is suitable to maintain a colony free from contaminating bacteria over the long term. CRASF remained stable for seven mouse generations and was efficiently transferred to the imported mouse strains.

Novel insights into embryonic stem cell self-renewal revealed through comparative human and mouse systems biology networks.

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Dowell, Karen G; Simons, Allen K; Bai, Hao; Kell, Braden; Wang, Zack Z; Yun, Kyuson; Hibbs, Matthew A

2014-05-01

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs), characterized by their ability to both self-renew and differentiate into multiple cell lineages, are a powerful model for biomedical research and developmental biology. Human and mouse ESCs share many features, yet have distinctive aspects, including fundamental differences in the signaling pathways and cell cycle controls that support self-renewal. Here, we explore the molecular basis of human ESC self-renewal using Bayesian network machine learning to integrate cell-type-specific, high-throughput data for gene function discovery. We integrated high-throughput ESC data from 83 human studies (~1.8 million data points collected under 1,100 conditions) and 62 mouse studies (~2.4 million data points collected under 1,085 conditions) into separate human and mouse predictive networks focused on ESC self-renewal to analyze shared and distinct functional relationships among protein-coding gene orthologs. Computational evaluations show that these networks are highly accurate, literature validation confirms their biological relevance, and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) validation supports our predictions. Our results reflect the importance of key regulatory genes known to be strongly associated with self-renewal and pluripotency in both species (e.g., POU5F1, SOX2, and NANOG), identify metabolic differences between species (e.g., threonine metabolism), clarify differences between human and mouse ESC developmental signaling pathways (e.g., leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF)-activated JAK/STAT in mouse; NODAL/ACTIVIN-A-activated fibroblast growth factor in human), and reveal many novel genes and pathways predicted to be functionally associated with self-renewal in each species. These interactive networks are available online at www.StemSight.org for stem cell researchers to develop new hypotheses, discover potential mechanisms involving sparsely annotated genes, and prioritize genes of interest for experimental validation

Comparative Lipidomic Analysis of Mouse and Human Brain with Alzheimer Disease*

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Chan, Robin B.; Oliveira, Tiago G.; Cortes, Etty P.; Honig, Lawrence S.; Duff, Karen E.; Small, Scott A.; Wenk, Markus R.; Shui, Guanghou; Di Paolo, Gilbert

2012-01-01

Lipids are key regulators of brain function and have been increasingly implicated in neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer disease (AD). Here, a systems-based approach was employed to determine the lipidome of brain tissues affected by AD. Specifically, we used liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to profile extracts from the prefrontal cortex, entorhinal cortex, and cerebellum of late-onset AD (LOAD) patients, as well as the forebrain of three transgenic familial AD (FAD) mouse models. Although the cerebellum lacked major alterations in lipid composition, we found an elevation of a signaling pool of diacylglycerol as well as sphingolipids in the prefrontal cortex of AD patients. Furthermore, the diseased entorhinal cortex showed specific enrichment of lysobisphosphatidic acid, sphingomyelin, the ganglioside GM3, and cholesterol esters, all of which suggest common pathogenic mechanisms associated with endolysosomal storage disorders. Importantly, a significant increase in cholesterol esters and GM3 was recapitulated in the transgenic FAD models, suggesting that these mice are relevant tools to study aberrant lipid metabolism of endolysosomal dysfunction associated with AD. Finally, genetic ablation of phospholipase D2, which rescues the synaptic and behavioral deficits of an FAD mouse model, fully normalizes GM3 levels. These data thus unmask a cross-talk between the metabolism of phosphatidic acid, the product of phospholipase D2, and gangliosides, and point to a central role of ganglioside anomalies in AD pathogenesis. Overall, our study highlights the hypothesis generating potential of lipidomics and identifies novel region-specific lipid anomalies potentially linked to AD pathogenesis. PMID:22134919

A gene-based high-resolution comparative radiation hybrid map as a framework for genome sequence assembly of a bovine chromosome 6 region associated with QTL for growth, body composition, and milk performance traits

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Laurent Pascal

2006-03-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background A number of different quantitative trait loci (QTL for various phenotypic traits, including milk production, functional, and conformation traits in dairy cattle as well as growth and body composition traits in meat cattle, have been mapped consistently in the middle region of bovine chromosome 6 (BTA6. Dense genetic and physical maps and, ultimately, a fully annotated genome sequence as well as their mutual connections are required to efficiently identify genes and gene variants responsible for genetic variation of phenotypic traits. A comprehensive high-resolution gene-rich map linking densely spaced bovine markers and genes to the annotated human genome sequence is required as a framework to facilitate this approach for the region on BTA6 carrying the QTL. Results Therefore, we constructed a high-resolution radiation hybrid (RH map for the QTL containing chromosomal region of BTA6. This new RH map with a total of 234 loci including 115 genes and ESTs displays a substantial increase in loci density compared to existing physical BTA6 maps. Screening the available bovine genome sequence resources, a total of 73 loci could be assigned to sequence contigs, which were already identified as specific for BTA6. For 43 loci, corresponding sequence contigs, which were not yet placed on the bovine genome assembly, were identified. In addition, the improved potential of this high-resolution RH map for BTA6 with respect to comparative mapping was demonstrated. Mapping a large number of genes on BTA6 and cross-referencing them with map locations in corresponding syntenic multi-species chromosome segments (human, mouse, rat, dog, chicken achieved a refined accurate alignment of conserved segments and evolutionary breakpoints across the species included. Conclusion The gene-anchored high-resolution RH map (1 locus/300 kb for the targeted region of BTA6 presented here will provide a valuable platform to guide high-quality assembling and

Full-length cDNA sequences from Rhesus monkey placenta tissue: analysis and utility for comparative mapping

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Lee Sang-Rae

2010-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta are widely-used as experimental animals in biomedical research and are closely related to other laboratory macaques, such as cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis, and to humans, sharing a last common ancestor from about 25 million years ago. Although rhesus monkeys have been studied extensively under field and laboratory conditions, research has been limited by the lack of genetic resources. The present study generated placenta full-length cDNA libraries, characterized the resulting expressed sequence tags, and described their utility for comparative mapping with human RefSeq mRNA transcripts. Results From rhesus monkey placenta full-length cDNA libraries, 2000 full-length cDNA sequences were determined and 1835 rhesus placenta cDNA sequences longer than 100 bp were collected. These sequences were annotated based on homology to human genes. Homology search against human RefSeq mRNAs revealed that our collection included the sequences of 1462 putative rhesus monkey genes. Moreover, we identified 207 genes containing exon alterations in the coding region and the untranslated region of rhesus monkey transcripts, despite the highly conserved structure of the coding regions. Approximately 10% (187 of all full-length cDNA sequences did not represent any public human RefSeq mRNAs. Intriguingly, two rhesus monkey specific exons derived from the transposable elements of AluYRa2 (SINE family and MER11B (LTR family were also identified. Conclusion The 1835 rhesus monkey placenta full-length cDNA sequences described here could expand genomic resources and information of rhesus monkeys. This increased genomic information will greatly contribute to the development of evolutionary biology and biomedical research.

Complete sequence and comparative analysis of the chloroplast genome of coconut palm (Cocos nucifera).

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Ya-Yi; Matzke, Antonius J M; Matzke, Marjori

2013-01-01

Coconut, a member of the palm family (Arecaceae), is one of the most economically important trees used by mankind. Despite its diverse morphology, coconut is recognized taxonomically as only a single species (Cocos nucifera L.). There are two major coconut varieties, tall and dwarf, the latter of which displays traits resulting from selection by humans. We report here the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of a dwarf coconut plant, and describe the gene content and organization, inverted repeat fluctuations, repeated sequence structure, and occurrence of RNA editing. Phylogenetic relationships of monocots were inferred based on 47 chloroplast protein-coding genes. Potential nodes for events of gene duplication and pseudogenization related to inverted repeat fluctuation were mapped onto the tree using parsimony criteria. We compare our findings with those from other palm species for which complete cp genome sequences are available.

High-precision genetic mapping of behavioral traits in the diversity outbred mouse population

Science.gov (United States)

Logan, R W; Robledo, R F; Recla, J M; Philip, V M; Bubier, J A; Jay, J J; Harwood, C; Wilcox, T; Gatti, D M; Bult, C J; Churchill, G A; Chesler, E J

2013-01-01

Historically our ability to identify genetic variants underlying complex behavioral traits in mice has been limited by low mapping resolution of conventional mouse crosses. The newly developed Diversity Outbred (DO) population promises to deliver improved resolution that will circumvent costly fine-mapping studies. The DO is derived from the same founder strains as the Collaborative Cross (CC), including three wild-derived strains. Thus the DO provides more allelic diversity and greater potential for discovery compared to crosses involving standard mouse strains. We have characterized 283 male and female DO mice using open-field, light–dark box, tail-suspension and visual-cliff avoidance tests to generate 38 behavioral measures. We identified several quantitative trait loci (QTL) for these traits with support intervals ranging from 1 to 3 Mb in size. These intervals contain relatively few genes (ranging from 5 to 96). For a majority of QTL, using the founder allelic effects together with whole genome sequence data, we could further narrow the positional candidates. Several QTL replicate previously published loci. Novel loci were also identified for anxiety- and activity-related traits. Half of the QTLs are associated with wild-derived alleles, confirming the value to behavioral genetics of added genetic diversity in the DO. In the presence of wild-alleles we sometimes observe behaviors that are qualitatively different from the expected response. Our results demonstrate that high-precision mapping of behavioral traits can be achieved with moderate numbers of DO animals, representing a significant advance in our ability to leverage the mouse as a tool for behavioral genetics PMID:23433259

Complete Chloroplast Genome Sequences and Comparative Analysis of Chenopodium quinoa and C. album.

Science.gov (United States)

Hong, Su-Young; Cheon, Kyeong-Sik; Yoo, Ki-Oug; Lee, Hyun-Oh; Cho, Kwang-Soo; Suh, Jong-Taek; Kim, Su-Jeong; Nam, Jeong-Hwan; Sohn, Hwang-Bae; Kim, Yul-Ho

2017-01-01

The Chenopodium genus comprises ~150 species, including Chenopodium quinoa and Chenopodium album , two important crops with high nutritional value. To elucidate the phylogenetic relationship between the two species, the complete chloroplast (cp) genomes of these species were obtained by next generation sequencing. We performed comparative analysis of the sequences and, using InDel markers, inferred phylogeny and genetic diversity of the Chenopodium genus. The cp genome is 152,099 bp ( C. quinoa ) and 152,167 bp ( C. album ) long. In total, 119 genes (78 protein-coding, 37 tRNA, and 4 rRNA) were identified. We found 14 ( C. quinoa ) and 15 ( C. album ) tandem repeats (TRs); 14 TRs were present in both species and C. album and C. quinoa each had one species-specific TR. The trnI-GAU intron sequences contained one ( C. quinoa ) or two ( C. album ) copies of TRs (66 bp); the InDel marker was designed based on the copy number variation in TRs. Using the InDel markers, we detected this variation in the TR copy number in four species, Chenopodium hybridum, Chenopodium pumilio, Chenopodium ficifolium , and Chenopodium koraiense , but not in Chenopodium glaucum . A comparison of coding and non-coding regions between C. quinoa and C. album revealed divergent sites. Nucleotide diversity >0.025 was found in 17 regions-14 were located in the large single copy region (LSC), one in the inverted repeats, and two in the small single copy region (SSC). A phylogenetic analysis based on 59 protein-coding genes from 25 taxa resolved Chenopodioideae monophyletic and sister to Betoideae. The complete plastid genome sequences and molecular markers based on divergence hotspot regions in the two Chenopodium taxa will help to resolve the phylogenetic relationships of Chenopodium .

Enhancement of radiation effect on mouse intestinal crypt survival by timing of 5-fluorouracil administration

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ho, E.; Coffey, C.; Maruyama, Y.

1977-01-01

There is a marked dependence of mouse crypt survival on the sequence of combined drug-radiation treatment and on the time lapse between irradiation and drug administration. When 5-fluorouracil is administered 6 hours after irradiation or later (up to 18 hours postirradiation), crypt survival drops significantly

Comparison of three mouse strains by radiosensitivity of hemato-immune system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li, Deguan; Wu, Hongying; Wang, Yong; Zhang, Junling; Wang, Yueying; Lu, Lu; Meng, Aimin

2008-01-01

IRM-2, developed in our Lab, is an inbred strain mouse created by cross of a ICR/JCL female and 615 male mouse. Compared to the parent strains, the IRM-2 mouse exhibit increased resistance to radiation. We examine the damage of hemato-immune system induced by radiation in IRM-2, ICR and 615 mice in order to elucidate the radiation resistant mechanism of IRM-2 mouse. The hemato-immune function and radiosensitivities of three mouse strains (IRM-2, ICR/JCL, 615) have been compared using the following parameters: the white blood cells (WBC) in peripheral blood (PB), the bone marrow nucleated cells (BMC) per femur. Percent of phagocytosis of peritoneal macrophage (PM) was checked by chicken red blood cells. Lymphocyte phenotype in PB were analyzed by flow cytometry. Damage induced by radiation were analysed in the bone marrows cells, splenocytes and thymocyte exposed to irradiation in vitro by cell viability assay (ATP Bioluminescence assay) and apoptosis assay (Annexin V/PI). The WBC and BMC of IRM-2 mice were significantly higher than those in ICR mice and 615 mice, respectively (P<0.01). The ratio of CD4/CD8 in PB of IRM-2 mouse was lower than those in ICR and 615, P<0.01. Cell viability showed difference after 18 hs incubation post radiation in three mouse strains. The results of our primary study suggest that the hemato-immune function in IRM-2 mouse is different to its parent strains. The IRM-2 mouse provides an animal model to conducted further investigation to explore the role of hemato-immune system in radiation resistance. (author)

ATM localization and gene expression in the adult mouse eye.

Science.gov (United States)

Leemput, Julia; Masson, Christel; Bigot, Karine; Errachid, Abdelmounaim; Dansault, Anouk; Provost, Alexandra; Gadin, Stéphanie; Aoufouchi, Said; Menasche, Maurice; Abitbol, Marc

2009-01-01

focus on retinal cells. Using RT-PCR, we detected a band of the expected size, with its sequence matching the amplified Atm cDNA sequence. Atm mRNA was detected in most cell bodies of the adult mouse eye by in situ hybridization of ocular tissue sections with specific digoxigenin-labeled PCR-amplified cDNA probes. Western blotting with different specific antibodies revealed bands corresponding to the expected sizes of ATM and its active forms (ATMp). These bands were not observed in the analysis of protein homogenates from Atm-deficient mouse tissues. ATM immunoreactivity was detected in the nucleus of all adult mice retinal cells and in most non-neuronal ocular cell types. The active phosphorylated form of ATM was also present in the retina as well as in non-neuronal cells of the adult mouse eye. However, its subcellular localization differed as a function of the cell type examined. A major finding of this study was that ATMp immunostaining in photoreceptor cells was exclusively in the cytoplasm, whereas ATM immunostaining was only in the nucleus of these cells. Furthermore, the specific and distinct ATM and ATMp immunolabeling patterns in photoreceptor cells were identical to those observed in the adult mouse cerebellar granule cells. We report the expression profile of Atm gene and protein in the adult mouse eye. In particular, we observed a difference between the localization patterns of the active and inactive forms of ATM in photoreceptor cells. These localization patterns suggest that ATM and its phosphorylated activated form may be involved in both the protection of cells from oxidative damage and the maintenance of ocular cell structure and function. The protection mechanisms mediated by the two forms of ATM appear to be particularly important in maintaining photoreceptor integrity.

Mouse allergen exposure and immunologic responses: IgE-mediated mouse sensitization and mouse specific IgG and IgG4 levels

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Matsui, Elizabeth C.; Krop, Esmeralda J. M.; Diette, Gregory B.; Aalberse, Rob C.; Smith, Abigail L.; Eggleston, Peyton A.

2004-01-01

Although there is evidence that contact with mice is associated with IgE-mediated mouse sensitization and mouse specific antibody responses, the exposure-response relationships remain unclear. To determine whether IgE-mediated mouse sensitization and mouse specific IgG (mIgG) and mIgG4 levels

Protective Effect of Carvacrol against Gut Dysbiosis and Clostridium difficile Associated Disease in a Mouse Model

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Kumar Venkitanarayanan

2017-04-01

Full Text Available This study investigated the effect of carvacrol (CR, a phytophenolic compound on antibiotic-associated gut dysbiosis and C. difficile infection in a mouse model. Five to six-week-old C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into seven treatment groups (challenge and control of eight mice each. Mice were fed with irradiated feed supplemented with CR (0, 0.05, and 0.1%; the challenge groups were made susceptible to C. difficile by orally administering an antibiotic cocktail in water and an intra-peritoneal injection of clindamycin. Both challenge and control groups were infected with 105CFU/ml of hypervirulent C. difficile (ATCC 1870 spores or PBS, and observed for clinical signs for 10 days. Respective control groups for CR, antibiotics, and their combination were included for investigating their effect on mouse enteric microflora. Mouse body weight and clinical and diarrhea scores were recorded daily post infection. Fecal samples were collected for microbiome analysis using rRNA sequencing in MiSeq platform. Carvacrol supplementation significantly reduced the incidence of diarrhea and improved the clinical and diarrhea scores in mice (p < 0.05. Microbiome analysis revealed a significant increase in Proteobacteria and reduction in the abundance of protective bacterial flora in antibiotic-treated and C. difficile-infected mice compared to controls (p < 0.05. However, CR supplementation positively altered the microbiome composition, as revealed by an increased abundance of beneficial bacteria, including Firmicutes, and significantly reduced the proportion of detrimental flora such as Proteobacteria, without significantly affecting the gut microbiome diversity compared to control. Results suggest that CR could potentially be used to control gut dysbiosis and reduce C. difficile infection.

The mouse beam walking assay offers improved sensitivity over the mouse rotarod in determining motor coordination deficits induced by benzodiazepines.

Science.gov (United States)

Stanley, Joanna L; Lincoln, Rachael J; Brown, Terry A; McDonald, Louise M; Dawson, Gerard R; Reynolds, David S

2005-05-01

The mouse rotarod test of motor coordination/sedation is commonly used to predict clinical sedation caused by novel drugs. However, past experience suggests that it lacks the desired degree of sensitivity to be predictive of effects in humans. For example, the benzodiazepine, bretazenil, showed little impairment of mouse rotarod performance, but marked sedation in humans. The aim of the present study was to assess whether the mouse beam walking assay demonstrates: (i) an increased sensitivity over the rotarod and (ii) an increased ability to predict clinically sedative doses of benzodiazepines. The study compared the effects of the full benzodiazepine agonists, diazepam and lorazepam, and the partial agonist, bretazenil, on the mouse rotarod and beam walking assays. Diazepam and lorazepam significantly impaired rotarod performance, although relatively high GABA-A receptor occupancy was required (72% and 93%, respectively), whereas beam walking performance was significantly affected at approximately 30% receptor occupancy. Bretazenil produced significant deficits at 90% and 53% receptor occupancy on the rotarod and beam walking assays, respectively. The results suggest that the mouse beam walking assay is a more sensitive tool for determining benzodiazepine-induced motor coordination deficits than the rotarod. Furthermore, the GABA-A receptor occupancy values at which significant deficits were determined in the beam walking assay are comparable with those observed in clinical positron emission tomography studies using sedative doses of benzodiazepines. These data suggest that the beam walking assay may be able to more accurately predict the clinically sedative doses of novel benzodiazepine-like drugs.

Genetic Dissection of Cardiac Remodeling in an Isoproterenol-Induced Heart Failure Mouse Model.

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Jessica Jen-Chu Wang

2016-07-01

Full Text Available We aimed to understand the genetic control of cardiac remodeling using an isoproterenol-induced heart failure model in mice, which allowed control of confounding factors in an experimental setting. We characterized the changes in cardiac structure and function in response to chronic isoproterenol infusion using echocardiography in a panel of 104 inbred mouse strains. We showed that cardiac structure and function, whether under normal or stress conditions, has a strong genetic component, with heritability estimates of left ventricular mass between 61% and 81%. Association analyses of cardiac remodeling traits, corrected for population structure, body size and heart rate, revealed 17 genome-wide significant loci, including several loci containing previously implicated genes. Cardiac tissue gene expression profiling, expression quantitative trait loci, expression-phenotype correlation, and coding sequence variation analyses were performed to prioritize candidate genes and to generate hypotheses for downstream mechanistic studies. Using this approach, we have validated a novel gene, Myh14, as a negative regulator of ISO-induced left ventricular mass hypertrophy in an in vivo mouse model and demonstrated the up-regulation of immediate early gene Myc, fetal gene Nppb, and fibrosis gene Lgals3 in ISO-treated Myh14 deficient hearts compared to controls.

Expression profiling and comparative sequence derived insights into lipid metabolism

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Callow, Matthew J.; Rubin, Edward M.

2001-12-19

Expression profiling and genomic DNA sequence comparisons are increasingly being applied to the identification and analysis of the genes involved in lipid metabolism. Not only has genome-wide expression profiling aided in the identification of novel genes involved in important processes in lipid metabolism such as sterol efflux, but the utilization of information from these studies has added to our understanding of the regulation of pathways participating in the process. Coupled with these gene expression studies, cross species comparison, searching for sequences conserved through evolution, has proven to be a powerful tool to identify important non-coding regulatory sequences as well as the discovery of novel genes relevant to lipid biology. An example of the value of this approach was the recent chance discovery of a new apolipoprotein gene (apo AV) that has dramatic effects upon triglyceride metabolism in mice and humans.

Studies on Dasyaceae. 3. Towards a phylogeny of the Dasyaceae (Ceramiales, Rhodophyta), based on comparative rbcL gene sequences and morphology

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Jong, Y.S D M; van der Wurff, A.W G; Stam, W.T.; Olsen, J.L.

Phylogenetic analyses of the Dasyaceae based on sequence analysis of the large subunit of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (rbcL) and 42 morphological characters are presented. Comparative sequence analysis confirms the general view of the Ceramiaceae as a primitive, paraphyletic

A CRISPR Path to Engineering New Genetic Mouse Models for Cardiovascular Research.

Science.gov (United States)

Miano, Joseph M; Zhu, Qiuyu Martin; Lowenstein, Charles J

2016-06-01

Previous efforts to target the mouse genome for the addition, subtraction, or substitution of biologically informative sequences required complex vector design and a series of arduous steps only a handful of laboratories could master. The facile and inexpensive clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) method has now superseded traditional means of genome modification such that virtually any laboratory can quickly assemble reagents for developing new mouse models for cardiovascular research. Here, we briefly review the history of CRISPR in prokaryotes, highlighting major discoveries leading to its formulation for genome modification in the animal kingdom. Core components of CRISPR technology are reviewed and updated. Practical pointers for 2-component and 3-component CRISPR editing are summarized with many applications in mice including frameshift mutations, deletion of enhancers and noncoding genes, nucleotide substitution of protein-coding and gene regulatory sequences, incorporation of loxP sites for conditional gene inactivation, and epitope tag integration. Genotyping strategies are presented and topics of genetic mosaicism and inadvertent targeting discussed. Finally, clinical applications and ethical considerations are addressed as the biomedical community eagerly embraces this astonishing innovation in genome editing to tackle previously intractable questions. © 2016 American Heart Association, Inc.

A CRISPR Path to Engineering New Genetic Mouse Models for Cardiovascular Research

Science.gov (United States)

Miano, Joseph M.; Zhu, Qiuyu Martin; Lowenstein, Charles J.

2016-01-01

Previous efforts to target the mouse genome for the addition, subtraction, or substitution of biologically informative sequences required complex vector design and a series of arduous steps only a handful of labs could master. The facile and inexpensive clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) method has now superseded traditional means of genome modification such that virtually any lab can quickly assemble reagents for developing new mouse models for cardiovascular research. Here we briefly review the history of CRISPR in prokaryotes, highlighting major discoveries leading to its formulation for genome modification in the animal kingdom. Core components of CRISPR technology are reviewed and updated. Practical pointers for two-component and three-component CRISPR editing are summarized with a number of applications in mice including frameshift mutations, deletion of enhancers and non-coding genes, nucleotide substitution of protein-coding and gene regulatory sequences, incorporation of loxP sites for conditional gene inactivation, and epitope tag integration. Genotyping strategies are presented and topics of genetic mosaicism and inadvertent targeting discussed. Finally, clinical applications and ethical considerations are addressed as the biomedical community eagerly embraces this astonishing innovation in genome editing to tackle previously intractable questions. PMID:27102963

Peptidomics Analysis of Transient Regeneration in the Neonatal Mouse Heart.

Science.gov (United States)

Fan, Yi; Zhang, Qijun; Li, Hua; Cheng, Zijie; Li, Xing; Chen, Yumei; Shen, Yahui; Wang, Liansheng; Song, Guixian; Qian, Lingmei

2017-09-01

Neonatal mouse hearts have completely regenerative capability after birth, but the ability to regenerate rapidly lost after 7 days, the mechanism has not been clarified. Previous studies have shown that mRNA profile of adult mouse changed greatly compared to neonatal mouse. So far, there is no research of peptidomics related to heart regeneration. In order to explore the changes of proteins, enzymes, and peptides related to the transient regeneration, we used comparative petidomics technique to compare the endogenous peptides in the mouse heart of postnatal 1 and 7 days. In final, we identified 236 differentially expressed peptides, 169 of which were upregulated and 67 were downregulated in the postnatal 1 day heart, and also predicted 36 functional peptides associated with transient regeneration. The predicted 36 candidate peptides are located in the important domains of precursor proteins and/or contain the post-transcriptional modification (PTM) sites, which are involved in the biological processes of cardiac development, cardiac muscle disease, cell proliferation, necrosis, and apoptosis. In conclusion, for the first time, we compared the peptidomics profiles of neonatal heart between postnatal 1 day and postnatal 7 day. This study provides a new direction and an important basis for the mechanism research of transient regeneration in neonatal heart. J. Cell. Biochem. 118: 2828-2840, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Sensitivity of PCR assays for murine gammaretroviruses and mouse contamination in human blood samples.

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Li Ling Lee

Full Text Available Gammaretroviruses related to murine leukemia virus (MLV have variously been reported to be present or absent in blood from chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME patients and healthy controls. Using subjects from New York State, we have investigated by PCR methods whether MLV-related sequences can be identified in nucleic acids isolated from whole blood or from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs or following PBMC culture. We have also passaged the prostate cancer cell line LNCaP following incubation with plasma from patients and controls and assayed nucleic acids for viral sequences. We have used 15 sets of primers that can effectively amplify conserved regions of murine endogenous and exogenous retrovirus sequences. We demonstrate that our PCR assays for MLV-related gag sequences and for mouse DNA contamination are extremely sensitive. While we have identified MLV-like gag sequences following PCR on human DNA preparations, we are unable to conclude that these sequences originated in the blood samples.

Mouse fetal antigen 1 (mFA1), the circulating gene product of mdlk, pref-1 and SCP-1: isolation, characterization and biology

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bachmann, E; Krogh, T N; Højrup, P

1996-01-01

The mouse homologue to human fetal antigen 1 (hFA1) was purified from mouse amniotic fluid by cation exchange chromatography and immunospecific affinity chromatography. Mouse FA1 (mFA1) is a single chain glycoprotein with an M(r) of 42-50 kDa (SDS-PAGE). The N-terminal amino acid sequence (39...... residues) revealed 74% identity to hFA1 and 100% identity to the translated cDNAs referred to as mouse dlk, pref-1 and SCP-1. mFA1 is the secreted processed molecule encoded by the mRNA defined by these identical mouse cDNAs. Monospecific rabbit anti-mFA1 antibodies, purified by ammonium sulfate...... precipitation and immunospecific affinity chromatography, were used for immunohistochemical and quantitative ELISA techniques. The indirect immunoperoxidase technique demonstrated mFA1 within the endocrine structures of adult mouse pancreas, whereas the exocrine tissue remained unstained. FA1-positive staining...

Usherin expression is highly conserved in mouse and human tissues.

Science.gov (United States)

Pearsall, Nicole; Bhattacharya, Gautam; Wisecarver, Jim; Adams, Joe; Cosgrove, Dominic; Kimberling, William

2002-12-01

Usher syndrome is an autosomal recessive disease that results in varying degrees of hearing loss and retinitis pigmentosa. Three types of Usher syndrome (I, II, and III) have been identified clinically with Usher type II being the most common of the three types. Usher type II has been localized to three different chromosomes 1q41, 3p, and 5q, corresponding to Usher type 2A, 2B, and 2C respectively. Usherin is a basement membrane protein encoded by the USH2A gene. Expression of usherin has been localized in the basement membrane of several tissues, however it is not ubiquitous. Immunohistochemistry detected usherin in the following human tissues: retina, cochlea, small and large intestine, pancreas, bladder, prostate, esophagus, trachea, thymus, salivary glands, placenta, ovary, fallopian tube, uterus, and testis. Usherin was absent in many other tissues such as heart, lung, liver, kidney, and brain. This distribution is consistent with the usherin distribution seen in the mouse. Conservation of usherin is also seen at the nucleotide and amino acid level when comparing the mouse and human gene sequences. Evolutionary conservation of usherin expression at the molecular level and in tissues unaffected by Usher 2a supports the important structural and functional role this protein plays in the human. In addition, we believe that these results could lead to a diagnostic procedure for the detection of Usher syndrome and those who carry an USH2A mutation.

Genomic organization, transcript variants and comparative analysis of the human nucleoporin 155 (NUP155) gene

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, X.; Yang, J.; Yu, J.

2002-01-01

Nucleoporin 155 (Nup155) is a major component of the nuclear pore complex (NPC) involved in cellular nucleo-cytoplasmic transport. We have acquired the complete sequence and interpreted the genomic organization of the Nup155 orthologos from human (Homo sapiens) and pufferfish (Fugu rubripes), which...... complementary to RNAs of the Nup155 orthologs from Fugu and mouse. Comparative analysis of the Nup155 orthologs in many species, including H. sapiens, Mus musculus, Rattus norvegicus, F. rubripes, Arabidopsis thaliana, Drosophila melanogaster, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has revealed two paralogs in S...

Comparative analysis of Homo sapiens and Mus musculus cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor genes p16 (MTS1) and p15 (MTS2).

Science.gov (United States)

Jiang, P; Stone, S; Wagner, R; Wang, S; Dayananth, P; Kozak, C A; Wold, B; Kamb, A

1995-12-01

Cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors are a growing family of molecules that regulate important transitions in the cell cycle. At least one of these molecules, p16, has been implicated in human tumorigenesis while its close homolog, p15, is induced by cell contact and transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta). To investigate the evolutionary and functional features of p15 and p16, we have isolated mouse (Mus musculus) homologs of each gene. Comparative analysis of these sequences provides evidence that the genes have similar functions in mouse and human. In addition, the comparison suggests that a gene conversion event is part of the evolution of the human p15 and p16 genes.

Deep-sequencing protocols influence the results obtained in small-RNA sequencing.

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Joern Toedling

Full Text Available Second-generation sequencing is a powerful method for identifying and quantifying small-RNA components of cells. However, little attention has been paid to the effects of the choice of sequencing platform and library preparation protocol on the results obtained. We present a thorough comparison of small-RNA sequencing libraries generated from the same embryonic stem cell lines, using different sequencing platforms, which represent the three major second-generation sequencing technologies, and protocols. We have analysed and compared the expression of microRNAs, as well as populations of small RNAs derived from repetitive elements. Despite the fact that different libraries display a good correlation between sequencing platforms, qualitative and quantitative variations in the results were found, depending on the protocol used. Thus, when comparing libraries from different biological samples, it is strongly recommended to use the same sequencing platform and protocol in order to ensure the biological relevance of the comparisons.

The role of retrotransposons in gene family expansions: insights from the mouse Abp gene family.

Science.gov (United States)

Janoušek, Václav; Karn, Robert C; Laukaitis, Christina M

2013-05-29

Retrotransposons have been suggested to provide a substrate for non-allelic homologous recombination (NAHR) and thereby promote gene family expansion. Their precise role, however, is controversial. Here we ask whether retrotransposons contributed to the recent expansions of the Androgen-binding protein (Abp) gene families that occurred independently in the mouse and rat genomes. Using dot plot analysis, we found that the most recent duplication in the Abp region of the mouse genome is flanked by L1Md_T elements. Analysis of the sequence of these elements revealed breakpoints that are the relicts of the recombination that caused the duplication, confirming that the duplication arose as a result of NAHR using L1 elements as substrates. L1 and ERVII retrotransposons are considerably denser in the Abp regions than in one Mb flanking regions, while other repeat types are depleted in the Abp regions compared to flanking regions. L1 retrotransposons preferentially accumulated in the Abp gene regions after lineage separation and roughly followed the pattern of Abp gene expansion. By contrast, the proportion of shared vs. lineage-specific ERVII repeats in the Abp region resembles the rest of the genome. We confirmed the role of L1 repeats in Abp gene duplication with the identification of recombinant L1Md_T elements at the edges of the most recent mouse Abp gene duplication. High densities of L1 and ERVII repeats were found in the Abp gene region with abrupt transitions at the region boundaries, suggesting that their higher densities are tightly associated with Abp gene duplication. We observed that the major accumulation of L1 elements occurred after the split of the mouse and rat lineages and that there is a striking overlap between the timing of L1 accumulation and expansion of the Abp gene family in the mouse genome. Establishing a link between the accumulation of L1 elements and the expansion of the Abp gene family and identification of an NAHR-related breakpoint in

High-fidelity Glucagon-CreER mouse line generated by CRISPR-Cas9 assisted gene targeting

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Amanda M. Ackermann

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Objective: α-cells are the second most prominent cell type in pancreatic islets and are responsible for producing glucagon to increase plasma glucose levels in times of fasting. α-cell dysfunction and inappropriate glucagon secretion occur in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Thus, there is growing interest in studying both normal function and pathophysiology of α-cells. However, tools to target gene ablation or activation specifically of α-cells have been limited, compared to those available for β-cells. Previous Glucagon-Cre and Glucagon-CreER transgenic mouse lines have suffered from transgene silencing, and the only available Glucagon-CreER “knock-in” mouse line results in glucagon haploinsufficiency, which can confound the interpretation of gene deletion analyses. Therefore, we sought to develop a Glucagon-CreERT2 mouse line that would maintain normal glucagon expression and would be less susceptible to transgene silencing. Methods: We utilized CRISPR-Cas9 technology to insert an IRES-CreERT2 sequence into the 3′ UTR of the Glucagon (Gcg locus in mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs. Targeted ESC clones were then injected into mouse blastocysts to obtain Gcg-CreERT2 mice. Recombination efficiency in GCG+ pancreatic α-cells and glucagon-like peptide 1 positive (GLP1+ enteroendocrine L-cells was measured in Gcg-CreERT2;Rosa26-LSL-YFP mice injected with tamoxifen during fetal development and adulthood. Results: Tamoxifen injection of Gcg-CreERT2;Rosa26-LSL-YFP mice induced high recombination efficiency of the Rosa26-LSL-YFP locus in perinatal and adult α-cells (88% and 95%, respectively, as well as in first-wave fetal α-cells (36% and adult enteroendocrine L-cells (33%. Mice homozygous for the Gcg-CreERT2 allele were phenotypically normal. Conclusions: We successfully derived a Gcg-CreERT2 mouse line that expresses CreERT2 in pancreatic α-cells and enteroendocrine L-cells without disrupting preproglucagon gene expression. These mice

Genetic localization of Cd63, a member of the transmembrane 4 superfamily, reveals two distinct loci in the mouse genome

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gwynn, B.; Eicher, E.M.; Peters, L.L. [Jackson Lab., Bar Harbor, ME (United States)

1996-07-15

The membrane protein CD63, a molecular marker for early stages of melanoma progression, has been associated with platelet storage pool deficiency disorders (SPD). CD63 localizes to the membranes of platelets, lysosomes, and melanosomes, all of which are affected in a specific subgroup of SPD. The cDNA encoding CD63 detects two closely related sequences that map to different regions of the mouse genome. One locus maps to mouse Chromosome (Chr) 10 in a region that shares linkage homology with the human chromosome encoding human CD63. The second locus maps to mouse Chr 18 in a region that bears no known human CD63-related genes. No SPD has been localized to these regions of either the mouse or the human chromosomes. 15 refs., 2 figs.

Resistance of human and mouse myeloid leukemia cells to UV radiation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Poljak-Blazi, M.; Osmak, M.; Hadzija, M.

1989-01-01

Sensitivity of mouse bone marrow and myeloid leukemia cells and sensitivity of human myeloid leukemia cells to UV light was tested. Criteria were the in vivo colony-forming ability of UV exposed cells and the inhibition of DNA synthesis during post-irradiation incubation for 24 h in vitro. Mouse bone marrow cells irradiated with a small dose of UV light (5 J/m 2 ) and injected into x-irradiated animals did not form hemopoietic colonies on recipient's spleens, and recipients died. However, mouse leukemia cells, after irradiation with higher doses of UV light, retained the ability to form colonies on the spleens, and all recipient mice died with typical symptoms of leukemia. In vitro, mouse bone marrow cells exhibited high sensitivity to UV light compared to mouse myeloid leukemia cells. Human leukemia cells were also resistant to UV light, but more sensitive than mouse leukemia cells. (author)

Specific Tandem 3'UTR Patterns and Gene Expression Profiles in Mouse Thy1+ Germline Stem Cells.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yan Huang

Full Text Available A recently developed strategy of sequencing alternative polyadenylation (APA sites (SAPAS with second-generation sequencing technology can be used to explore complete genome-wide patterns of tandem APA sites and global gene expression profiles. spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs maintain long-term reproductive abilities in male mammals. The detailed mechanisms by which SSCs self-renew and generate mature spermatozoa are not clear. To understand the specific alternative polyadenylation pattern and global gene expression profile of male germline stem cells (GSCs, mainly referred to SSCs here, we isolated and purified mouse Thy1+ cells from testis by magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS and then used the SAPAS method for analysis, using pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESCs and differentiated mouse embryonic fibroblast cells (MEFs as controls. As a result, we obtained 99,944 poly(A sites, approximately 40% of which were newly detected in our experiments. These poly(A sites originated from three mouse cell types and covered 17,499 genes, including 831 long non-coding RNA (lncRNA genes. We observed that GSCs tend to have shorter 3'UTR lengths while MEFs tend towards longer 3'UTR lengths. We also identified 1337 genes that were highly expressed in GSCs, and these genes were highly consistent with the functional characteristics of GSCs. Our detailed bioinformatics analysis identified APA site-switching events at 3'UTRs and many new specifically expressed genes in GSCs, which we experimentally confirmed. Furthermore, qRT-PCR was performed to validate several events of the 334 genes with distal-to-proximal poly(A switch in GSCs. Consistently APA reporter assay confirmed the total 3'UTR shortening in GSCs compared to MEFs. We also analyzed the cis elements around the proximal poly(A site preferentially used in GSCs and found C-rich elements may contribute to this regulation. Overall, our results identified the expression level and polyadenylation site

Specific Tandem 3'UTR Patterns and Gene Expression Profiles in Mouse Thy1+ Germline Stem Cells

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Zhuoheng; Feng, Xuyang; Jiang, Xue; Songyang, Zhou; Huang, Junjiu

2015-01-01

A recently developed strategy of sequencing alternative polyadenylation (APA) sites (SAPAS) with second-generation sequencing technology can be used to explore complete genome-wide patterns of tandem APA sites and global gene expression profiles. spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) maintain long-term reproductive abilities in male mammals. The detailed mechanisms by which SSCs self-renew and generate mature spermatozoa are not clear. To understand the specific alternative polyadenylation pattern and global gene expression profile of male germline stem cells (GSCs, mainly referred to SSCs here), we isolated and purified mouse Thy1+ cells from testis by magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS) and then used the SAPAS method for analysis, using pluripotent embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and differentiated mouse embryonic fibroblast cells (MEFs) as controls. As a result, we obtained 99,944 poly(A) sites, approximately 40% of which were newly detected in our experiments. These poly(A) sites originated from three mouse cell types and covered 17,499 genes, including 831 long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) genes. We observed that GSCs tend to have shorter 3'UTR lengths while MEFs tend towards longer 3'UTR lengths. We also identified 1337 genes that were highly expressed in GSCs, and these genes were highly consistent with the functional characteristics of GSCs. Our detailed bioinformatics analysis identified APA site-switching events at 3'UTRs and many new specifically expressed genes in GSCs, which we experimentally confirmed. Furthermore, qRT-PCR was performed to validate several events of the 334 genes with distal-to-proximal poly(A) switch in GSCs. Consistently APA reporter assay confirmed the total 3'UTR shortening in GSCs compared to MEFs. We also analyzed the cis elements around the proximal poly(A) site preferentially used in GSCs and found C-rich elements may contribute to this regulation. Overall, our results identified the expression level and polyadenylation site profiles and

4D atlas of the mouse embryo for precise morphological staging.

Science.gov (United States)

Wong, Michael D; van Eede, Matthijs C; Spring, Shoshana; Jevtic, Stefan; Boughner, Julia C; Lerch, Jason P; Henkelman, R Mark

2015-10-15

After more than a century of research, the mouse remains the gold-standard model system, for it recapitulates human development and disease and is quickly and highly tractable to genetic manipulations. Fundamental to the power and success of using a mouse model is the ability to stage embryonic mouse development accurately. Past staging systems were limited by the technologies of the day, such that only surface features, visible with a light microscope, could be recognized and used to define stages. With the advent of high-throughput 3D imaging tools that capture embryo morphology in microscopic detail, we now present the first 4D atlas staging system for mouse embryonic development using optical projection tomography and image registration methods. By tracking 3D trajectories of every anatomical point in the mouse embryo from E11.5 to E14.0, we established the first 4D atlas compiled from ex vivo 3D mouse embryo reference images. The resulting 4D atlas comprises 51 interpolated 3D images in this gestational range, resulting in a temporal resolution of 72 min. From this 4D atlas, any mouse embryo image can be subsequently compared and staged at the global, voxel and/or structural level. Assigning an embryonic stage to each point in anatomy allows for unprecedented quantitative analysis of developmental asynchrony among different anatomical structures in the same mouse embryo. This comprehensive developmental data set offers developmental biologists a new, powerful staging system that can identify and compare differences in developmental timing in wild-type embryos and shows promise for localizing deviations in mutant development. © 2015. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

Inability of Kaplan radiation leukemia virus to replicate on mouse fibroblasts is conferred by its long terminal repeat

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rassart, E.; Paquette, Y.; Jolicoeur, P.

1988-01-01

The molecularly cloned infectious Kaplan radiation leukemia virus has previously been shown to be unable to replicate on mouse fibroblasts. To map the viral sequences responsible for this, we constructed chimeric viral DNA genomes in vitro with parental cloned infectious viral DNAs from the nonfibrotropic (F-) BL/VL3 V-13 radiation leukemia virus and the fibrotropic (F+) endogenous BALB/c or Moloney murine leukemia viruses (MuLV). Infectious chimeric MuLVs, recovered after transfection of Ti-6 lymphocytes with these recombinant DNAs, were tested for capacity to replicate on mouse fibroblasts in vitro. We found that chimeric MuLVs harboring the long terminal repeat (LTR) of a fibrotropic MuLV replicated well on mouse fibroblasts. Conversely, chimeric MuLVs harboring the LTR of a nonfibrotropic MuLV were restricted on mouse fibroblasts. These results indicate that the LTR of BL/VL3 radiation leukemia virus harbors the primary determinant responsible for its inability to replicate on mouse fibroblasts in vitro. Our results also show that the primary determinant allowing F+ MuLVs (endogenous BALB/c and Moloney MuLVs) to replicate on mouse fibroblasts in vitro resides within the LTR

Core Genome Multilocus Sequence Typing Scheme for Stable, Comparative Analyses of Campylobacter jejuni and C. coli Human Disease Isolates.

Science.gov (United States)

Cody, Alison J; Bray, James E; Jolley, Keith A; McCarthy, Noel D; Maiden, Martin C J

2017-07-01

Human campylobacteriosis, caused by Campylobacter jejuni and C. coli , remains a leading cause of bacterial gastroenteritis in many countries, but the epidemiology of campylobacteriosis outbreaks remains poorly defined, largely due to limitations in the resolution and comparability of isolate characterization methods. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data enable the improvement of sequence-based typing approaches, such as multilocus sequence typing (MLST), by substantially increasing the number of loci examined. A core genome MLST (cgMLST) scheme defines a comprehensive set of those loci present in most members of a bacterial group, balancing very high resolution with comparability across the diversity of the group. Here we propose a set of 1,343 loci as a human campylobacteriosis cgMLST scheme (v1.0), the allelic profiles of which can be assigned to core genome sequence types. The 1,343 loci chosen were a subset of the 1,643 loci identified in the reannotation of the genome sequence of C. jejuni isolate NCTC 11168, chosen as being present in >95% of draft genomes of 2,472 representative United Kingdom campylobacteriosis isolates, comprising 2,207 (89.3%) C. jejuni isolates and 265 (10.7%) C. coli isolates. Validation of the cgMLST scheme was undertaken with 1,478 further high-quality draft genomes, containing 150 or fewer contiguous sequences, from disease isolate collections: 99.5% of these isolates contained ≥95% of the 1,343 cgMLST loci. In addition to the rapid and effective high-resolution analysis of large numbers of diverse isolates, the cgMLST scheme enabled the efficient identification of very closely related isolates from a well-defined single-source campylobacteriosis outbreak. Copyright © 2017 Cody et al.

Comparative gene expression of intestinal metabolizing enzymes.

Science.gov (United States)

Shin, Ho-Chul; Kim, Hye-Ryoung; Cho, Hee-Jung; Yi, Hee; Cho, Soo-Min; Lee, Dong-Goo; Abd El-Aty, A M; Kim, Jin-Suk; Sun, Duxin; Amidon, Gordon L

2009-11-01

The purpose of this study was to compare the expression profiles of drug-metabolizing enzymes in the intestine of mouse, rat and human. Total RNA was isolated from the duodenum and the mRNA expression was measured using Affymetrix GeneChip oligonucleotide arrays. Detected genes from the intestine of mouse, rat and human were ca. 60% of 22690 sequences, 40% of 8739 and 47% of 12559, respectively. Total genes of metabolizing enzymes subjected in this study were 95, 33 and 68 genes in mouse, rat and human, respectively. Of phase I enzymes, the mouse exhibited abundant gene expressions for Cyp3a25, Cyp4v3, Cyp2d26, followed by Cyp2b20, Cyp2c65 and Cyp4f14, whereas, the rat showed higher expression profiles of Cyp3a9, Cyp2b19, Cyp4f1, Cyp17a1, Cyp2d18, Cyp27a1 and Cyp4f6. However, the highly expressed P450 enzymes were CYP3A4, CYP3A5, CYP4F3, CYP2C18, CYP2C9, CYP2D6, CYP3A7, CYP11B1 and CYP2B6 in the human. For phase II enzymes, glucuronosyltransferase Ugt1a6, glutathione S-transferases Gstp1, Gstm3 and Gsta2, sulfotransferase Sult1b1 and acyltransferase Dgat1 were highly expressed in the mouse. The rat revealed predominant expression of glucuronosyltransferases Ugt1a1 and Ugt1a7, sulfotransferase Sult1b1, acetyltransferase Dlat and acyltransferase Dgat1. On the other hand, in human, glucuronosyltransferases UGT2B15 and UGT2B17, glutathione S-transferases MGST3, GSTP1, GSTA2 and GSTM4, sulfotransferases ST1A3 and SULT1A2, acetyltransferases SAT1 and CRAT, and acyltransferase AGPAT2 were dominantly detected. Therefore, current data indicated substantial interspecies differences in the pattern of intestinal gene expression both for P450 enzymes and phase II drug-metabolizing enzymes. This genomic database is expected to improve our understanding of interspecies variations in estimating intestinal prehepatic clearance of oral drugs.

Long sequence correlation coprocessor

Science.gov (United States)

Gage, Douglas W.

1994-09-01

A long sequence correlation coprocessor (LSCC) accelerates the bitwise correlation of arbitrarily long digital sequences by calculating in parallel the correlation score for 16, for example, adjacent bit alignments between two binary sequences. The LSCC integrated circuit is incorporated into a computer system with memory storage buffers and a separate general purpose computer processor which serves as its controller. Each of the LSCC's set of sequential counters simultaneously tallies a separate correlation coefficient. During each LSCC clock cycle, computer enable logic associated with each counter compares one bit of a first sequence with one bit of a second sequence to increment the counter if the bits are the same. A shift register assures that the same bit of the first sequence is simultaneously compared to different bits of the second sequence to simultaneously calculate the correlation coefficient by the different counters to represent different alignments of the two sequences.

The toxicity of silver and silica nanoparticles in comparable human and mouse cell lines

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Foldbjerg, Rasmus; Beer, Christiane; Sutherland, Duncan S

The toxicity of silica (SiO2) and PVP-coated silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) was investigated in two pairs of human or mouse cell lines originating from lung epithelium (A549 and ASB-XIV) and macrophages (THP-1 and J744A.1). Both NPs were characterized in H2O and cell media and demonstrated to be...

Comparative Genomics in Switchgrass Using 61,585 High-Quality Expressed Sequence Tags

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christian M. Tobias

2008-11-01

Full Text Available The development of genomic resources for switchgrass ( L., a perennial NAD-malic enzyme type C grass, is required to enable molecular breeding and biotechnological approaches for improving its value as a forage and bioenergy crop. Expressed sequence tag (EST sequencing is one method that can quickly sample gene inventories and produce data suitable for marker development or analysis of tissue-specific patterns of expression. Toward this goal, three cDNA libraries from callus, crown, and seedling tissues of ‘Kanlow’ switchgrass were end-sequenced to generate a total of 61,585 high-quality ESTs from 36,565 separate clones. Seventy-three percent of the assembled consensus sequences could be aligned with the sorghum [ (L. Moench] genome at a -value of <1 × 10, indicating a high degree of similarity. Sixty-five percent of the ESTs matched with gene ontology molecular terms, and 3.3% of the sequences were matched with genes that play potential roles in cell-wall biogenesis. The representation in the three libraries of gene families known to be associated with C photosynthesis, cellulose and β-glucan synthesis, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and peroxidase activity indicated likely roles for individual family members. Pairwise comparisons of synonymous codon substitutions were used to assess genome sequence diversity and indicated an overall similarity between the two genome copies present in the tetraploid. Identification of EST–simple sequence repeat markers and amplification on two individual parents of a mapping population yielded an average of 2.18 amplicons per individual, and 35% of the markers produced fragment length polymorphisms.

Complete Chloroplast Genome Sequence of Tartary Buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum and Comparative Analysis with Common Buckwheat (F. esculentum.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kwang-Soo Cho

Full Text Available We report the chloroplast (cp genome sequence of tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum obtained by next-generation sequencing technology and compared this with the previously reported common buckwheat (F. esculentum ssp. ancestrale cp genome. The cp genome of F. tataricum has a total sequence length of 159,272 bp, which is 327 bp shorter than the common buckwheat cp genome. The cp gene content, order, and orientation are similar to those of common buckwheat, but with some structural variation at tandem and palindromic repeat frequencies and junction areas. A total of seven InDels (around 100 bp were found within the intergenic sequences and the ycf1 gene. Copy number variation of the 21-bp tandem repeat varied in F. tataricum (four repeats and F. esculentum (one repeat, and the InDel of the ycf1 gene was 63 bp long. Nucleotide and amino acid have highly conserved coding sequence with about 98% homology and four genes--rpoC2, ycf3, accD, and clpP--have high synonymous (Ks value. PCR based InDel markers were applied to diverse genetic resources of F. tataricum and F. esculentum, and the amplicon size was identical to that expected in silico. Therefore, these InDel markers are informative biomarkers to practically distinguish raw or processed buckwheat products derived from F. tataricum and F. esculentum.

Accelerated Evolution of Conserved Noncoding Sequences in theHuman Genome

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Prambhakar, Shyam; Noonan, James P.; Paabo, Svante; Rubin, EdwardM.

2006-07-06

Genomic comparisons between human and distant, non-primatemammals are commonly used to identify cis-regulatory elements based onconstrained sequence evolution. However, these methods fail to detect"cryptic" functional elements, which are too weakly conserved amongmammals to distinguish from nonfunctional DNA. To address this problem,we explored the potential of deep intra-primate sequence comparisons. Wesequenced the orthologs of 558 kb of human genomic sequence, coveringmultiple loci involved in cholesterol homeostasis, in 6 nonhumanprimates. Our analysis identified 6 noncoding DNA elements displayingsignificant conservation among primates, but undetectable in more distantcomparisons. In vitro and in vivo tests revealed that at least three ofthese 6 elements have regulatory function. Notably, the mouse orthologsof these three functional human sequences had regulatory activity despitetheir lack of significant sequence conservation, indicating that they arecryptic ancestral cis-regulatory elements. These regulatory elementscould still be detected in a smaller set of three primate speciesincluding human, rhesus and marmoset. Since the human and rhesus genomesequences are already available, and the marmoset genome is activelybeing sequenced, the primate-specific conservation analysis describedhere can be applied in the near future on a whole-genome scale, tocomplement the annotation provided by more distant speciescomparisons.

Genome sequence and comparative analysis of a putative entomopathogenic Serratia isolated from Caenorhabditis briggsae.

Science.gov (United States)

Abebe-Akele, Feseha; Tisa, Louis S; Cooper, Vaughn S; Hatcher, Philip J; Abebe, Eyualem; Thomas, W Kelley

2015-07-18

Entomopathogenic associations between nematodes in the genera Steinernema and Heterorhabdus with their cognate bacteria from the bacterial genera Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus, respectively, are extensively studied for their potential as biological control agents against invasive insect species. These two highly coevolved associations were results of convergent evolution. Given the natural abundance of bacteria, nematodes and insects, it is surprising that only these two associations with no intermediate forms are widely studied in the entomopathogenic context. Discovering analogous systems involving novel bacterial and nematode species would shed light on the evolutionary processes involved in the transition from free living organisms to obligatory partners in entomopathogenicity. We report the complete genome sequence of a new member of the enterobacterial genus Serratia that forms a putative entomopathogenic complex with Caenorhabditis briggsae. Analysis of the 5.04 MB chromosomal genome predicts 4599 protein coding genes, seven sets of ribosomal RNA genes, 84 tRNA genes and a 64.8 KB plasmid encoding 74 genes. Comparative genomic analysis with three of the previously sequenced Serratia species, S. marcescens DB11 and S. proteamaculans 568, and Serratia sp. AS12, revealed that these four representatives of the genus share a core set of ~3100 genes and extensive structural conservation. The newly identified species shares a more recent common ancestor with S. marcescens with 99% sequence identity in rDNA sequence and orthology across 85.6% of predicted genes. Of the 39 genes/operons implicated in the virulence, symbiosis, recolonization, immune evasion and bioconversion, 21 (53.8%) were present in Serratia while 33 (84.6%) and 35 (89%) were present in Xenorhabdus and Photorhabdus EPN bacteria respectively. The majority of unique sequences in Serratia sp. SCBI (South African Caenorhabditis briggsae Isolate) are found in ~29 genomic islands of 5 to 65 genes and are

The genomic landscape shaped by selection on transposable elements across 18 mouse strains.

Science.gov (United States)

Nellåker, Christoffer; Keane, Thomas M; Yalcin, Binnaz; Wong, Kim; Agam, Avigail; Belgard, T Grant; Flint, Jonathan; Adams, David J; Frankel, Wayne N; Ponting, Chris P

2012-06-15

Transposable element (TE)-derived sequence dominates the landscape of mammalian genomes and can modulate gene function by dysregulating transcription and translation. Our current knowledge of TEs in laboratory mouse strains is limited primarily to those present in the C57BL/6J reference genome, with most mouse TEs being drawn from three distinct classes, namely short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs), long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) and the endogenous retrovirus (ERV) superfamily. Despite their high prevalence, the different genomic and gene properties controlling whether TEs are preferentially purged from, or are retained by, genetic drift or positive selection in mammalian genomes remain poorly defined. Using whole genome sequencing data from 13 classical laboratory and 4 wild-derived mouse inbred strains, we developed a comprehensive catalogue of 103,798 polymorphic TE variants. We employ this extensive data set to characterize TE variants across the Mus lineage, and to infer neutral and selective processes that have acted over 2 million years. Our results indicate that the majority of TE variants are introduced though the male germline and that only a minority of TE variants exert detectable changes in gene expression. However, among genes with differential expression across the strains there are twice as many TE variants identified as being putative causal variants as expected. Most TE variants that cause gene expression changes appear to be purged rapidly by purifying selection. Our findings demonstrate that past TE insertions have often been highly deleterious, and help to prioritize TE variants according to their likely contribution to gene expression or phenotype variation.

mESAdb: microRNA expression and sequence analysis database.

Science.gov (United States)

Kaya, Koray D; Karakülah, Gökhan; Yakicier, Cengiz M; Acar, Aybar C; Konu, Ozlen

2011-01-01

microRNA expression and sequence analysis database (http://konulab.fen.bilkent.edu.tr/mirna/) (mESAdb) is a regularly updated database for the multivariate analysis of sequences and expression of microRNAs from multiple taxa. mESAdb is modular and has a user interface implemented in PHP and JavaScript and coupled with statistical analysis and visualization packages written for the R language. The database primarily comprises mature microRNA sequences and their target data, along with selected human, mouse and zebrafish expression data sets. mESAdb analysis modules allow (i) mining of microRNA expression data sets for subsets of microRNAs selected manually or by motif; (ii) pair-wise multivariate analysis of expression data sets within and between taxa; and (iii) association of microRNA subsets with annotation databases, HUGE Navigator, KEGG and GO. The use of existing and customized R packages facilitates future addition of data sets and analysis tools. Furthermore, the ability to upload and analyze user-specified data sets makes mESAdb an interactive and expandable analysis tool for microRNA sequence and expression data.

Monomorphism in humans and sequence differences among higher primates for a sequence tagged site (STS) in homeo box cluster 2 as assayed by denaturing gradient electrophoresis

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ruano, G.; Ruddle, F.H.; Kidd, K.K. (Yale Univ., New Haven, CT (United States)); Gray, M.R. (Tufts Univ., Boston, MA (United States)); Miki, Tetsuro (Osaka Univ. (Japan)); Ferguson-Smith, A.C. (Inst. of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research, Cambridge (United Kingdom))

1990-03-11

The human homeo box cluster 2 (HOX2) contains genes coding for DNA binding proteins involved in developmental control and is highly conserved between mouse and man. The authors have applied in concert the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and Denaturing Gradient Electrophoresis (DGE) to amplify defined primate HOX2 segments and to detect sequence differences among them. They have sequenced a PstI fragment 4 kb upstream from HOX 2.2 and synthesized primers delimiting both halves of 630 bp segment within it PCR on various unrelated humans and SC-PCR on chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan and gibbon yielded products of the same length for each primer pair.

Efficient use of unlabeled data for protein sequence classification: a comparative study.

Science.gov (United States)

Kuksa, Pavel; Huang, Pai-Hsi; Pavlovic, Vladimir

2009-04-29

Recent studies in computational primary protein sequence analysis have leveraged the power of unlabeled data. For example, predictive models based on string kernels trained on sequences known to belong to particular folds or superfamilies, the so-called labeled data set, can attain significantly improved accuracy if this data is supplemented with protein sequences that lack any class tags-the unlabeled data. In this study, we present a principled and biologically motivated computational framework that more effectively exploits the unlabeled data by only using the sequence regions that are more likely to be biologically relevant for better prediction accuracy. As overly-represented sequences in large uncurated databases may bias the estimation of computational models that rely on unlabeled data, we also propose a method to remove this bias and improve performance of the resulting classifiers. Combined with state-of-the-art string kernels, our proposed computational framework achieves very accurate semi-supervised protein remote fold and homology detection on three large unlabeled databases. It outperforms current state-of-the-art methods and exhibits significant reduction in running time. The unlabeled sequences used under the semi-supervised setting resemble the unpolished gemstones; when used as-is, they may carry unnecessary features and hence compromise the classification accuracy but once cut and polished, they improve the accuracy of the classifiers considerably.

Short-scan-time multi-slice diffusion MRI of the mouse cervical spinal cord using echo planar imaging.

Science.gov (United States)

Callot, Virginie; Duhamel, Guillaume; Cozzone, Patrick J; Kober, Frank

2008-10-01

Mouse spinal cord (SC) diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) provides important information on tissue morphology and structural changes that may occur during pathologies such as multiple sclerosis or SC injury. The acquisition scheme of the commonly used DWI techniques is based on conventional spin-echo encoding, which is time-consuming. The purpose of this work was to investigate whether the use of echo planar imaging (EPI) would provide good-quality diffusion MR images of mouse SC, as well as accurate measurements of diffusion-derived metrics, and thus enable diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and highly resolved DWI within reasonable scan times. A four-shot diffusion-weighted spin-echo EPI (SE-EPI) sequence was evaluated at 11.75 T on a group of healthy mice (n = 10). SE-EPI-derived apparent diffusion coefficients of gray and white matter were compared with those obtained using a conventional spin-echo sequence (c-SE) to validate the accuracy of the method. To take advantage of the reduction in acquisition time offered by the EPI sequence, multi-slice DTI acquisitions were performed covering the cervical segments (six slices, six diffusion-encoding directions, three b values) within 30 min (vs 2 h for c-SE). From these measurements, fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivities were calculated, and fiber tracking along the C1 to C6 cervical segments was performed. In addition, high-resolution images (74 x 94 microm(2)) were acquired within 5 min per direction. Clear delineation of gray and white matter and identical apparent diffusion coefficient values were obtained, with a threefold reduction in acquisition time compared with c-SE. While overcoming the difficulties associated with high spatially and temporally resolved DTI measurements, the present SE-EPI approach permitted identification of reliable quantitative parameters with a reproducibility compatible with the detection of pathologies. The SE-EPI method may be particularly valuable when multiple sets of images

Cloning of cDNAs that encode human mast cell carboxypeptidase A, and comparison of the protein with mouse mast cell carboxypeptidase A and rat pancreatic carboxypeptidases

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Reynolds, D.S.; Gurley, D.S.; Stevens, R.L.; Austen, K.F.; Serafin, W.E.; Sugarbaker, D.J.

1989-01-01

Human skin and lung mast cells and rodent peritoneal cells contain a carboxypeptidase in their secretory granules. The authors have screened human lung cDNA libraries with a mouse mast cell carboxypeptidase A (MC-CPA) cDNA probe to isolate a near-full-length cDNA that encodes human MC-CPA. The 5' end of the human MC-CPA transcript was defined by direct mRNA sequencing and by isolation and partial sequencing of the human MC-CPA gene. Human MC-CPA is predicted to be translated as a 417 amino acid preproenzyme which includes a 15 amino acid signal peptide and a 94-amino acid activation peptide. The mature human MC-CPA enzyme has a predicted size of 36.1 kDa, a net positive charge of 16 at neutral pH, and 86% amino acid sequence identity with mouse MC-CPA. DNA blot analyses showed that human MC-CPA mRNA is transcribed from a single locus in the human genome. Comparison of the human MC-CPA with mouse MC-CPA and with three rat pancreatic carboxypeptidases shows that these enzymes are encoded by distinct but homologous genes

Is there an added value of T1-weighted contrast-enhanced fat-suppressed spin-echo MR sequences compared to STIR sequences in MRI of the foot and ankle?

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zubler, Veronika; Zanetti, Marco; Dietrich, Tobias J.; Pfirrmann, Christian W.; Mamisch-Saupe, Nadja [University of Zurich, Faculty of Medicine, Zurich (Switzerland); Orthopedic University Hospital Balgrist, Department of Radiology, Zurich (Switzerland); Espinosa, Norman [University of Zurich, Faculty of Medicine, Zurich (Switzerland); Orthopedic University Hospital Balgrist, Orthopedic Surgery, Zurich (Switzerland)

2017-08-15

To prospectively compare T1-weighted fat-suppressed spin-echo magnetic resonance (MR) sequences after gadolinium application (T1wGdFS) to STIR sequences in patients with acute and chronic foot pain. In 51 patients referred for MRI of the foot and ankle, additional transverse and sagittal T1wGdFS sequences were obtained. Two sets of MR images (standard protocol with STIR or T1wGdFS) were analysed. Diagnosis, diagnostic confidence, and localization of the abnormality were noted. Standard of reference was established by an expert panel of two experienced MSK radiologists and one experienced foot surgeon based on MR images, clinical charts and surgical reports. Patients reported prospectively localization of pain. Descriptive statistics, McNemar test and Kappa test were used. Diagnostic accuracy with STIR protocol was 80% for reader 1, 67% for reader 2, with contrast-protocol 84%, both readers. Significance was found for reader 2. Diagnostic confidence for reader 1 was 1.7 with STIR, 1.3 with contrast-protocol; reader 2: 2.1/1.7. Significance was found for reader 1. Pain location correlated with STIR sequences in 64% and 52%, with gadolinium sequences in 70% and 71%. T1-weighted contrast material-enhanced fat-suppressed spin-echo magnetic resonance sequences improve diagnostic accuracy, diagnostic confidence and correlation of MR abnormalities with pain location in MRI of the foot and ankle. However, the additional value is small. (orig.)

Is there an added value of T1-weighted contrast-enhanced fat-suppressed spin-echo MR sequences compared to STIR sequences in MRI of the foot and ankle?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zubler, Veronika; Zanetti, Marco; Dietrich, Tobias J.; Pfirrmann, Christian W.; Mamisch-Saupe, Nadja; Espinosa, Norman

2017-01-01

To prospectively compare T1-weighted fat-suppressed spin-echo magnetic resonance (MR) sequences after gadolinium application (T1wGdFS) to STIR sequences in patients with acute and chronic foot pain. In 51 patients referred for MRI of the foot and ankle, additional transverse and sagittal T1wGdFS sequences were obtained. Two sets of MR images (standard protocol with STIR or T1wGdFS) were analysed. Diagnosis, diagnostic confidence, and localization of the abnormality were noted. Standard of reference was established by an expert panel of two experienced MSK radiologists and one experienced foot surgeon based on MR images, clinical charts and surgical reports. Patients reported prospectively localization of pain. Descriptive statistics, McNemar test and Kappa test were used. Diagnostic accuracy with STIR protocol was 80% for reader 1, 67% for reader 2, with contrast-protocol 84%, both readers. Significance was found for reader 2. Diagnostic confidence for reader 1 was 1.7 with STIR, 1.3 with contrast-protocol; reader 2: 2.1/1.7. Significance was found for reader 1. Pain location correlated with STIR sequences in 64% and 52%, with gadolinium sequences in 70% and 71%. T1-weighted contrast material-enhanced fat-suppressed spin-echo magnetic resonance sequences improve diagnostic accuracy, diagnostic confidence and correlation of MR abnormalities with pain location in MRI of the foot and ankle. However, the additional value is small. (orig.)

High-Throughput Mapping of Single-Neuron Projections by Sequencing of Barcoded RNA.

Science.gov (United States)

Kebschull, Justus M; Garcia da Silva, Pedro; Reid, Ashlan P; Peikon, Ian D; Albeanu, Dinu F; Zador, Anthony M

2016-09-07

Neurons transmit information to distant brain regions via long-range axonal projections. In the mouse, area-to-area connections have only been systematically mapped using bulk labeling techniques, which obscure the diverse projections of intermingled single neurons. Here we describe MAPseq (Multiplexed Analysis of Projections by Sequencing), a technique that can map the projections of thousands or even millions of single neurons by labeling large sets of neurons with random RNA sequences ("barcodes"). Axons are filled with barcode mRNA, each putative projection area is dissected, and the barcode mRNA is extracted and sequenced. Applying MAPseq to the locus coeruleus (LC), we find that individual LC neurons have preferred cortical targets. By recasting neuroanatomy, which is traditionally viewed as a problem of microscopy, as a problem of sequencing, MAPseq harnesses advances in sequencing technology to permit high-throughput interrogation of brain circuits. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gene Discovery in the Apicomplexa as Revealed by EST Sequencing and Assembly of a Comparative Gene Database

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Li; Brunk, Brian P.; Kissinger, Jessica C.; Pape, Deana; Tang, Keliang; Cole, Robert H.; Martin, John; Wylie, Todd; Dante, Mike; Fogarty, Steven J.; Howe, Daniel K.; Liberator, Paul; Diaz, Carmen; Anderson, Jennifer; White, Michael; Jerome, Maria E.; Johnson, Emily A.; Radke, Jay A.; Stoeckert, Christian J.; Waterston, Robert H.; Clifton, Sandra W.; Roos, David S.; Sibley, L. David

2003-01-01

Large-scale EST sequencing projects for several important parasites within the phylum Apicomplexa were undertaken for the purpose of gene discovery. Included were several parasites of medical importance (Plasmodium falciparum, Toxoplasma gondii) and others of veterinary importance (Eimeria tenella, Sarcocystis neurona, and Neospora caninum). A total of 55,192 ESTs, deposited into dbEST/GenBank, were included in the analyses. The resulting sequences have been clustered into nonredundant gene assemblies and deposited into a relational database that supports a variety of sequence and text searches. This database has been used to compare the gene assemblies using BLAST similarity comparisons to the public protein databases to identify putative genes. Of these new entries, ∼15%–20% represent putative homologs with a conservative cutoff of p neurona: , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, –, –, –, –. Eimeria tenella: –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, – , –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –. Neospora caninum: –, –, , – , –, –.] PMID:12618375

Acquisition of nonspecific Bartonella strains by the northern grasshopper mouse (Onychomys leucogaster)

Science.gov (United States)

Bai, Y.; Kosoy, M.Y.; Cully, J.F.; Bala, T.; Ray, C.; Collinge, S.K.

2007-01-01

Rodent-associated Bartonella species are generally host-specific parasites in North America. Here evidence that Bartonella species can 'jump' between host species is presented. Northern grasshopper mice and other rodents were trapped in the western USA. A study of Bartonella infection in grasshopper mice demonstrated a high prevalence that varied from 25% to 90% by location. Bartonella infection was detected in other rodent species with a high prevalence as well. Sequence analyses of gltA identified 29 Bartonella variants in rodents, 10 of which were obtained from grasshopper mice. Among these 10, only six variants were specific to grasshopper mice, whereas four were identical to variants specific to deer mice or 13-lined ground squirrels. Fourteen of 90 sequenced isolates obtained from grasshopper mice were strains found more commonly in other rodent species and were apparently acquired from these animals. The ecological behavior of grasshopper mice may explain the occurrence of Bartonella strains in occasional hosts. The observed rate at which Bartonella jumps from a donor host species to the grasshopper mouse was directly proportional to a metric of donor host density and to the prevalence of Bartonella in the donor host, and inversely proportional to the same parameters for the grasshopper mouse. ?? 2007 Federation of European Microbiological Societies.

Positional mapping and candidate gene analysis of the mouse Ccs3 locus that regulates differential susceptibility to carcinogen-induced colorectal cancer.

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Charles Meunier

Full Text Available The Ccs3 locus on mouse chromosome 3 regulates differential susceptibility of A/J (A, susceptible and C57BL/6J (B6, resistant mouse strains to chemically-induced colorectal cancer (CRC. Here, we report the high-resolution positional mapping of the gene underlying the Ccs3 effect. Using phenotype/genotype correlation in a series of 33 AcB/BcA recombinant congenic mouse strains, as well as in groups of backcross populations bearing unique recombinant chromosomes for the interval, and in subcongenic strains, we have delineated the maximum size of the Ccs3 physical interval to a ∼2.15 Mb segment. This interval contains 12 annotated transcripts. Sequencing of positional candidates in A and B6 identified many either low-priority coding changes or non-protein coding variants. We found a unique copy number variant (CNV in intron 15 of the Nfkb1 gene. The CNV consists of two copies of a 54 bp sequence immediately adjacent to the exon 15 splice site, while only one copy is found in CRC-susceptible A. The Nfkb1 protein (p105/p50 expression is much reduced in A tumors compared to normal A colonic epithelium as analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Studies in primary macrophages from A and B6 mice demonstrate a marked differential activation of the NfκB pathway by lipopolysaccharide (kinetics of stimulation and maximum levels of phosphorylated IκBα, with a more robust activation being associated with resistance to CRC. NfκB has been previously implicated in regulating homeostasis and inflammatory response in the intestinal mucosa. The interval contains another positional candidate Slc39a8 that is differentially expressed in A vs B6 colons, and that has recently been associated in CRC tumor aggressiveness in humans.

Ultra-deep sequencing of mouse mitochondrial DNA: mutational patterns and their origins.

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Adam Ameur

2011-03-01

Full Text Available Somatic mutations of mtDNA are implicated in the aging process, but there is no universally accepted method for their accurate quantification. We have used ultra-deep sequencing to study genome-wide mtDNA mutation load in the liver of normally- and prematurely-aging mice. Mice that are homozygous for an allele expressing a proof-reading-deficient mtDNA polymerase (mtDNA mutator mice have 10-times-higher point mutation loads than their wildtype siblings. In addition, the mtDNA mutator mice have increased levels of a truncated linear mtDNA molecule, resulting in decreased sequence coverage in the deleted region. In contrast, circular mtDNA molecules with large deletions occur at extremely low frequencies in mtDNA mutator mice and can therefore not drive the premature aging phenotype. Sequence analysis shows that the main proportion of the mutation load in heterozygous mtDNA mutator mice and their wildtype siblings is inherited from their heterozygous mothers consistent with germline transmission. We found no increase in levels of point mutations or deletions in wildtype C57Bl/6N mice with increasing age, thus questioning the causative role of these changes in aging. In addition, there was no increased frequency of transversion mutations with time in any of the studied genotypes, arguing against oxidative damage as a major cause of mtDNA mutations. Our results from studies of mice thus indicate that most somatic mtDNA mutations occur as replication errors during development and do not result from damage accumulation in adult life.

A Case Study of MasterMind Chess: Comparing Mouse/Keyboard Interaction with Kinect-Based Gestural Interface

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Gabriel Alves Mendes Vasiljevic

2016-01-01

Full Text Available As gestural interfaces emerged as a new type of user interface, their use has been vastly explored by the entertainment industry to better immerse the player in games. Despite being mainly used in dance and sports games, little use was made of gestural interaction in more slow-paced genres, such as board games. In this work, we present a Kinect-based gestural interface for an online and multiplayer chess game and describe a case study with users with different playing skill levels. Comparing the mouse/keyboard interaction with the gesture-based interaction, the results of the activity were synthesized into lessons learned regarding general usability and design of game control mechanisms. These results could be applied to slow-paced board games like chess. Our findings indicate that gestural interfaces may not be suitable for competitive chess matches, yet it can be fun to play while using them in casual matches.

Comparing the mechanical influence of vinculin, focal adhesion kinase and p53 in mouse embryonic fibroblasts

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Klemm, Anna H.; Diez, Gerold; Alonso, Jose-Luis; Goldmann, Wolfgang H.

2009-01-01

Cytoskeletal reorganization is an ongoing process when cells adhere, move or invade extracellular substrates. The cellular force generation and transmission are determined by the intactness of the actomyosin-(focal adhesion complex)-integrin connection. We investigated the intracellular course of action in mouse embryonic fibroblasts deficient in the focal adhesion proteins vinculin and focal adhesion kinase (FAK) and the nuclear matrix protein p53 using magnetic tweezer and nanoparticle tracking techniques. Results show that the lack of these proteins decrease cellular stiffness and affect cell rheological behavior. The decrease in cellular binding strength was higher in FAK- to vinculin-deficient cells, whilst p53-deficient cells showed no effect compared to wildtype cells. The intracellular cytoskeletal activity was lowest in wildtype cells, but increased in the following order when cells lacked FAK+p53 > p53 > vinculin. In summary, cell mechanical processes are differently affected by the focal adhesion proteins vinculin and FAK than by the nuclear matrix protein, p53.

Exploiting CRISPR-Cas nucleases to produce sequence-specific antimicrobials.

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Bikard, David; Euler, Chad W; Jiang, Wenyan; Nussenzweig, Philip M; Goldberg, Gregory W; Duportet, Xavier; Fischetti, Vincent A; Marraffini, Luciano A

2014-11-01

Antibiotics target conserved bacterial cellular pathways or growth functions and therefore cannot selectively kill specific members of a complex microbial population. Here, we develop programmable, sequence-specific antimicrobials using the RNA-guided nuclease Cas9 (refs.1,2) delivered by a bacteriophage. We show that Cas9, reprogrammed to target virulence genes, kills virulent, but not avirulent, Staphylococcus aureus. Reprogramming the nuclease to target antibiotic resistance genes destroys staphylococcal plasmids that harbor antibiotic resistance genes and immunizes avirulent staphylococci to prevent the spread of plasmid-borne resistance genes. We also show that CRISPR-Cas9 antimicrobials function in vivo to kill S. aureus in a mouse skin colonization model. This technology creates opportunities to manipulate complex bacterial populations in a sequence-specific manner.

Molecular dissection of a contiguous gene syndrome: Frequent submicroscopic deletions, evolutionarily conserved sequences, and a hypomethylated island in the Miller-Dieker chromosome region

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ledbetter, D.H.; Ledbetter, S.A.; vanTuinen, P.

1989-01-01

The Miller-Dieker syndrome (MDS), composed of characteristic facial abnormalities and a severe neuronal migration disorder affecting the cerebral cortex, is caused by visible or submicroscopic deletions of chromosome band 17p13. Twelve anonymous DNA markers were tested against a panel of somatic cell hybrids containing 17p deletions from seven MDS patients. All patients, including three with normal karyotypes, are deleted for a variable set of 5-12 markers. Two highly polymorphic VNTR (variable number of tandem repeats) probes, YNZ22 and YNH37, are codeleted in all patients tested and make molecular diagnosis for this disorder feasible. By pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, YNZ22 and YNH37 were shown to be within 30 kilobases (kb) of each other. Cosmid clones containing both VNTR sequences were identified, and restriction mapping showed them to be 100 kb were completely deleted in all patients, providing a minimum estimate of the size of the MDS critical region. A hypomethylated island and evolutionarily conserved sequences were identified within this 100-kb region, indications of the presence of one or more expressed sequences potentially involved in the pathophysiology of this disorder. The conserved sequences were mapped to mouse chromosome 11 by using mouse-rat somatic cell hybrids, extending the remarkable homology between human chromosome 17 and mouse chromosome 11 by 30 centimorgans, into the 17p telomere region

Giant renin secretory granules in beige mouse renal afferent arterioles

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, B L; Rasch, Ruth; Nyengaard, Jens Randel

1997-01-01

The mutant beige mouse (C57BL/6 bg) has a disease characterised by abnormally enlarged cytoplasmic granules in a variety of cells. With the purpose of establishing a suitable cellular model for studying renin secretion, the present study was undertaken to compare renin granule morphology in beige...... (average granular volume 0.681 microm3), whereas 1-2 large granules were present per cell in beige mice. The volume of afferent arteriole that contained secretory granules was lower in the beige mice. We conclude that the beige mouse synthesizes, stores and releases active renin. Renin secretory granules...... in beige mice are grossly enlarged with 1-2 granules per juxtaglomerular cell. Compared with control mice, a similar amount of total renin granule volume per afferent arteriole is contained in a smaller part of beige mouse afferent arteriole. Granular cells from beige mice could therefore be a valuable...

A genome sequence resource for the aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis), a nocturnal lemur from Madagascar.

Science.gov (United States)

Perry, George H; Reeves, Darryl; Melsted, Páll; Ratan, Aakrosh; Miller, Webb; Michelini, Katelyn; Louis, Edward E; Pritchard, Jonathan K; Mason, Christopher E; Gilad, Yoav

2012-01-01

We present a high-coverage draft genome assembly of the aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis), a highly unusual nocturnal primate from Madagascar. Our assembly totals ~3.0 billion bp (3.0 Gb), roughly the size of the human genome, comprised of ~2.6 million scaffolds (N50 scaffold size = 13,597 bp) based on short paired-end sequencing reads. We compared the aye-aye genome sequence data with four other published primate genomes (human, chimpanzee, orangutan, and rhesus macaque) as well as with the mouse and dog genomes as nonprimate outgroups. Unexpectedly, we observed strong evidence for a relatively slow substitution rate in the aye-aye lineage compared with these and other primates. In fact, the aye-aye branch length is estimated to be ~10% shorter than that of the human lineage, which is known for its low substitution rate. This finding may be explained, in part, by the protracted aye-aye life-history pattern, including late weaning and age of first reproduction relative to other lemurs. Additionally, the availability of this draft lemur genome sequence allowed us to polarize nucleotide and protein sequence changes to the ancestral primate lineage-a critical period in primate evolution, for which the relevant fossil record is sparse. Finally, we identified 293,800 high-confidence single nucleotide polymorphisms in the donor individual for our aye-aye genome sequence, a captive-born individual from two wild-born parents. The resulting heterozygosity estimate of 0.051% is the lowest of any primate studied to date, which is understandable considering the aye-aye's extensive home-range size and relatively low population densities. Yet this level of genetic diversity also suggests that conservation efforts benefiting this unusual species should be prioritized, especially in the face of the accelerating degradation and fragmentation of Madagascar's forests.

A Mouse Model of Chronic West Nile Virus Disease.

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Jessica B Graham

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Infection with West Nile virus (WNV leads to a range of disease outcomes, including chronic infection, though lack of a robust mouse model of chronic WNV infection has precluded identification of the immune events contributing to persistent infection. Using the Collaborative Cross, a population of recombinant inbred mouse strains with high levels of standing genetic variation, we have identified a mouse model of persistent WNV disease, with persistence of viral loads within the brain. Compared to lines exhibiting no disease or marked disease, the F1 cross CC(032x013F1 displays a strong immunoregulatory signature upon infection that correlates with restraint of the WNV-directed cytolytic response. We hypothesize that this regulatory T cell response sufficiently restrains the immune response such that a chronic infection can be maintained in the CNS. Use of this new mouse model of chronic neuroinvasive virus will be critical in developing improved strategies to prevent prolonged disease in humans.

Mouse Activity across Time Scales: Fractal Scenarios

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Lima, G. Z. dos Santos; Lobão-Soares, B.; do Nascimento, G. C.; França, Arthur S. C.; Muratori, L.; Ribeiro, S.; Corso, G.

2014-01-01

In this work we devise a classification of mouse activity patterns based on accelerometer data using Detrended Fluctuation Analysis. We use two characteristic mouse behavioural states as benchmarks in this study: waking in free activity and slow-wave sleep (SWS). In both situations we find roughly the same pattern: for short time intervals we observe high correlation in activity - a typical 1/f complex pattern - while for large time intervals there is anti-correlation. High correlation of short intervals ( to : waking state and to : SWS) is related to highly coordinated muscle activity. In the waking state we associate high correlation both to muscle activity and to mouse stereotyped movements (grooming, waking, etc.). On the other side, the observed anti-correlation over large time scales ( to : waking state and to : SWS) during SWS appears related to a feedback autonomic response. The transition from correlated regime at short scales to an anti-correlated regime at large scales during SWS is given by the respiratory cycle interval, while during the waking state this transition occurs at the time scale corresponding to the duration of the stereotyped mouse movements. Furthermore, we find that the waking state is characterized by longer time scales than SWS and by a softer transition from correlation to anti-correlation. Moreover, this soft transition in the waking state encompass a behavioural time scale window that gives rise to a multifractal pattern. We believe that the observed multifractality in mouse activity is formed by the integration of several stereotyped movements each one with a characteristic time correlation. Finally, we compare scaling properties of body acceleration fluctuation time series during sleep and wake periods for healthy mice. Interestingly, differences between sleep and wake in the scaling exponents are comparable to previous works regarding human heartbeat. Complementarily, the nature of these sleep-wake dynamics could lead to a better

Detection of molecular markers by comparative sequence analysis of enzymes from mycobacteria species

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Asad, S.; Hussain, M.; Siddiqua, A.; Ain, Q.U.

2014-01-01

Mycobacterial species are one of the most important pathogens and among these members of non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) and mycobacterial tuberculousis complex (MTC) are the causative agent of a relatively milder form of Tuberculosis. Traditional methods for identification of these groups of pathogens are time consuming, lack specificity and sensitivity and furthermore lead to the misidentification due to high similarity index. Therefore, more rapid, specific and cost-effective methods are required for the accurate identification of Mycobacterium species in routine diagnostics. In our study, we identified molecular markers in order to differentiate closely related cousin species of genus Mycobacterium including M. bovis, M. avium, M. leprae and M. tuberculosis. The nucleotide sequences of selected unique markers, i.e., enzymes (used previously in various biochemical tests for the identification of M. species) were selected and their ORFs were retrieved and selected functional proteins of respective biosynthetic pathways were compared in-silico. Result suggested that the variations in nucleotide sequences of the selected enzymes can be directly used for M. species discrimination in one step PCR test. We believe that the in-silico identification and storage of these distinctive characteristics of individual M. species will help in more precise recognition of pathogenic strains and hence specie specific targeted therapy. (author)

Comparative genome sequence analysis of Choristoneura occidentalis Freeman and C. rosaceana Harris (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae alphabaculoviruses.

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David K Thumbi

Full Text Available The complete genome sequences of Choristoneura occidentalis and C. rosaceana nucleopolyhedroviruses (ChocNPV and ChroNPV, respectively (Baculoviridae: Alphabaculovirus were determined and compared with each other and with those of other baculoviruses, including the genome of the closely related C. fumiferana NPV (CfMNPV. The ChocNPV genome was 128,446 bp in length (1147 bp smaller than that of CfMNPV, had a G+C content of 50.1%, and contained 148 open reading frames (ORFs. In comparison, the ChroNPV genome was 129,052 bp in length, had a G+C content of 48.6% and contained 149 ORFs. ChocNPV and ChroNPV shared 144 ORFs in common, and had a 77% sequence identity with each other and 96.5% and 77.8% sequence identity, respectively, with CfMNPV. Five homologous regions (hrs, with sequence similarities to those of CfMNPV, were identified in ChocNPV, whereas the ChroNPV genome contained three hrs featuring up to 14 repeats. Both genomes encoded three inhibitors of apoptosis (IAP-1, IAP-2, and IAP-3, as reported for CfMNPV, and the ChocNPV IAP-3 gene represented the most divergent functional region of this genome relative to CfMNPV. Two ORFs were unique to ChocNPV, and four were unique to ChroNPV. ChroNPV ORF chronpv38 is a eukaryotic initiation factor 5 (eIF-5 homolog that has also been identified in the C. occidentalis granulovirus (ChocGV and is believed to be the product of horizontal gene transfer from the host. Based on levels of sequence identity and phylogenetic analysis, both ChocNPV and ChroNPV fall within group I alphabaculoviruses, where ChocNPV appears to be more closely related to CfMNPV than does ChroNPV. Our analyses suggest that it may be appropriate to consider ChocNPV and CfMNPV as variants of the same virus species.

Mitochondrial genome sequences and comparative genomics ofPhytophthora ramorum and P. sojae

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Martin, Frank N.; Douda, Bensasson; Tyler, Brett M.; Boore,Jeffrey L.

2007-01-01

The complete sequences of the mitochondrial genomes of theoomycetes of Phytophthora ramorum and P. sojae were determined during thecourse of their complete nuclear genome sequencing (Tyler, et al. 2006).Both are circular, with sizes of 39,314 bp for P. ramorum and 42,975 bpfor P. sojae. Each contains a total of 37 identifiable protein-encodinggenes, 25 or 26 tRNAs (P. sojae and P. ramorum, respectively)specifying19 amino acids, and a variable number of ORFs (7 for P. ramorum and 12for P. sojae) which are potentially additional functional genes.Non-coding regions comprise approximately 11.5 percent and 18.4 percentof the genomes of P. ramorum and P. sojae, respectively. Relative to P.sojae, there is an inverted repeat of 1,150 bp in P. ramorum thatincludes an unassigned unique ORF, a tRNA gene, and adjacent non-codingsequences, but otherwise the gene order in both species is identical.Comparisons of these genomes with published sequences of the P. infestansmitochondrial genome reveals a number of similarities, but the gene orderin P. infestans differs in two adjacent locations due to inversions.Sequence alignments of the three genomes indicated sequence conservationranging from 75 to 85 percent and that specific regions were morevariable than others.

Characterization of Bovine 5′-flanking Region during Differentiation of Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

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Hye-Jeong Jang

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Embryonic stem cells (ESCs have been used as a powerful tool for research including gene manipulated animal models and the study of developmental gene regulation. Among the critical regulatory factors that maintain the pluripotency and self-renewal of undifferentiated ESCs, NANOG plays a very important role. Nevertheless, because pluripotency maintaining factors and specific markers for livestock ESCs have not yet been probed, few studies of the NANOG gene from domestic animals including bovine have been reported. Therefore, we chose mouse ESCs in order to understand and compare NANOG expression between bovine, human, and mouse during ESCs differentiation. We cloned a 600 bp (−420/+181 bovine NANOG 5′-flanking region, and tagged it with humanized recombinant green fluorescent protein (hrGFP as a tracing reporter. Very high GFP expression for bovine NANOG promoter was observed in the mouse ESC line. GFP expression was monitored upon ESC differentiation and was gradually reduced along with differentiation toward neurons and adipocyte cells. Activity of bovine NANOG (−420/+181 promoter was compared with already known mouse and human NANOG promoters in mouse ESC and they were likely to show a similar pattern of regulation. In conclusion, bovine NANOG 5-flanking region functions in mouse ES cells and has characteristics similar to those of mouse and human. These results suggest that bovine gene function studied in mouse ES cells should be evaluated and extrapolated for application to characterization of bovine ES cells.

Comparison of confocal microscopy and two-photon microscopy in mouse cornea in vivo.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Jun Ho; Lee, Seunghun; Gho, Yong Song; Song, In Seok; Tchah, Hungwon; Kim, Myoung Joon; Kim, Ki Hean

2015-03-01

High-resolution imaging of the cornea is important for studying corneal diseases at cellular levels. Confocal microscopy (CM) has been widely used in the clinic, and two-photon microscopy (TPM) has recently been introduced in various pre-clinical studies. We compared the performance of CM and TPM in normal mouse corneas and neovascularized mouse corneas induced by suturing. Balb/C mice and C57BL/6 mice expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) were used to compare modalities based on intrinsic contrast and extrinsic fluorescence contrast. CM based on reflection (CMR), CM based on fluorescence (CMF), and TPM based on intrinsic/extrinsic fluorescence and second harmonic generation (SHG) were compared by imaging the same sections of mouse corneas sequentially in vivo. In normal mouse corneas, CMR visualized corneal cell morphologies with some background noise, and CMF visualized GFP expressing corneal cells clearly. TPM visualized corneal cells and collagen in the stroma based on fluorescence and SHG, respectively. However, in neovascularized mouse corneas, CMR could not resolve cells deep inside the cornea due to high background noise from the effects of increased structural irregularity induced by suturing. CMF and TPM visualized cells and induced vasculature better than CMR because both collect signals from fluorescent cells only. Both CMF and TPM had signal decays with depth due to the structural irregularity, with CMF having faster signal decay than TPM. CMR, CMF, and TPM showed different degrees of image degradation in neovascularized mouse corneas. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Detection of Weakly Conserved Ancestral Mammalian RegulatorySequences by Primate Comparisons

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Wang, Qian-fei; Prabhakar, Shyam; Chanan, Sumita; Cheng,Jan-Fang; Rubin, Edward M.; Boffelli, Dario

2006-06-01

Genomic comparisons between human and distant, non-primatemammals are commonly used to identify cis-regulatory elements based onconstrained sequence evolution. However, these methods fail to detectcryptic functional elements, which are too weakly conserved among mammalsto distinguish from nonfunctional DNA. To address this problem, weexplored the potential of deep intra-primate sequence comparisons. Wesequenced the orthologs of 558 kb of human genomic sequence, coveringmultiple loci involved in cholesterol homeostasis, in 6 nonhumanprimates. Our analysis identified 6 noncoding DNA elements displayingsignificant conservation among primates, but undetectable in more distantcomparisons. In vitro and in vivo tests revealed that at least three ofthese 6 elements have regulatory function. Notably, the mouse orthologsof these three functional human sequences had regulatory activity despitetheir lack of significant sequence conservation, indicating that they arecryptic ancestral cis-regulatory elements. These regulatory elementscould still be detected in a smaller set of three primate speciesincluding human, rhesus and marmoset. Since the human and rhesus genomesequences are already available, and the marmoset genome is activelybeing sequenced, the primate-specific conservation analysis describedhere can be applied in the near future on a whole-genome scale, tocomplement the annotation provided by more distant speciescomparisons.

A novel homologous model for gene therapy of dwarfism by non-viral transfer of the mouse growth hormone gene into immunocompetent dwarf mice.

Science.gov (United States)

Cecchi, Claudia R; Higuti, Eliza; Oliveira, Nelio A J; Lima, Eliana R; Jakobsen, Maria; Dagnaes-Hansen, Frederick; Gissel, Hanne; Aagaard, Lars; Jensen, Thomas G; Jorge, Alexander A L; Bartolini, Paolo; Peroni, Cibele N

2014-02-01

The possibilities for non-viral GH gene therapy are studied in immunocompetent dwarf mice (lit/lit). As expression vector we used a plasmid previously employed in immunodeficient dwarf mice (pUBI-hGH-gDNA) by replacing the human GH gene with the genomic sequence of mouse-GH DNA (pUBI-mGH-gDNA). HEK-293 human cells transfected with pUBI-mGH-gDNA produced 3.0 µg mGH/10(6) cells/day compared to 3.7 µg hGH/10(6) cells/day for pUBIhGH- gDNA transfected cells. The weight of lit/lit mice treated with the same two plasmids (50 µg DNA/mouse) by electrotransfer into the quadriceps muscle was followed for 3 months. The weight increase up to 15 days for mGH, hGH and saline treated mice were 0.130, 0.112 and 0.027 g/mouse/day. Most sera from hGH-treated mice contained anti-hGH antibodies already on day 15, with the highest titers on day 45, while no significant anti-mGH antibodies were observed in mGH-treated mice. At the end of 3 months, the weight increase for mGH-treated mice was 34.3%, while the nose-to-tail and femur lengths increased 9.5% and 24.3%. Mouse-GH and hGH circulating levels were 4-5 ng/mL 15 days after treatment, versus control levels of ~0.7 ng GH/mL (Pdeficiency.

Comparative sequence analysis of nitrogen fixation-related genes in six legumes

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Dong Hyun eKim

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Legumes play an important role as food and forage crops in international agriculture especially in developing countries. Legumes have a unique biological process called nitrogen fixation (NF by which they convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia. Although legume genomes have undergone polyploidization, duplication and divergence, NF-related genes, because of their essential functional role for legumes, might have remained conserved. To understand the relationship of divergence and evolutionary processes in legumes, this study analyzes orthologs and paralogs for selected 20 NF-related genes by using comparative genomic approaches in six legumes i.e. Medicago truncatula (Mt, Cicer arietinum, Lotus japonicus, Cajanus cajan (Cc, Phaseolus vulgaris (Pv and Glycine max (Gm. Subsequently, sequence distances, numbers of synonymous substitutions per synonymous site (Ks and nonsynonymous substitutions per nonsynonymous site (Ka between orthologs and paralogs were calculated and compared across legumes. These analyses suggest the closest relationship between Gm and Cc and the farthest distance between Mt and Pv in 6 legumes. Ks proportional plots clearly showed ancient genome duplication in all legumes, whole genome duplication event in Gm and also speciation pattern in different legumes. This study also reported some interesting observations e.g. no peak at Ks 0.4 in Gm-Gm, location of two independent genes next to each other in Mt and low Ks values for outparalogs for three genes as compared to other 12 genes. In summary, this study underlines the importance of NF-related genes and provides important insights in genome organization and evolutionary aspects of six legume species analyzed.

Structure and function of ameloblastin as an extracellular matrix protein: adhesion, calcium binding, and CD63 interaction in human and mouse.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Xu; Diekwisch, Thomas G H; Luan, Xianghong

2011-12-01

The functional significance of extracellular matrix proteins in the life of vertebrates is underscored by a high level of sequence variability in tandem with a substantial degree of conservation in terms of cell-cell and cell-matrix adhesion interactions. Many extracellular matrix proteins feature multiple adhesion domains for successful attachment to substrates, such as integrin, CD63, and heparin. Here we have used homology and ab initio modeling algorithms to compare mouse ameloblastin (mAMBN) and human ameloblastin (hABMN) isoforms and to analyze their potential for cell adhesion and interaction with other matrix molecules as well as calcium binding. Sequence comparison between mAMBN and hAMBN revealed a 26-amino-acid deletion in mAMBN, corresponding to a helix-loop-helix frameshift. The human AMBN domain (174Q-201G), homologous to the mAMBN 157E-178I helix-loop-helix region, formed a helix-loop motif with an extended loop, suggesting a higher degree of flexibility of hAMBN compared with mAMBN, as confirmed by molecular dynamics simulation. Heparin-binding domains, CD63-interaction domains, and calcium-binding sites in both hAMBN and mAMBN support the concept of AMBN as an extracellular matrix protein. The high level of conservation between AMBN functional domains related to adhesion and differentiation was remarkable when compared with only 61% amino acid sequence homology. © 2011 Eur J Oral Sci.

Sequence Capture versus Restriction Site Associated DNA Sequencing for Shallow Systematics.

Science.gov (United States)

Harvey, Michael G; Smith, Brian Tilston; Glenn, Travis C; Faircloth, Brant C; Brumfield, Robb T

2016-09-01

Sequence capture and restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-Seq) are two genomic enrichment strategies for applying next-generation sequencing technologies to systematics studies. At shallow timescales, such as within species, RAD-Seq has been widely adopted among researchers, although there has been little discussion of the potential limitations and benefits of RAD-Seq and sequence capture. We discuss a series of issues that may impact the utility of sequence capture and RAD-Seq data for shallow systematics in non-model species. We review prior studies that used both methods, and investigate differences between the methods by re-analyzing existing RAD-Seq and sequence capture data sets from a Neotropical bird (Xenops minutus). We suggest that the strengths of RAD-Seq data sets for shallow systematics are the wide dispersion of markers across the genome, the relative ease and cost of laboratory work, the deep coverage and read overlap at recovered loci, and the high overall information that results. Sequence capture's benefits include flexibility and repeatability in the genomic regions targeted, success using low-quality samples, more straightforward read orthology assessment, and higher per-locus information content. The utility of a method in systematics, however, rests not only on its performance within a study, but on the comparability of data sets and inferences with those of prior work. In RAD-Seq data sets, comparability is compromised by low overlap of orthologous markers across species and the sensitivity of genetic diversity in a data set to an interaction between the level of natural heterozygosity in the samples examined and the parameters used for orthology assessment. In contrast, sequence capture of conserved genomic regions permits interrogation of the same loci across divergent species, which is preferable for maintaining comparability among data sets and studies for the purpose of drawing general conclusions about the impact of

Cloning of human and mouse genes homologous to RAD52, a yeast gene involved in DNA repair and recombination.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

D.F.R. Muris; O.Y. Bezzubova (Olga); J-M. Buerstedde; K. Vreeken; A.S. Balajee; C.J. Osgood; C. Troelstra (Christine); J.H.J. Hoeijmakers (Jan); K. Ostermann; H. Schmidt (Henning); A.T. Natarajan; J.C.J. Eeken; P.H.M. Lohmann (Paul); A. Pastink (Albert)

1994-01-01

textabstractThe RAD52 gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is required for recombinational repair of double-strand breaks. Using degenerate oligonucleotides based on conserved amino acid sequences of RAD52 and rad22, its counterpart from Schizosaccharomyces pombe, RAD52 homologs from man and mouse were

Human and mouse mononuclear phagocyte networks: a tale of two species?

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Gary eReynolds

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Dendritic cells (DCs, monocytes and macrophages are a heterogeneous population of mononuclear phagocytes that are involved in antigen processing and presentation to initiate and regulate immune responses to pathogens, vaccines, tumour and tolerance to self. In addition to their afferent sentinel function, DCs and macrophages are also critical as effectors and coordinators of inflammation and homeostasis in peripheral tissues. Harnessing DCs and macrophages for therapeutic purposes has major implications for infectious disease, vaccination, transplantation, tolerance induction, inflammation and cancer immunotherapy. There has been a paradigm shift in our understanding of the developmental origin and function of the cellular constituents of the mononuclear phagocyte system. Significant progress has been made in tandem in both human and mouse mononuclear phagocyte biology. This progress has been accelerated by comparative biology analysis between mouse and human, which has proved to be an exceptionally fruitful strategy to harmonise findings across species. Such analyses have provided unexpected insights and facilitated productive reciprocal and iterative processes to inform our understanding of human and mouse mononuclear phagocytes. In this review, we discuss the strategies, power and utility of comparative biology approaches to integrate recent advances in human and mouse mononuclear phagocyte biology and its potential to drive forward clinical translation of this knowledge. We also present a functional framework on the parallel organisation of human and mouse mononuclear phagocyte networks.

Comparing the Microsoft Kinect to a traditional mouse for adjusting the viewed tissue densities of three-dimensional anatomical structures

Science.gov (United States)

Juhnke, Bethany; Berron, Monica; Philip, Adriana; Williams, Jordan; Holub, Joseph; Winer, Eliot

2013-03-01

Advancements in medical image visualization in recent years have enabled three-dimensional (3D) medical images to be volume-rendered from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scans. Medical data is crucial for patient diagnosis and medical education, and analyzing these three-dimensional models rather than two-dimensional (2D) slices would enable more efficient analysis by surgeons and physicians, especially non-radiologists. An interaction device that is intuitive, robust, and easily learned is necessary to integrate 3D modeling software into the medical community. The keyboard and mouse configuration does not readily manipulate 3D models because these traditional interface devices function within two degrees of freedom, not the six degrees of freedom presented in three dimensions. Using a familiar, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) device for interaction would minimize training time and enable maximum usability with 3D medical images. Multiple techniques are available to manipulate 3D medical images and provide doctors more innovative ways of visualizing patient data. One such example is windowing. Windowing is used to adjust the viewed tissue density of digital medical data. A software platform available at the Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC), named Isis, was used to visualize and interact with the 3D representations of medical data. In this paper, we present the methodology and results of a user study that examined the usability of windowing 3D medical imaging using a Kinect™ device compared to a traditional mouse.

Properties and distribution of pure GA-sequences of mammalian genomes.

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Guenter Albrecht-Buehler

Full Text Available The article describes DNA sequences of mammalian genomes that are longer than 50 bases, but consist exclusively of G's and A's ('pure GA-sequences'. Although their frequency of incidence should be 10(-16 or smaller, the chromosomes of human, chimpanzee, dog, cat, rat, and mouse contained many tens of thousands of them ubiquitously located along the chromosomes with a species-dependent density, reaching sizes of up to 1300 [b]. With the exception of a small number of poly-A-, poly-G-, poly-GA-, and poly-GAAA-sequences (combined <0.5%, all pure GA-sequences of the mammals tested were unique individuals, contained several repeated short GA-containing motifs, and shared a common hexa-nucleotide spectrum. At most 2% of the human GA-sequences were transcribed into mRNAs; all others were not coding for proteins. Although this could have made them less subject to natural selection, they contained many [corrected] times fewer point mutations than one should expect from the genome at large. As to the presence of other sequences with similarly restricted base contents, there were approximately as many pure TC-sequences as pure GA-sequences, but many fewer pure AC-, TA, and TG-sequences. There were practically no pure GC-sequences. The functions of pure GA-sequences are not known. Supported by a number of observations related to heat shock phenomena, the article speculates that they serve as genomic sign posts which may help guide polymerases and transcription factors to their proper targets, and/or as spatial linkers that help generate the 3-dimensional organization of chromatin.

Rudhira/BCAS3 is essential for mouse development and cardiovascular patterning.

Science.gov (United States)

Shetty, Ronak; Joshi, Divyesh; Jain, Mamta; Vasudevan, Madavan; Paul, Jasper Chrysolite; Bhat, Ganesh; Banerjee, Poulomi; Abe, Takaya; Kiyonari, Hiroshi; VijayRaghavan, K; Inamdar, Maneesha S

2018-04-04

Rudhira/Breast Carcinoma Amplified Sequence 3 (BCAS3) is a cytoskeletal protein that promotes directional cell migration and angiogenesis in vitro and is implicated in human carcinomas and coronary artery disease. To study the role of Rudhira during development in vivo, we generated the first knockout mouse for rudhira and show that Rudhira is essential for mouse development. Rudhira null embryos die at embryonic day (E) 9.5 accompanied by severe vascular patterning defects in embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues. To identify the molecular processes downstream of rudhira, we analyzed the transcriptome of intact knockout yolk sacs. Genome-wide transcriptome analysis showed that Rudhira functions in angiogenesis and its related processes such as cell adhesion, extracellular matrix organization, peptidase activity and TGFβ signaling. Since Rudhira is also expressed in endothelial cells (ECs), we further generated Tie2Cre-mediated endothelial knockout (CKO) of rudhira. CKO embryos survive to E11.5 and similar to the global knockout, display gross vascular patterning defects, showing that endothelial Rudhira is vital for development. Further, Rudhira knockdown ECs in culture fail to sprout in a spheroid-sprouting assay, strongly supporting its role in vascular patterning. Our study identifies an essential role for Rudhira in blood vessel remodeling and provides a mouse model for cardiovascular development.

Universal sequence map (USM of arbitrary discrete sequences

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Almeida Jonas S

2002-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background For over a decade the idea of representing biological sequences in a continuous coordinate space has maintained its appeal but not been fully realized. The basic idea is that any sequence of symbols may define trajectories in the continuous space conserving all its statistical properties. Ideally, such a representation would allow scale independent sequence analysis – without the context of fixed memory length. A simple example would consist on being able to infer the homology between two sequences solely by comparing the coordinates of any two homologous units. Results We have successfully identified such an iterative function for bijective mappingψ of discrete sequences into objects of continuous state space that enable scale-independent sequence analysis. The technique, named Universal Sequence Mapping (USM, is applicable to sequences with an arbitrary length and arbitrary number of unique units and generates a representation where map distance estimates sequence similarity. The novel USM procedure is based on earlier work by these and other authors on the properties of Chaos Game Representation (CGR. The latter enables the representation of 4 unit type sequences (like DNA as an order free Markov Chain transition table. The properties of USM are illustrated with test data and can be verified for other data by using the accompanying web-based tool:http://bioinformatics.musc.edu/~jonas/usm/. Conclusions USM is shown to enable a statistical mechanics approach to sequence analysis. The scale independent representation frees sequence analysis from the need to assume a memory length in the investigation of syntactic rules.

Development of a mouse-feline chimeric antibody against feline tumor necrosis factor-alpha

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DOKI, Tomoyoshi; TAKANO, Tomomi; HOHDATSU, Tsutomu

2016-01-01

Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) is a fatal inflammatory disease caused by FIP virus infection. Feline tumor necrosis factor (fTNF)-alpha is closely involved in the aggravation of FIP pathology. We previously described the preparation of neutralizing mouse anti-fTNF-alpha monoclonal antibody (mAb 2–4) and clarified its role in the clinical condition of cats with FIP using in vitro systems. However, administration of mouse mAb 2–4 to cat may lead to a production of feline anti-mouse antibodies. In the present study, we prepared a mouse-feline chimeric mAb (chimeric mAb 2–4) by fusing the variable region of mouse mAb 2–4 to the constant region of feline antibody. The chimeric mAb 2–4 was confirmed to have fTNF-alpha neutralization activity. Purified mouse mAb 2–4 and chimeric mAb 2–4 were repeatedly administered to cats, and the changes in the ability to induce feline anti-mouse antibody response were investigated. In the serum of cats treated with mouse mAb 2–4, feline anti-mouse antibody production was induced, and the fTNF-alpha neutralization effect of mouse mAb 2–4 was reduced. In contrast, in cats treated with chimeric mAb 2–4, the feline anti-mouse antibody response was decreased compared to that of mouse mAb 2–4-treated cats. PMID:27264736

Pseudogene of dihydrolipoyl succinyltransferase (E2k) found by PCR amplification and direct sequencing of rodent-human cell hybrid DNAs

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cai, X.; Ali, G.; Blass, J.P. [Cornell Univ. Medical College, White Plains, NY (United States); Szabo, P. [Cornell Univ. Medical College, New York, NY (United States); Tanzi, R.E. [Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA (United States)

1994-07-01

Previous studies have indicated that the cDNA for the E2k component of the human {alpha}-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex (KGDHC) hybridized not only to a major locus on chromosome 14q24.3 in a region associated with familial Alzheimer`s disease and with Joseph-Machado disease, but also to another locus on chromosome 1p31. The authors now report that PCR of genomic DNA and direct sequencing indicated that the chromosome 1 locus is an intronless pseudogene. PCR of genomic DNA amplified E2k fragments from mouse-human cell hybrids containing human chromosome 1 DNA but not from hybrids containing human chromosome 14 DNA. The resulting amplicons were of comparable sizes to those when the cDNA was used to template. The direct sequencing of these amplicons confirmed the lack of introns and indicated a frame shift, which led to the presence of four termination codons early in the coding region. PCR followed by direct sequencing of the amplicons appears to be a convenient method for identifying intronless pseudogenes.

The complete chloroplast genome sequences of Lychnis wilfordii and Silene capitata and comparative analyses with other Caryophyllaceae genomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Kang, Jong-Soo; Lee, Byoung Yoon; Kwak, Myounghai

2017-01-01

The complete chloroplast genomes of Lychnis wilfordii and Silene capitata were determined and compared with ten previously reported Caryophyllaceae chloroplast genomes. The chloroplast genome sequences of L. wilfordii and S. capitata contain 152,320 bp and 150,224 bp, respectively. The gene contents and orders among 12 Caryophyllaceae species are consistent, but several microstructural changes have occurred. Expansion of the inverted repeat (IR) regions at the large single copy (LSC)/IRb and small single copy (SSC)/IR boundaries led to partial or entire gene duplications. Additionally, rearrangements of the LSC region were caused by gene inversions and/or transpositions. The 18 kb inversions, which occurred three times in different lineages of tribe Sileneae, were thought to be facilitated by the intermolecular duplicated sequences. Sequence analyses of the L. wilfordii and S. capitata genomes revealed 39 and 43 repeats, respectively, including forward, palindromic, and reverse repeats. In addition, a total of 67 and 56 simple sequence repeats were discovered in the L. wilfordii and S. capitata chloroplast genomes, respectively. Finally, we constructed phylogenetic trees of the 12 Caryophyllaceae species and two Amaranthaceae species based on 73 protein-coding genes using both maximum parsimony and likelihood methods.

Quantification of massively parallel sequencing libraries - a comparative study of eight methods

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hussing, Christian; Kampmann, Marie-Louise; Mogensen, Helle Smidt

2018-01-01

Quantification of massively parallel sequencing libraries is important for acquisition of monoclonal beads or clusters prior to clonal amplification and to avoid large variations in library coverage when multiple samples are included in one sequencing analysis. No gold standard for quantification...... estimates followed by Qubit and electrophoresis-based instruments (Bioanalyzer, TapeStation, GX Touch, and Fragment Analyzer), while SYBR Green and TaqMan based qPCR assays gave the lowest estimates. qPCR gave more accurate predictions of sequencing coverage than Qubit and TapeStation did. Costs, time......-consumption, workflow simplicity, and ability to quantify multiple samples are discussed. Technical specifications, advantages, and disadvantages of the various methods are pointed out....

Comparative and evolutionary studies of vertebrate ALDH1A-like genes and proteins.

Science.gov (United States)

Holmes, Roger S

2015-06-05

Vertebrate ALDH1A-like genes encode cytosolic enzymes capable of metabolizing all-trans-retinaldehyde to retinoic acid which is a molecular 'signal' guiding vertebrate development and adipogenesis. Bioinformatic analyses of vertebrate and invertebrate genomes were undertaken using known ALDH1A1, ALDH1A2 and ALDH1A3 amino acid sequences. Comparative analyses of the corresponding human genes provided evidence for distinct modes of gene regulation and expression with putative transcription factor binding sites (TFBS), CpG islands and micro-RNA binding sites identified for the human genes. ALDH1A-like sequences were identified for all mammalian, bird, lizard and frog genomes examined, whereas fish genomes displayed a more restricted distribution pattern for ALDH1A1 and ALDH1A3 genes. The ALDH1A1 gene was absent in many bony fish genomes examined, with the ALDH1A3 gene also absent in the medaka and tilapia genomes. Multiple ALDH1A1-like genes were identified in mouse, rat and marsupial genomes. Vertebrate ALDH1A1, ALDH1A2 and ALDH1A3 subunit sequences were highly conserved throughout vertebrate evolution. Comparative amino acid substitution rates showed that mammalian ALDH1A2 sequences were more highly conserved than for the ALDH1A1 and ALDH1A3 sequences. Phylogenetic studies supported an hypothesis for ALDH1A2 as a likely primordial gene originating in invertebrate genomes and undergoing sequential gene duplication to generate two additional genes, ALDH1A1 and ALDH1A3, in most vertebrate genomes. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pervasive within-Mitochondrion Single-Nucleotide Variant Heteroplasmy as Revealed by Single-Mitochondrion Sequencing

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Jacqueline Morris

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Summary: A number of mitochondrial diseases arise from single-nucleotide variant (SNV accumulation in multiple mitochondria. Here, we present a method for identification of variants present at the single-mitochondrion level in individual mouse and human neuronal cells, allowing for extremely high-resolution study of mitochondrial mutation dynamics. We identified extensive heteroplasmy between individual mitochondrion, along with three high-confidence variants in mouse and one in human that were present in multiple mitochondria across cells. The pattern of variation revealed by single-mitochondrion data shows surprisingly pervasive levels of heteroplasmy in inbred mice. Distribution of SNV loci suggests inheritance of variants across generations, resulting in Poisson jackpot lines with large SNV load. Comparison of human and mouse variants suggests that the two species might employ distinct modes of somatic segregation. Single-mitochondrion resolution revealed mitochondria mutational dynamics that we hypothesize to affect risk probabilities for mutations reaching disease thresholds. : Morris et al. use independent sequencing of multiple individual mitochondria from mouse and human brain cells to show high pervasiveness of mutations. The mutations are heteroplasmic within single mitochondria and within and between cells. These findings suggest mechanisms by which mutations accumulate over time, resulting in mitochondrial dysfunction and disease. Keywords: single mitochondrion, single cell, human neuron, mouse neuron, single-nucleotide variation

GraphTeams: a method for discovering spatial gene clusters in Hi-C sequencing data.

Science.gov (United States)

Schulz, Tizian; Stoye, Jens; Doerr, Daniel

2018-05-08

Hi-C sequencing offers novel, cost-effective means to study the spatial conformation of chromosomes. We use data obtained from Hi-C experiments to provide new evidence for the existence of spatial gene clusters. These are sets of genes with associated functionality that exhibit close proximity to each other in the spatial conformation of chromosomes across several related species. We present the first gene cluster model capable of handling spatial data. Our model generalizes a popular computational model for gene cluster prediction, called δ-teams, from sequences to graphs. Following previous lines of research, we subsequently extend our model to allow for several vertices being associated with the same label. The model, called δ-teams with families, is particular suitable for our application as it enables handling of gene duplicates. We develop algorithmic solutions for both models. We implemented the algorithm for discovering δ-teams with families and integrated it into a fully automated workflow for discovering gene clusters in Hi-C data, called GraphTeams. We applied it to human and mouse data to find intra- and interchromosomal gene cluster candidates. The results include intrachromosomal clusters that seem to exhibit a closer proximity in space than on their chromosomal DNA sequence. We further discovered interchromosomal gene clusters that contain genes from different chromosomes within the human genome, but are located on a single chromosome in mouse. By identifying δ-teams with families, we provide a flexible model to discover gene cluster candidates in Hi-C data. Our analysis of Hi-C data from human and mouse reveals several known gene clusters (thus validating our approach), but also few sparsely studied or possibly unknown gene cluster candidates that could be the source of further experimental investigations.

Sequencing and Comparative Analysis of the Straw Mushroom (Volvariella volvacea) Genome

Science.gov (United States)

Bao, Dapeng; Gong, Ming; Zheng, Huajun; Chen, Mingjie; Zhang, Liang; Wang, Hong; Jiang, Jianping; Wu, Lin; Zhu, Yongqiang; Zhu, Gang; Zhou, Yan; Li, Chuanhua; Wang, Shengyue; Zhao, Yan; Zhao, Guoping; Tan, Qi

2013-01-01

Volvariella volvacea, the edible straw mushroom, is a highly nutritious food source that is widely cultivated on a commercial scale in many parts of Asia using agricultural wastes (rice straw, cotton wastes) as growth substrates. However, developments in V. volvacea cultivation have been limited due to a low biological efficiency (i.e. conversion of growth substrate to mushroom fruit bodies), sensitivity to low temperatures, and an unclear sexuality pattern that has restricted the breeding of improved strains. We have now sequenced the genome of V. volvacea and assembled it into 62 scaffolds with a total genome size of 35.7 megabases (Mb), containing 11,084 predicted gene models. Comparative analyses were performed with the model species in basidiomycete on mating type system, carbohydrate active enzymes, and fungal oxidative lignin enzymes. We also studied transcriptional regulation of the response to low temperature (4°C). We found that the genome of V. volvacea has many genes that code for enzymes, which are involved in the degradation of cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin. The molecular genetics of the mating type system in V. volvacea was also found to be similar to the bipolar system in basidiomycetes, suggesting that it is secondary homothallism. Sensitivity to low temperatures could be due to the lack of the initiation of the biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids, trehalose and glycogen biosyntheses in this mushroom. Genome sequencing of V. volvacea has improved our understanding of the biological characteristics related to the degradation of the cultivating compost consisting of agricultural waste, the sexual reproduction mechanism, and the sensitivity to low temperatures at the molecular level which in turn will enable us to increase the industrial production of this mushroom. PMID:23526973

Sequencing and comparative analysis of the straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea genome.

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Dapeng Bao

Full Text Available Volvariella volvacea, the edible straw mushroom, is a highly nutritious food source that is widely cultivated on a commercial scale in many parts of Asia using agricultural wastes (rice straw, cotton wastes as growth substrates. However, developments in V. volvacea cultivation have been limited due to a low biological efficiency (i.e. conversion of growth substrate to mushroom fruit bodies, sensitivity to low temperatures, and an unclear sexuality pattern that has restricted the breeding of improved strains. We have now sequenced the genome of V. volvacea and assembled it into 62 scaffolds with a total genome size of 35.7 megabases (Mb, containing 11,084 predicted gene models. Comparative analyses were performed with the model species in basidiomycete on mating type system, carbohydrate active enzymes, and fungal oxidative lignin enzymes. We also studied transcriptional regulation of the response to low temperature (4°C. We found that the genome of V. volvacea has many genes that code for enzymes, which are involved in the degradation of cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin. The molecular genetics of the mating type system in V. volvacea was also found to be similar to the bipolar system in basidiomycetes, suggesting that it is secondary homothallism. Sensitivity to low temperatures could be due to the lack of the initiation of the biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids, trehalose and glycogen biosyntheses in this mushroom. Genome sequencing of V. volvacea has improved our understanding of the biological characteristics related to the degradation of the cultivating compost consisting of agricultural waste, the sexual reproduction mechanism, and the sensitivity to low temperatures at the molecular level which in turn will enable us to increase the industrial production of this mushroom.

A brain-specific gene cluster isolated from the region of the mouse obesity locus is expressed in the adult hypothalamus and during mouse development

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Laig-Webster, M.; Lim, M.E.; Chehab, F.F. [Univ. of California, San Francisco, CA (United States)

1994-09-01

The molecular defect underlying an autosomal recessive form of genetic obesity in a classical mouse model C57 BL/6J-ob/ob has not yet been elucidated. Whereas metabolic and physiological disturbances such as diabetes and hypertension are associated with obesity, the site of expression and the nature of the primary lesion responsible for this cascade of events remains elusive. Our efforts aimed at the positional cloning of the ob gene by YAC contig mapping and gene identification have resulted in the cloning of a brain-specific gene cluster from the ob critical region. The expression of this gene cluster is remarkably complex owing to the multitude of brain-specific mRNA transcripts detected on Northern blots. cDNA cloning of these transcripts suggests that they are expressed from different genes as well as by alternate splicing mechanisms. Furthermore, the genomic organization of the cluster appears to consist of at least two identical promoters displaying CpG islands characteristic of housekeeping genes, yet clearly involving tissue-specific expression. Sense and anti-sense synthetic RNA probes were derived from a common DNA sequence on 3 cDNA clones and hybridized to 8-16 days mouse embryonic stages and mouse adult brain sections. Expression in development was noticeable as of the 11th day of gestation and confined to the central nervous system mainly in the telencephalon and spinal cord. Coronal and sagittal sections of the adult mouse brain showed expression only in 3 different regions of the brain stem. In situ hybridization to mouse hypothalamus sections revealed the presence of a localized and specialized group of cells expressing high levels of mRNA, suggesting that this gene cluster may also be involved in the regulation of hypothalamic activities. The hypothalamus has long been hypothesized as a primary candidate tissue for the expression of the obesity gene mainly because of its well-established role in the regulation of energy metabolism and food intake.

Phase-Specific Vocalizations of Male Mice at the Initial Encounter during the Courtship Sequence.

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Yui K Matsumoto

Full Text Available Mice produce ultrasonic vocalizations featuring a variety of syllables. Vocalizations are observed during social interactions. In particular, males produce numerous syllables during courtship. Previous studies have shown that vocalizations change according to sexual behavior, suggesting that males vary their vocalizations depending on the phase of the courtship sequence. To examine this process, we recorded large sets of mouse vocalizations during male-female interactions and acoustically categorized these sounds into 12 vocal types. We found that males emitted predominantly short syllables during the first minute of interaction, more long syllables in the later phases, and mainly harmonic sounds during mounting. These context- and time-dependent changes in vocalization indicate that vocal communication during courtship in mice consists of at least three stages and imply that each vocalization type has a specific role in a phase of the courtship sequence. Our findings suggest that recording for a sufficiently long time and taking the phase of courtship into consideration could provide more insights into the role of vocalization in mouse courtship behavior in future study.

Comparative Analysis of Osteogenic/Chondrogenic Differentiation Potential in Primary Limb Bud-Derived and C3H10T1/2 Cell Line-Based Mouse Micromass Cultures

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Róza Zákány

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Murine micromass models have been extensively applied to study chondrogenesis and osteogenesis to elucidate pathways of endochondral bone formation. Here we provide a detailed comparative analysis of the differentiation potential of micromass cultures established from either BMP-2 overexpressing C3H10T1/2 cells or mouse embryonic limb bud-derived chondroprogenitor cells, using micromass cultures from untransfected C3H10T1/2 cells as controls. Although the BMP-2 overexpressing C3H10T1/2 cells failed to form chondrogenic nodules, cells of both models expressed mRNA transcripts for major cartilage-specific marker genes including Sox9, Acan, Col2a1, Snorc, and Hapln1 at similar temporal sequence, while notable lubricin expression was only detected in primary cultures. Furthermore, mRNA transcripts for markers of osteogenic differentiation including Runx2, Osterix, alkaline phosphatase, osteopontin and osteocalcin were detected in both models, along with matrix calcification. Although the adipogenic lineage-specific marker gene FABP4 was also expressed in micromass cultures, Oil Red O-positive cells along with PPARγ2 transcripts were only detected in C3H10T1/2-derived micromass cultures. Apart from lineage-specific marker genes, pluripotency factors (Nanog and Sox2 were also expressed in these models, reflecting on the presence of various mesenchymal lineages as well as undifferentiated cells. This cellular heterogeneity has to be taken into consideration for the interpretation of data obtained by using these models.

Mouse manipulation through single-switch scanning.

Science.gov (United States)

Blackstien-Adler, Susie; Shein, Fraser; Quintal, Janet; Birch, Shae; Weiss, Patrice L Tamar

2004-01-01

Given the current extensive reliance on the graphical user interface, independent access to computer software requires that users be able to manipulate a pointing device of some type (e.g., mouse, trackball) or be able to emulate a mouse by some other means (e.g., scanning). The purpose of the present study was to identify one or more optimal single-switch scanning mouse emulation strategies. Four alternative scanning strategies (continuous Cartesian, discrete Cartesian, rotational, and hybrid quadrant/continuous Cartesian) were selected for testing based on current market availability as well as on theoretical considerations of their potential speed and accuracy. Each strategy was evaluated using a repeated measures study design by means of a test program that permitted mouse emulation via any one of four scanning strategies in a motivating environment; response speed and accuracy could be automatically recorded and considered in view of the motor, cognitive, and perceptual demands of each scanning strategy. Ten individuals whose disabilities required them to operate a computer via single-switch scanning participated in the study. Results indicated that Cartesian scanning was the preferred and most effective scanning strategy. There were no significant differences between results from the Continuous Cartesian and Discrete Cartesian scanning strategies. Rotational scanning was quite slow with respect to the other strategies, although it was equally accurate. Hybrid Quadrant scanning improved access time but at the cost of fewer correct selections. These results demonstrated the importance of testing and comparing alternate single-switch scanning strategies.

Whole Genome Sequencing Increases Molecular Diagnostic Yield Compared with Current Diagnostic Testing for Inherited Retinal Disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Ellingford, Jamie M; Barton, Stephanie; Bhaskar, Sanjeev; Williams, Simon G; Sergouniotis, Panagiotis I; O'Sullivan, James; Lamb, Janine A; Perveen, Rahat; Hall, Georgina; Newman, William G; Bishop, Paul N; Roberts, Stephen A; Leach, Rick; Tearle, Rick; Bayliss, Stuart; Ramsden, Simon C; Nemeth, Andrea H; Black, Graeme C M

2016-05-01

To compare the efficacy of whole genome sequencing (WGS) with targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) in the diagnosis of inherited retinal disease (IRD). Case series. A total of 562 patients diagnosed with IRD. We performed a direct comparative analysis of current molecular diagnostics with WGS. We retrospectively reviewed the findings from a diagnostic NGS DNA test for 562 patients with IRD. A subset of 46 of 562 patients (encompassing potential clinical outcomes of diagnostic analysis) also underwent WGS, and we compared mutation detection rates and molecular diagnostic yields. In addition, we compared the sensitivity and specificity of the 2 techniques to identify known single nucleotide variants (SNVs) using 6 control samples with publically available genotype data. Diagnostic yield of genomic testing. Across known disease-causing genes, targeted NGS and WGS achieved similar levels of sensitivity and specificity for SNV detection. However, WGS also identified 14 clinically relevant genetic variants through WGS that had not been identified by NGS diagnostic testing for the 46 individuals with IRD. These variants included large deletions and variants in noncoding regions of the genome. Identification of these variants confirmed a molecular diagnosis of IRD for 11 of the 33 individuals referred for WGS who had not obtained a molecular diagnosis through targeted NGS testing. Weighted estimates, accounting for population structure, suggest that WGS methods could result in an overall 29% (95% confidence interval, 15-45) uplift in diagnostic yield. We show that WGS methods can detect disease-causing genetic variants missed by current NGS diagnostic methodologies for IRD and thereby demonstrate the clinical utility and additional value of WGS. Copyright © 2016 American Academy of Ophthalmology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[Molecular phylogeny of Turbellaria, based on data from comparing the nucleotide sequences of 18S ribosomal RNA genes].

Science.gov (United States)

Kuznedelov, K D; Timoshkin, O A

1995-01-01

Polymerase chain reaction and direct sequencing of the 5'-end region of the 18S ribosomal RNA gene were used to infer phylogenetic relationship among turbellarian flatworms from Lake Baikal. Representatives of 5 orders (Tricladida--10 spp., Lecithoepitheliata--5 spp., Prolecithophora--3 spp., Proseriata and Kalyptorhynchia one for each) were studied; nucleotide sequence of more than 340 nucleotides was determined for each species. Consensus sequence for each order having more than one representative species was determined. Distance matrix and maximum parsimony approaches were applied to infer phylogenies. Bootstrap procedure was used to estimate confidence limits, at the 100% level by bootstrapping, the group of three orders: Kalyptorhynchia, Proseriata and Lecithoepitheliata was found to be monophyletic. However, subsets inside the group had no significant support to be preferred or rejected. Our data do not support traditional systematics which joins two suborders Tricladida and Proseriata into the single order Seriata, and also do not support comparative anatomical data which show close relationship of Lecithoepitheliata and lower Prolecithophora.

Low-field MR imaging of the spine. A comparative study of a traditional and a new, completely balanced gradient-echo sequence

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Drejer, J.; Thomsen, H.S.; Tanttu, J.

1995-01-01

49 patients underwent 53 examinations with both a traditional T1-weighted gradient-echo (PS) sequence and a new completely balanced steady-state 3-D (CBASS3D) sequence; 20 examinations included the cervical spine, 8 the thoracic spine and 25 the lumbar spine. All 106 examinations were reviewed twice regarding visibility of selected structures in the spinal region and diagnostic usefulness. The CBASS3D sequence delineated the medulla, nerve roots, CSF, the intervertebral discs and the posterior longitudinal ligament significantly better than the PS sequence. Disc hernia was also better visualised (p<0.01). There were significantly more artefacts on images obtained with the CBASS3D sequence, but they were usually outside the region of interest and occurred less frequently over time due to increased experience of the staff. Both reviewers found the diagnostic usefulness of CBASS3D to be superior compared to that of PS and excellent for diagnostic purposes. (orig./MG)

Low-field MR imaging of the spine. A comparative study of a traditional and a new, completely balanced gradient-echo sequence

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Drejer, J. [Dept. of Diagnostic Radiology, Herlev Hospital, Univ. Copenhagen (Denmark); Thomsen, H.S. [Dept. of Diagnostic Radiology, Herlev Hospital, Univ. Copenhagen (Denmark); Tanttu, J. [Picker Nordstar, Helsinki (Finland)

1995-09-01

49 patients underwent 53 examinations with both a traditional T1-weighted gradient-echo (PS) sequence and a new completely balanced steady-state 3-D (CBASS3D) sequence; 20 examinations included the cervical spine, 8 the thoracic spine and 25 the lumbar spine. All 106 examinations were reviewed twice regarding visibility of selected structures in the spinal region and diagnostic usefulness. The CBASS3D sequence delineated the medulla, nerve roots, CSF, the intervertebral discs and the posterior longitudinal ligament significantly better than the PS sequence. Disc hernia was also better visualised (p<0.01). There were significantly more artefacts on images obtained with the CBASS3D sequence, but they were usually outside the region of interest and occurred less frequently over time due to increased experience of the staff. Both reviewers found the diagnostic usefulness of CBASS3D to be superior compared to that of PS and excellent for diagnostic purposes. (orig./MG).

The Mouse Genome Database (MGD): facilitating mouse as a model for human biology and disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Eppig, Janan T; Blake, Judith A; Bult, Carol J; Kadin, James A; Richardson, Joel E

2015-01-01

The Mouse Genome Database (MGD, http://www.informatics.jax.org) serves the international biomedical research community as the central resource for integrated genomic, genetic and biological data on the laboratory mouse. To facilitate use of mouse as a model in translational studies, MGD maintains a core of high-quality curated data and integrates experimentally and computationally generated data sets. MGD maintains a unified catalog of genes and genome features, including functional RNAs, QTL and phenotypic loci. MGD curates and provides functional and phenotype annotations for mouse genes using the Gene Ontology and Mammalian Phenotype Ontology. MGD integrates phenotype data and associates mouse genotypes to human diseases, providing critical mouse-human relationships and access to repositories holding mouse models. MGD is the authoritative source of nomenclature for genes, genome features, alleles and strains following guidelines of the International Committee on Standardized Genetic Nomenclature for Mice. A new addition to MGD, the Human-Mouse: Disease Connection, allows users to explore gene-phenotype-disease relationships between human and mouse. MGD has also updated search paradigms for phenotypic allele attributes, incorporated incidental mutation data, added a module for display and exploration of genes and microRNA interactions and adopted the JBrowse genome browser. MGD resources are freely available to the scientific community. © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

Optimization of the virtual mouse HeadMouse to foster its classroom use by children with physical disabilities

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Merce TEIXIDO

2014-03-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the optimization of a virtual mouse called HeadMouse in order to foster its classroom use by children with physical disabilities. HeadMouse is an absolute virtual mouse that converts head movements in cursor displacement and facial gestures in click actions. The virtual mouse combines different image processing algorithms: face detection, pattern matching and optical flow in order to emulate the behaviour of a conventional computer mouse. The original implementation of HeadMouse requires large computational power and this paper proposes specific optimizations in order to enable its use by children with disabilities in standard low cost classroom computers.

Structural organization and chromosomal assignment of the mouse embryonic TEA domain-containing factor (ETF) gene.

Science.gov (United States)

Suzuki, K; Yasunami, M; Matsuda, Y; Maeda, T; Kobayashi, H; Terasaki, H; Ohkubo, H

1996-09-01

Embryonic TEA domain-containing factor (ETF) belongs to the family of proteins structurally related to transcriptional enhancer factor-1 (TEF-1) and is implicated in neural development. Isolation and characterization of the cosmid clones encoding the mouse ETF gene (Etdf) revealed that Etdf spans approximately 17.9 kb and consists of 12 exons. The exon-intron structure of Etdf closely resembles that of the Drosophila scalloped gene, indicating that these genes may have evolved from a common ancestor. The multiple transcription initiation sites revealed by S1 protection and primer extension analyses are consistent with the absence of the canonical TATA and CAAT boxes in the 5'-flanking region, which contains many potential regulatory sequences, such as the E-box, N-box, Sp1 element, GATA-1 element, TAATGARAT element, and B2 short interspersed element (SINE) as well as several direct and inverted repeat sequences. The Etdf locus was assigned to the proximal region of mouse chromosome 7 using fluorescence in situ hybridization and linkage mapping analyses. These results provide the molecular basis for studying the regulation, in vivo function, and evolution of Etdf.

Fine mapping and candidate gene search of quantitative trait loci for growth and obesity using mouse intersubspecific subcongenic intercrosses and exome sequencing.

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Akira Ishikawa

Full Text Available Although growth and body composition traits are quantitative traits of medical and agricultural importance, the genetic and molecular basis of those traits remains elusive. Our previous genome-wide quantitative trait locus (QTL analyses in an intersubspecific backcross population between C57BL/6JJcl (B6 and wild Mus musculus castaneus mice revealed a major growth QTL (named Pbwg1 on a proximal region of mouse chromosome 2. Using the B6.Cg-Pbwg1 intersubspecific congenic strain created, we revealed 12 closely linked QTLs for body weight and body composition traits on an approximately 44.1-Mb wild-derived congenic region. In this study, we narrowed down genomic regions harboring three (Pbwg1.12, Pbwg1.3 and Pbwg1.5 of the 12 linked QTLs and searched for possible candidate genes for the QTLs. By phenotypic analyses of F2 intercross populations between B6 and each of four B6.Cg-Pbwg1 subcongenic strains with overlapping and non-overlapping introgressed regions, we physically defined Pbwg1.12 affecting body weight to a 3.8-Mb interval (61.5-65.3 Mb on chromosome 2. We fine-mapped Pbwg1.3 for body length to an 8.0-Mb interval (57.3-65.3 and Pbwg1.5 for abdominal white fat weight to a 2.1-Mb interval (59.4-61.5. The wild-derived allele at Pbwg1.12 and Pbwg1.3 uniquely increased body weight and length despite the fact that the wild mouse has a smaller body size than that of B6, whereas it decreased fat weight at Pbwg1.5. Exome sequencing and candidate gene prioritization suggested that Gcg and Grb14 are putative candidate genes for Pbwg1.12 and that Ly75 and Itgb6 are putative candidate genes for Pbwg1.5. These genes had nonsynonymous SNPs, but the SNPs were predicted to be not harmful to protein functions. These results provide information helpful to identify wild-derived quantitative trait genes causing enhanced growth and resistance to obesity.

Comparative genomics of human and non-human Listeria monocytogenes sequence type 121 strains.

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Kathrin Rychli

Full Text Available The food-borne pathogen Listeria (L. monocytogenes is able to survive for months and even years in food production environments. Strains belonging to sequence type (ST121 are particularly found to be abundant and to persist in food and food production environments. To elucidate genetic determinants characteristic for L. monocytogenes ST121, we sequenced the genomes of 14 ST121 strains and compared them with currently available L. monocytogenes ST121 genomes. In total, we analyzed 70 ST121 genomes deriving from 16 different countries, different years of isolation, and different origins-including food, animal and human ST121 isolates. All ST121 genomes show a high degree of conservation sharing at least 99.7% average nucleotide identity. The main differences between the strains were found in prophage content and prophage conservation. We also detected distinct highly conserved subtypes of prophages inserted at the same genomic locus. While some of the prophages showed more than 99.9% similarity between strains from different sources and years, other prophages showed a higher level of diversity. 81.4% of the strains harbored virtually identical plasmids. 97.1% of the ST121 strains contain a truncated internalin A (inlA gene. Only one of the seven human ST121 isolates encodes a full-length inlA gene, illustrating the need of better understanding their survival and virulence mechanisms.

Aggression and commensalism in house mouse: a comparative study across Europe and the Near East

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Frynta, D.; Slábová, M.; Váchová, H.; Volfová, R.; Munclinger, Pavel

2005-01-01

Roč. 31, - (2005), s. 283-293 ISSN 0096-140X R&D Projects: GA ČR GA206/01/0989; GA ČR GP206/03/D148; GA AV ČR IAA6111410 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z50450515 Keywords : agonistic behaviour * wild mouse * hybrid zone Subject RIV: EB - Genetics ; Molecular Biology Impact factor: 1.112, year: 2005

Assessment of tropism and effectiveness of new primate-derived hybrid recombinant AAV serotypes in the mouse and primate retina.

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Peter Charbel Issa

Full Text Available Adeno-associated viral vectors (AAV have been shown to be safe in the treatment of retinal degenerations in clinical trials. Thus, improving the efficiency of viral gene delivery has become increasingly important to increase the success of clinical trials. In this study, structural domains of different rAAV serotypes isolated from primate brain were combined to create novel hybrid recombinant AAV serotypes, rAAV2/rec2 and rAAV2/rec3. The efficacy of these novel serotypes were assessed in wild type mice and in two models of retinal degeneration (the Abca4(-/- mouse which is a model for Stargardt disease and in the Pde6b(rd1/rd1 mouse in vivo, in primate tissue ex-vivo, and in the human-derived SH-SY5Y cell line, using an identical AAV2 expression cassette. We show that these novel hybrid serotypes can transduce retinal tissue in mice and primates efficiently, although no more than AAV2/2 and rAAV2/5 serotypes. Transduction efficiency appeared lower in the Abca4(-/- mouse compared to wild type with all vectors tested, suggesting an effect of specific retinal diseases on the efficiency of gene delivery. Shuffling of AAV capsid domains may have clinical applications for patients who develop T-cell immune responses following AAV gene therapy, as specific peptide antigen sequences could be substituted using this technique prior to vector re-treatments.

Assessment of tropism and effectiveness of new primate-derived hybrid recombinant AAV serotypes in the mouse and primate retina.

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Charbel Issa, Peter; De Silva, Samantha R; Lipinski, Daniel M; Singh, Mandeep S; Mouravlev, Alexandre; You, Qisheng; Barnard, Alun R; Hankins, Mark W; During, Matthew J; Maclaren, Robert E

2013-01-01

Adeno-associated viral vectors (AAV) have been shown to be safe in the treatment of retinal degenerations in clinical trials. Thus, improving the efficiency of viral gene delivery has become increasingly important to increase the success of clinical trials. In this study, structural domains of different rAAV serotypes isolated from primate brain were combined to create novel hybrid recombinant AAV serotypes, rAAV2/rec2 and rAAV2/rec3. The efficacy of these novel serotypes were assessed in wild type mice and in two models of retinal degeneration (the Abca4(-/-) mouse which is a model for Stargardt disease and in the Pde6b(rd1/rd1) mouse) in vivo, in primate tissue ex-vivo, and in the human-derived SH-SY5Y cell line, using an identical AAV2 expression cassette. We show that these novel hybrid serotypes can transduce retinal tissue in mice and primates efficiently, although no more than AAV2/2 and rAAV2/5 serotypes. Transduction efficiency appeared lower in the Abca4(-/-) mouse compared to wild type with all vectors tested, suggesting an effect of specific retinal diseases on the efficiency of gene delivery. Shuffling of AAV capsid domains may have clinical applications for patients who develop T-cell immune responses following AAV gene therapy, as specific peptide antigen sequences could be substituted using this technique prior to vector re-treatments.

Comparing three-dimensional serial optical coherence tomography histology to MRI imaging in the entire mouse brain

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Castonguay, Alexandre; Lefebvre, Joël; Pouliot, Philippe; Lesage, Frédéric

2018-01-01

An automated serial histology setup combining optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging with vibratome sectioning was used to image eight wild type mouse brains. The datasets resulted in thousands of volumetric tiles resolved at a voxel size of (4.9×4.9×6.5) μm3 stitched back together to give a three-dimensional map of the brain from which a template OCT brain was obtained. To assess deformation caused by tissue sectioning, reconstruction algorithms, and fixation, OCT datasets were compared to both in vivo and ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) imaging. The OCT brain template yielded a highly detailed map of the brain structure, with a high contrast in white matter fiber bundles and was highly resemblant to the in vivo MRI template. Brain labeling using the Allen brain framework showed little variation in regional brain volume among imaging modalities with no statistical differences. The high correspondence between the OCT template brain and its in vivo counterpart demonstrates the potential of whole brain histology to validate in vivo imaging.

Method and apparatus for biological sequence comparison

Science.gov (United States)

Marr, T.G.; Chang, W.I.

1997-12-23

A method and apparatus are disclosed for comparing biological sequences from a known source of sequences, with a subject (query) sequence. The apparatus takes as input a set of target similarity levels (such as evolutionary distances in units of PAM), and finds all fragments of known sequences that are similar to the subject sequence at each target similarity level, and are long enough to be statistically significant. The invention device filters out fragments from the known sequences that are too short, or have a lower average similarity to the subject sequence than is required by each target similarity level. The subject sequence is then compared only to the remaining known sequences to find the best matches. The filtering member divides the subject sequence into overlapping blocks, each block being sufficiently large to contain a minimum-length alignment from a known sequence. For each block, the filter member compares the block with every possible short fragment in the known sequences and determines a best match for each comparison. The determined set of short fragment best matches for the block provide an upper threshold on alignment values. Regions of a certain length from the known sequences that have a mean alignment value upper threshold greater than a target unit score are concatenated to form a union. The current block is compared to the union and provides an indication of best local alignment with the subject sequence. 5 figs.

Complete chloroplast genome sequence of Elodea canadensis and comparative analyses with other monocot plastid genomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Huotari, Tea; Korpelainen, Helena

2012-10-15

Elodea canadensis is an aquatic angiosperm native to North America. It has attracted great attention due to its invasive nature when transported to new areas in its non-native range. We have determined the complete nucleotide sequence of the chloroplast (cp) genome of Elodea. Taxonomically Elodea is a basal monocot, and only few monocot cp genomes representing early lineages of monocots have been sequenced so far. The genome is a circular double-stranded DNA molecule 156,700 bp in length, and has a typical structure with large (LSC 86,194 bp) and small (SSC 17,810 bp) single-copy regions separated by a pair of inverted repeats (IRs 26,348 bp each). The Elodea cp genome contains 113 unique genes and 16 duplicated genes in the IR regions. A comparative analysis showed that the gene order and organization of the Elodea cp genome is almost identical to that of Amborella trichopoda, a basal angiosperm. The structure of IRs in Elodea is unique among monocot species with the whole cp genome sequenced. In Elodea and another monocot Lemna minor the borders between IRs and LSC are located upstream of rps 19 gene and downstream of trnH-GUG gene, while in most monocots, IR has extended to include both trnH and rps 19 genes. A phylogenetic analysis conducted using Bayesian method, based on the DNA sequences of 81 chloroplast genes from 17 monocot taxa provided support for the placement of Elodea together with Lemna as a basal monocot and the next diverging lineage of monocots after Acorales. In comparison with other monocots, the Elodea cp genome has gone through only few rearrangements or gene losses. IR of Elodea has a unique structure among the monocot species studied so far as its structure is similar to that of a basal angiosperm Amborella. This result together with phylogenetic analyses supports the placement of Elodea as a basal monocot to the next diverging lineage of monocots after Acorales. So far, only few cp genomes representing early lineages of monocots have been

Divergent and nonuniform gene expression patterns in mouse brain

Science.gov (United States)

Morris, John A.; Royall, Joshua J.; Bertagnolli, Darren; Boe, Andrew F.; Burnell, Josh J.; Byrnes, Emi J.; Copeland, Cathy; Desta, Tsega; Fischer, Shanna R.; Goldy, Jeff; Glattfelder, Katie J.; Kidney, Jolene M.; Lemon, Tracy; Orta, Geralyn J.; Parry, Sheana E.; Pathak, Sayan D.; Pearson, Owen C.; Reding, Melissa; Shapouri, Sheila; Smith, Kimberly A.; Soden, Chad; Solan, Beth M.; Weller, John; Takahashi, Joseph S.; Overly, Caroline C.; Lein, Ed S.; Hawrylycz, Michael J.; Hohmann, John G.; Jones, Allan R.

2010-01-01

Considerable progress has been made in understanding variations in gene sequence and expression level associated with phenotype, yet how genetic diversity translates into complex phenotypic differences remains poorly understood. Here, we examine the relationship between genetic background and spatial patterns of gene expression across seven strains of mice, providing the most extensive cellular-resolution comparative analysis of gene expression in the mammalian brain to date. Using comprehensive brainwide anatomic coverage (more than 200 brain regions), we applied in situ hybridization to analyze the spatial expression patterns of 49 genes encoding well-known pharmaceutical drug targets. Remarkably, over 50% of the genes examined showed interstrain expression variation. In addition, the variability was nonuniformly distributed across strain and neuroanatomic region, suggesting certain organizing principles. First, the degree of expression variance among strains mirrors genealogic relationships. Second, expression pattern differences were concentrated in higher-order brain regions such as the cortex and hippocampus. Divergence in gene expression patterns across the brain could contribute significantly to variations in behavior and responses to neuroactive drugs in laboratory mouse strains and may help to explain individual differences in human responsiveness to neuroactive drugs. PMID:20956311

Optimized, unequal pulse spacing in multiple echo sequences improves refocusing in magnetic resonance.

Science.gov (United States)

Jenista, Elizabeth R; Stokes, Ashley M; Branca, Rosa Tamara; Warren, Warren S

2009-11-28

A recent quantum computing paper (G. S. Uhrig, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 100504 (2007)) analytically derived optimal pulse spacings for a multiple spin echo sequence designed to remove decoherence in a two-level system coupled to a bath. The spacings in what has been called a "Uhrig dynamic decoupling (UDD) sequence" differ dramatically from the conventional, equal pulse spacing of a Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) multiple spin echo sequence. The UDD sequence was derived for a model that is unrelated to magnetic resonance, but was recently shown theoretically to be more general. Here we show that the UDD sequence has theoretical advantages for magnetic resonance imaging of structured materials such as tissue, where diffusion in compartmentalized and microstructured environments leads to fluctuating fields on a range of different time scales. We also show experimentally, both in excised tissue and in a live mouse tumor model, that optimal UDD sequences produce different T(2)-weighted contrast than do CPMG sequences with the same number of pulses and total delay, with substantial enhancements in most regions. This permits improved characterization of low-frequency spectral density functions in a wide range of applications.

Genome editing in mouse spermatogonial stem/progenitor cells using engineered nucleases.

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Danielle A Fanslow

Full Text Available Editing the genome to create specific sequence modifications is a powerful way to study gene function and promises future applicability to gene therapy. Creation of precise modifications requires homologous recombination, a very rare event in most cell types that can be stimulated by introducing a double strand break near the target sequence. One method to create a double strand break in a particular sequence is with a custom designed nuclease. We used engineered nucleases to stimulate homologous recombination to correct a mutant gene in mouse "GS" (germline stem cells, testicular derived cell cultures containing spermatogonial stem cells and progenitor cells. We demonstrated that gene-corrected cells maintained several properties of spermatogonial stem/progenitor cells including the ability to colonize following testicular transplantation. This proof of concept for genome editing in GS cells impacts both cell therapy and basic research given the potential for GS cells to be propagated in vitro, contribute to the germline in vivo following testicular transplantation or become reprogrammed to pluripotency in vitro.

Novel object exploration in the C58/J mouse model of autistic-like behavior.

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Blick, Mikkal G; Puchalski, Breann H; Bolanos, Veronica J; Wolfe, Kaitlin M; Green, Matthew C; Ryan, Bryce C

2015-04-01

Mouse models of autistic like behaviors are a valuable tool to use when studying the causes, symptoms, and potential treatments for autism. The inbred C58/J strain is a strain of interest for this model and has previously been shown to possess face validity for some of the core traits of autism, including low social behavior and elevated motor stereotypies. Higher order repetitive behaviors have not been extensively studied in this strain, or in mice in general. In this study, we looked for evidence of higher-order repetitive behaviors in the C58/J strain using a novel object assay. This assay utilized a mouse's natural exploratory behavior among unfamiliar objects to identify potential sequencing patterns in motor activity. The motor stereotypies displayed by the C58/J strain during testing were consistent with past studies. The C58/J strain also displayed a high preference for a single object in the round arena assays and the females demonstrating elevated sequencing patterns in the round arena. Although the C58/J strain did not show pervasive evidence of higher-order repetitive behaviors across all measures, there was evidence of higher order repetitive behaviors in certain situations. This study further demonstrates the potential of the C58/J mouse strains as a model for lower-order and potentially, higher-order repetitive behaviors. This study also demonstrates that the shape of the novel object arena can change the behavior displayed by the test animals. Further studies utilizing the C58/J strain and further validation of the novel object assay are warranted. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated classification of mouse pup isolation syllables: from cluster analysis to an Excel based ‘mouse pup syllable classification calculator’

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Jasmine eGrimsley

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Mouse pups vocalize at high rates when they are cold or isolated from the nest. The proportions of each syllable type produced carry information about disease state and are being used as behavioral markers for the internal state of animals. Manual classifications of these vocalizations identified ten syllable types based on their spectro-temporal features. However, manual classification of mouse syllables is time consuming and vulnerable to experimenter bias. This study uses an automated cluster analysis to identify acoustically distinct syllable types produced by CBA/CaJ mouse pups, and then compares the results to prior manual classification methods. The cluster analysis identified two syllable types, based on their frequency bands, that have continuous frequency-time structure, and two syllable types featuring abrupt frequency transitions. Although cluster analysis computed fewer syllable types than manual classification, the clusters represented well the probability distributions of the acoustic features within syllables. These probability distributions indicate that some of the manually classified syllable types are not statistically distinct. The characteristics of the four classified clusters were used to generate a Microsoft Excel-based mouse syllable classifier that rapidly categorizes syllables, with over a 90% match, into the syllable types determined by cluster analysis.

Contribution of V(H replacement products in mouse antibody repertoire.

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Lin Huang

Full Text Available VH replacement occurs through RAG-mediated recombination between the cryptic recombination signal sequence (cRSS near the 3' end of a rearranged VH gene and the 23-bp RSS from an upstream unrearranged VH gene. Due to the location of the cRSS, VH replacement leaves a short stretch of nucleotides from the previously rearranged VH gene at the newly formed V-D junction, which can be used as a marker to identify VH replacement products. To determine the contribution of VH replacement products to mouse antibody repertoire, we developed a Java-based VH Replacement Footprint Analyzer (VHRFA program and analyzed 17,179 mouse IgH gene sequences from the NCBI database to identify VH replacement products. The overall frequency of VH replacement products in these IgH genes is 5.29% based on the identification of pentameric VH replacement footprints at their V-D junctions. The identified VH replacement products are distributed similarly in IgH genes using most families of VH genes, although different families of VH genes are used differentially. The frequencies of VH replacement products are significantly elevated in IgH genes derived from several strains of autoimmune prone mice and in IgH genes encoding autoantibodies. Moreover, the identified VH replacement footprints in IgH genes from autoimmune prone mice or IgH genes encoding autoantibodies preferentially encode positively charged amino acids. These results revealed a significant contribution of VH replacement products to the diversification of antibody repertoire and potentially, to the generation of autoantibodies in mice.

Detecting Cognitive Stress from Keyboard and Mouse Dynamics during Mental Arithmetic

OpenAIRE

Lim, Yee Mei; Ayesh, Aladdin, 1972-; Stacey, Martin

2014-01-01

Much research has been done to detect human emotion using various computational methods, such as physiological measures and facial expression recognition. These methods are effective but they could be expensive or intrusive as special setups of equipment are needed. Some researchers have utilized nonintrusive methods by using mouse or keyboard analyses and presented comparable effectiveness in detecting human emotion. This paper investigates how both keyboard and mouse features can be combine...

Highly conserved non-coding elements on either side of SOX9 associated with Pierre Robin sequence.

Science.gov (United States)

Benko, Sabina; Fantes, Judy A; Amiel, Jeanne; Kleinjan, Dirk-Jan; Thomas, Sophie; Ramsay, Jacqueline; Jamshidi, Negar; Essafi, Abdelkader; Heaney, Simon; Gordon, Christopher T; McBride, David; Golzio, Christelle; Fisher, Malcolm; Perry, Paul; Abadie, Véronique; Ayuso, Carmen; Holder-Espinasse, Muriel; Kilpatrick, Nicky; Lees, Melissa M; Picard, Arnaud; Temple, I Karen; Thomas, Paul; Vazquez, Marie-Paule; Vekemans, Michel; Roest Crollius, Hugues; Hastie, Nicholas D; Munnich, Arnold; Etchevers, Heather C; Pelet, Anna; Farlie, Peter G; Fitzpatrick, David R; Lyonnet, Stanislas

2009-03-01

Pierre Robin sequence (PRS) is an important subgroup of cleft palate. We report several lines of evidence for the existence of a 17q24 locus underlying PRS, including linkage analysis results, a clustering of translocation breakpoints 1.06-1.23 Mb upstream of SOX9, and microdeletions both approximately 1.5 Mb centromeric and approximately 1.5 Mb telomeric of SOX9. We have also identified a heterozygous point mutation in an evolutionarily conserved region of DNA with in vitro and in vivo features of a developmental enhancer. This enhancer is centromeric to the breakpoint cluster and maps within one of the microdeletion regions. The mutation abrogates the in vitro enhancer function and alters binding of the transcription factor MSX1 as compared to the wild-type sequence. In the developing mouse mandible, the 3-Mb region bounded by the microdeletions shows a regionally specific chromatin decompaction in cells expressing Sox9. Some cases of PRS may thus result from developmental misexpression of SOX9 due to disruption of very-long-range cis-regulatory elements.

Human more complex than mouse at cellular level.

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Alexander E Vinogradov

Full Text Available The family of transcription factors with the C2H2 zinc finger domain is expanding in the evolution of vertebrates, reaching its highest numbers in the mammals. The question arises: whether an increased amount of these transcription factors is related to embryogenesis, nervous system, pathology or more of them are expressed in individual cells? Among mammals, the primates have a more complex anatomical structure than the rodents (e.g., brain. In this work, I show that a greater number of C2H2-ZF genes are expressed in the human cells than in the mouse cells. The effect is especially pronounced for C2H2-ZF genes accompanied with the KRAB domain. The relative difference between the numbers of C2H2-ZF(-KRAB genes in the human and mouse cellular transcriptomes even exceeds their difference in the genomes (i.e. a greater subset of existing in the genome genes is expressed in the human cellular transcriptomes compared to the mouse transcriptomes. The evolutionary turnover of C2H2-ZF(-KRAB genes acts in the direction of the revealed phenomenon, i.e. gene duplication and loss enhances the difference in the relative number of C2H2-ZF(-KRAB genes between human and mouse cellular transcriptomes. A higher amount of these genes is expressed in the brain and embryonic cells (compared with other tissues, whereas a lower amount--in the cancer cells. It is specifically the C2H2-ZF transcription factors whose repertoire is poorer in the cancer and richer in the brain (other transcription factors taken together do not show this trend. These facts suggest that increase of anatomical complexity is accompanied by a more complex intracellular regulation involving these transcription factors. Malignization is associated with simplification of this regulation. These results agree with the known fact that human cells are more resistant to oncogenic transformation than mouse cells. The list of C2H2-ZF genes whose suppression might be involved in malignization is provided.

Comparative molecular analysis of early and late cancer cachexia-induced muscle wasting in mouse models.

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Sun, Rulin; Zhang, Santao; Lu, Xing; Hu, Wenjun; Lou, Ning; Zhao, Yan; Zhou, Jia; Zhang, Xiaoping; Yang, Hongmei

2016-12-01

Cancer-induced muscle wasting, which commonly occurs in cancer cachexia, is characterized by impaired quality of life and poor patient survival. To identify an appropriate treatment, research on the mechanism underlying muscle wasting is essential. Thus far, studies on muscle wasting using cancer cachectic models have generally focused on early cancer cachexia (ECC), before severe body weight loss occurs. In the present study, we established models of ECC and late cancer cachexia (LCC) and compared different stages of cancer cachexia using two cancer cachectic mouse models induced by colon-26 (C26) adenocarcinoma or Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC). In each model, tumor-bearing (TB) and control (CN) mice were injected with cancer cells and PBS, respectively. The TB and CN mice, which were euthanized on the 24th day or the 36th day after injection, were defined as the ECC and ECC-CN mice or the LCC and LCC-CN mice. In addition, the tissues were harvested and analyzed. We found that both the ECC and LCC mice developed cancer cachexia. The amounts of muscle loss differed between the ECC and LCC mice. Moreover, the expression of some molecules was altered in the muscles from the LCC mice but not in those from the ECC mice compared with their CN mice. In conclusion, the molecules with altered expression in the muscles from the ECC and LCC mice were not exactly the same. These findings may provide some clues for therapy which could prevent the muscle wasting in cancer cachexia from progression to the late stage.

Identification and characterization of cell-specific enhancer elements for the mouse ETF/Tead2 gene.

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Tanoue, Y; Yasunami, M; Suzuki, K; Ohkubo, H

2001-12-21

We have identified and characterized by transient transfection assays the cell-specific 117-bp enhancer sequence in the first intron of the mouse ETF (Embryonic TEA domain-containing factor)/Tead2 gene required for transcriptional activation in ETF/Tead2 gene-expressing cells, such as P19 cells. The 117-bp enhancer contains one GC-rich sequence (5'-GGGGCGGGG-3'), termed the GC box, and two tandemly repeated GA-rich sequences (5'-GGGGGAGGGG-3'), termed the proximal and distal GA elements. Further analyses, including transfection studies and electrophoretic mobility shift assays using a series of deletion and mutation constructs, indicated that Sp1, a putative activator, may be required to predominate over its competition with another unknown putative repressor, termed the GA element-binding factor, for binding to both the GC box, which overlapped with the proximal GA element, and the distal GA element in the 117-bp sequence in order to achieve a full enhancer activity. We also discuss a possible mechanism underlying the cell-specific enhancer activity of the 117-bp sequence.

GenHtr: a tool for comparative assessment of genetic heterogeneity in microbial genomes generated by massive short-read sequencing

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Yu GongXin

2010-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Microevolution is the study of short-term changes of alleles within a population and their effects on the phenotype of organisms. The result of the below-species-level evolution is heterogeneity, where populations consist of subpopulations with a large number of structural variations. Heterogeneity analysis is thus essential to our understanding of how selective and neutral forces shape bacterial populations over a short period of time. The Solexa Genome Analyzer, a next-generation sequencing platform, allows millions of short sequencing reads to be obtained with great accuracy, allowing for the ability to study the dynamics of the bacterial population at the whole genome level. The tool referred to as GenHtr was developed for genome-wide heterogeneity analysis. Results For particular bacterial strains, GenHtr relies on a set of Solexa short reads on given bacteria pathogens and their isogenic reference genome to identify heterogeneity sites, the chromosomal positions with multiple variants of genes in the bacterial population, and variations that occur in large gene families. GenHtr accomplishes this by building and comparatively analyzing genome-wide heterogeneity genotypes for both the newly sequenced genomes (using massive short-read sequencing and their isogenic reference (using simulated data. As proof of the concept, this approach was applied to SRX007711, the Solexa sequencing data for a newly sequenced Staphylococcus aureus subsp. USA300 cell line, and demonstrated that it could predict such multiple variants. They include multiple variants of genes critical in pathogenesis, e.g. genes encoding a LysR family transcriptional regulator, 23 S ribosomal RNA, and DNA mismatch repair protein MutS. The heterogeneity results in non-synonymous and nonsense mutations, leading to truncated proteins for both LysR and MutS. Conclusion GenHtr was developed for genome-wide heterogeneity analysis. Although it is much more time

Development of mPMab-1, a Mouse-Rat Chimeric Antibody Against Mouse Podoplanin.

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Yamada, Shinji; Kaneko, Mika K; Nakamura, Takuro; Ichii, Osamu; Konnai, Satoru; Kato, Yukinari

2017-04-01

Podoplanin (PDPN), the ligand of C-type lectin-like receptor-2, is used as a lymphatic endothelial marker. We previously established clone PMab-1 of rat IgG 2a as a specific monoclonal antibody (mAb) against mouse PDPN. PMab-1 is also very sensitive in immunohistochemical analysis; however, rat mAbs seem to be unfavorable for pathologists because anti-mouse IgG and anti-rabbit IgG are usually used as secondary antibodies in commercially available kits for immunohistochemical analysis. In this study, we develop a mouse-rat chimeric antibody, mPMab-1 of mouse IgG 2a , which was derived from rat PMab-1 mAb. Immunohistochemical analysis shows that mPMab-1 detects podocytes of the kidney, lymphatic endothelial cells of the colon, and type I alveolar cells of the lung. Importantly, mPMab-1 is more sensitive than PMab-1. This conversion strategy from rat mAb to mouse mAb could be applicable to other mAbs.

Sexing of Mouse Preimplantation Embryos Using Polymerase Chain Reaction%运用PCR对小鼠植入前胚胎进行性别诊断

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

李汶; 陆长富; 卢光琇

2001-01-01

In order to determine the sex of mouse embryo, 1 or 2 blastomeres were biopsied from Kun-ming-white mouse preimplantation embryo at 4-8 cells stage. The gDNA of the single-blastomere was abstracted. According to the base sequence of 145C5, a repititive sequence of Y chromosome of mouse C57BL6, a pair of primer were asigned and synthesized. The gDNA was amplified using these primers. 108 mouse preimplantation embryos were sexed via this technique. 46 male embryos and 62 female embryos were transfered into five pseudopreganant mothers respectively. 4 male litters and 9 female litters were obtained. The diagnosis positive　rate was 100%(4/4) and 70% (9/13)respectively. The result of PCR indecated that there was no difference between the repititive sequence of Y chromosome in mouse C57BL6 and Kun-ming-white mouse. The technique developed in this study might be further used for preimplantation genetic diagnosis of single-gene defects.%根据C57BL6小鼠Y染色体重复序列145C5的碱基顺序, 设计并合成一对引物, 运用PCR扩增昆明白小鼠植入前胚胎卵裂球DNA, 以确定其性别。共对108枚活检胚胎的相应卵裂球进行了性别诊断, 获雄性胚46枚, 雌性胚62枚, 移植后分别获雄性仔鼠4只, 准确率100%(4/4), 雌性仔鼠9只, 准确率70%(9/13)。本研究结果表明小鼠Y染色体重复序列145C5的碱基顺序在C57BL6小鼠和昆明白小鼠中基本一致；为农牧业动物进行性别选择和运用PCR进行单基因病植入前遗传学诊断提供了方法学基础。

T1 Gd-enhanced compared with CISS sequences in retinoblastoma: superiority of T1 sequences in evaluation of tumour extension

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Gizewski, Elke R.; Wanke, Isabel; Guengoer, Ali-Riza; Forsting, Michael [University Hospital, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, Essen (Germany); Jurklies, Christine [University Hospital Essen, Department of Ophthalmology (Germany)

2005-01-01

Background As adequate therapy for retinoblastoma in young children depends on infiltration of extra-retinal structures, diagnostic modalities play an essential role. Methods: In this widely extended study, 80 children with retinoblastoma were studied with MRI (standard fat-suppressed Gd-enhanced T1, T2 thin-slice sequences (additionally with small loop surface coil), constructive interference in steady state (CISS) sequence covering the orbita). The images were analysed by two blinded neuroradiologists. Histology was used as the gold standard. MRI assumed infiltration of extra-retinal structures in 13 of 80 patients of which ten were confirmed by histology. Affected extra-retinal structures were: optic nerve (five, of which two were on CISS and three on T1 with higher image resolution using the surface coil), scleral infiltration (five, of which four on CISS and T1) and ciliary body infiltration (one on CISS and T1). Another 61 enucleated patients did not have any extra-retinal infiltration in histology. The CISS sequence with multiplanar reconstruction was mainly helpful in revealing exact three-dimensional tumour extension with excellent clinical acceptance and pre-surgical planning but T1 fat-suppressed Gd-enhanced images were superior in revealing exact tumour extension. CISS sequences allow to produce excellent anatomical images and to perform multiplanar reconstruction to better demonstrate tumour extension. However, T1-weighted sequences after contrast application are more sensitive (60 versus 40%) in detecting infiltration of the optic nerve but equal in detecting scleral infiltration. (orig.)

Broad histone H3K4me3 domains in mouse oocytes modulate maternal-to-zygotic transition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dahl, John Arne; Jung, Inkyung; Aanes, Håvard

2016-01-01

device that is not readily available. We developed a micro-scale chromatin immunoprecipitation and sequencing (μChIP-seq) method, which we used to profile genome-wide histone H3 lysine methylation (H3K4me3) and acetylation (H3K27ac) in mouse immature and metaphase II oocytes and in 2-cell and 8-cell....... Active removal of broad H3K4me3 domains by the lysine demethylases KDM5A and KDM5B is required for normal zygotic genome activation and is essential for early embryo development. Our results provide insight into the onset of the developmental program in mouse embryos and demonstrate a role for broad H3K4...

Gaze beats mouse

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mateo, Julio C.; San Agustin, Javier; Hansen, John Paulin

2008-01-01

Facial EMG for selection is fast, easy and, combined with gaze pointing, it can provide completely hands-free interaction. In this pilot study, 5 participants performed a simple point-and-select task using mouse or gaze for pointing and a mouse button or a facial-EMG switch for selection. Gaze...

Multi-Scale Characterization of the PEPCK-Cmus Mouse through 3D Cryo-Imaging

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Debashish Roy

2010-01-01

Full Text Available We have developed, for the Case 3D Cryo-imaging system, a specialized, multiscale visualization scheme which provides color-rich volume rendering and multiplanar reformatting enabling one to visualize an entire mouse and zoom in to organ, tissue, and microscopic scales. With this system, we have anatomically characterized, in 3D, from whole animal to tissue level, a transgenic mouse and compared it with its control. The transgenic mouse overexpresses the cytosolic form of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK-C in its skeletal muscle and is capable of greatly enhanced physical endurance and has a longer life-span and reproductive life as compared to control animals. We semiautomatically analyzed selected organs such as kidney, heart, adrenal gland, spleen, and ovaries and found comparatively enlarged heart, much less visceral, subcutaneous, and pericardial adipose tissue, and higher tibia-to-femur ratio in the transgenic animal. Microscopically, individual skeletal muscle fibers, fine mesenteric blood vessels, and intestinal villi, among others, were clearly seen.

Global gene expression analysis in a mouse model for Norrie disease: late involvement of photoreceptor cells.

Science.gov (United States)

Lenzner, Steffen; Prietz, Sandra; Feil, Silke; Nuber, Ulrike A; Ropers, H-Hilger; Berger, Wolfgang

2002-09-01

Mutations in the NDP gene give rise to a variety of eye diseases, including classic Norrie disease (ND), X-linked exudative vitreoretinopathy (EVRX), retinal telangiectasis (Coats disease), and advanced retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). The gene product is a cystine-knot-containing extracellular signaling molecule of unknown function. In the current study, gene expression was determined in a mouse model of ND, to unravel disease-associated mechanisms at the molecular level. Gene transcription in the eyes of 2-year-old Ndp knockout mice was compared with that in the eyes of age-matched wild-type control animals, by means of cDNA subtraction and microarrays. Clones (n = 3072) from the cDNA subtraction libraries were spotted onto glass slides and hybridized with fluorescently labeled RNA-derived targets. More than 230 differentially expressed clones were sequenced, and their expression patterns were verified by virtual Northern blot analysis. Numerous gene transcripts that are absent or downregulated in the eye of Ndp knockout mice are photoreceptor cell specific. In younger Ndp knockout mice (up to 1 year old), however, all these transcripts were found to be expressed at normal levels. The identification of numerous photoreceptor cell-specific transcripts with a reduced expression in 2-year-old, but not in young, Ndp knockout mice indicates that normal gene expression in these light-sensitive cells of mutant mice is established and maintained over a long period and that rods and cones are affected relatively late in the mouse model of ND. Obviously, the absence of the Ndp gene product is not compatible with long-term survival of photoreceptor cells in the mouse.

Five Complete Chloroplast Genome Sequences from Diospyros: Genome Organization and Comparative Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Jianmin; Liu, Huimin; Hu, Jingjing; Liang, Yuqin; Liang, Jinjun; Wuyun, Tana; Tan, Xiaofeng

2016-01-01

Diospyros is the largest genus in Ebenaceae, comprising more than 500 species with remarkable economic value, especially Diospyros kaki Thunb., which has traditionally been an important food resource in China, Korea, and Japan. Complete chloroplast (cp) genomes from D. kaki, D. lotus L., D. oleifera Cheng., D. glaucifolia Metc., and Diospyros 'Jinzaoshi' were sequenced using Illumina sequencing technology. This is the first cp genome reported in Ebenaceae. The cp genome sequences of Diospyros ranged from 157,300 to 157,784 bp in length, presenting a typical quadripartite structure with two inverted repeats each separated by one large and one small single-copy region. For each cp genome, 134 genes were annotated, including 80 protein-coding, 31 tRNA, and 4 rRNA unique genes. In all, 179 repeats and 283 single sequence repeats were identified. Four hypervariable regions, namely, intergenic region of trnQ_rps16, trnV_ndhC, and psbD_trnT, and intron of ndhA, were identified in the Diospyros genomes. Phylogenetic analyses based on the whole cp genome, protein-coding, and intergenic and intron sequences indicated that D. oleifera is closely related to D. kaki and could be used as a model plant for future research on D. kaki; to our knowledge, this is proposed for the first time. Further, these analyses together with two large deletions (301 and 140 bp) in the cp genome of D. 'Jinzaoshi', support its placement as a new species in Diospyros. Both maximum parsimony and likelihood analyses for 19 taxa indicated the basal position of Ericales in asterids and suggested that Ebenaceae is monophyletic in Ericales.

Five Complete Chloroplast Genome Sequences from Diospyros: Genome Organization and Comparative Analysis.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianmin Fu

Full Text Available Diospyros is the largest genus in Ebenaceae, comprising more than 500 species with remarkable economic value, especially Diospyros kaki Thunb., which has traditionally been an important food resource in China, Korea, and Japan. Complete chloroplast (cp genomes from D. kaki, D. lotus L., D. oleifera Cheng., D. glaucifolia Metc., and Diospyros 'Jinzaoshi' were sequenced using Illumina sequencing technology. This is the first cp genome reported in Ebenaceae. The cp genome sequences of Diospyros ranged from 157,300 to 157,784 bp in length, presenting a typical quadripartite structure with two inverted repeats each separated by one large and one small single-copy region. For each cp genome, 134 genes were annotated, including 80 protein-coding, 31 tRNA, and 4 rRNA unique genes. In all, 179 repeats and 283 single sequence repeats were identified. Four hypervariable regions, namely, intergenic region of trnQ_rps16, trnV_ndhC, and psbD_trnT, and intron of ndhA, were identified in the Diospyros genomes. Phylogenetic analyses based on the whole cp genome, protein-coding, and intergenic and intron sequences indicated that D. oleifera is closely related to D. kaki and could be used as a model plant for future research on D. kaki; to our knowledge, this is proposed for the first time. Further, these analyses together with two large deletions (301 and 140 bp in the cp genome of D. 'Jinzaoshi', support its placement as a new species in Diospyros. Both maximum parsimony and likelihood analyses for 19 taxa indicated the basal position of Ericales in asterids and suggested that Ebenaceae is monophyletic in Ericales.

Haemozoin Detection in Mouse Liver Histology Using Simple Polarized Light Microscope

OpenAIRE

DWI RAMADHANI; SITI NURHAYATI; TUR RAHARDJO

2014-01-01

The presence of malarial pigment (haemozoin) due to Plasmodium infection is a common histopathological effect in mouse liver. Previous research showed that by using a polarized light microscope, researchers were better able to detect haemozoin in mouse liver histology section. Thus, the aim of this research was to compare the haemozoin area observed by a conventional vs. simple polarized light microscope by using image processing analysis. A total of 40 images produced from both conventional ...

ABS: Sequence alignment by scanning

KAUST Repository

Bonny, Mohamed Talal; Salama, Khaled N.

2011-01-01

Sequence alignment is an essential tool in almost any computational biology research. It processes large database sequences and considered to be high consumers of computation time. Heuristic algorithms are used to get approximate but fast results. We introduce fast alignment algorithm, called Alignment By Scanning (ABS), to provide an approximate alignment of two DNA sequences. We compare our algorithm with the well-known alignment algorithms, the FASTA (which is heuristic) and the 'Needleman-Wunsch' (which is optimal). The proposed algorithm achieves up to 76% enhancement in alignment score when it is compared with the FASTA Algorithm. The evaluations are conducted using different lengths of DNA sequences. © 2011 IEEE.

ABS: Sequence alignment by scanning

KAUST Repository

Bonny, Mohamed Talal

2011-08-01

Sequence alignment is an essential tool in almost any computational biology research. It processes large database sequences and considered to be high consumers of computation time. Heuristic algorithms are used to get approximate but fast results. We introduce fast alignment algorithm, called Alignment By Scanning (ABS), to provide an approximate alignment of two DNA sequences. We compare our algorithm with the well-known alignment algorithms, the FASTA (which is heuristic) and the \\'Needleman-Wunsch\\' (which is optimal). The proposed algorithm achieves up to 76% enhancement in alignment score when it is compared with the FASTA Algorithm. The evaluations are conducted using different lengths of DNA sequences. © 2011 IEEE.

Fast global sequence alignment technique

KAUST Repository

Bonny, Mohamed Talal

2011-11-01

Bioinformatics database is growing exponentially in size. Processing these large amount of data may take hours of time even if super computers are used. One of the most important processing tool in Bioinformatics is sequence alignment. We introduce fast alignment algorithm, called \\'Alignment By Scanning\\' (ABS), to provide an approximate alignment of two DNA sequences. We compare our algorithm with the wellknown sequence alignment algorithms, the \\'GAP\\' (which is heuristic) and the \\'Needleman-Wunsch\\' (which is optimal). The proposed algorithm achieves up to 51% enhancement in alignment score when it is compared with the GAP Algorithm. The evaluations are conducted using different lengths of DNA sequences. © 2011 IEEE.

Hybridization of mouse lemurs: different patterns under different ecological conditions

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Rosenkranz David

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Several mechanistic models aim to explain the diversification of the multitude of endemic species on Madagascar. The island's biogeographic history probably offered numerous opportunities for secondary contact and subsequent hybridization. Existing diversification models do not consider a possible role of these processes. One key question for a better understanding of their potential importance is how they are influenced by different environmental settings. Here, we characterized a contact zone between two species of mouse lemurs, Microcebus griseorufus and M. murinus, in dry spiny bush and mesic gallery forest that border each other sharply without intermediate habitats between them. We performed population genetic analyses based on mtDNA sequences and nine nuclear microsatellites and compared the results to a known hybrid zone of the same species in a nearby wide gradient from dry spiny bush over transitional forest to humid littoral forest. Results In the spiny-gallery system, Microcebus griseorufus is restricted to the spiny bush; Microcebus murinus occurs in gallery forest and locally invades the dryer habitat of its congener. We found evidence for bidirectional introgressive hybridization, which is closely linked to increased spatial overlap within the spiny bush. Within 159 individuals, we observed 18 hybrids with mitochondrial haplotypes of both species. Analyses of simulated microsatellite data indicate that we identified hybrids with great accuracy and that we probably underestimated their true number. We discuss short-term climatic fluctuations as potential trigger for the dynamic of invasion and subsequent hybridization. In the gradient hybrid zone in turn, long-term aridification could have favored unidirectional nuclear introgression from Microcebus griseorufus into M. murinus in transitional forest. Conclusions Madagascar's southeastern transitional zone harbors two very different hybrid zones of mouse lemurs

Retinal cone photoreceptors of the deer mouse Peromyscus maniculatus: development, topography, opsin expression and spectral tuning.

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Patrick Arbogast

Full Text Available A quantitative analysis of photoreceptor properties was performed in the retina of the nocturnal deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, using pigmented (wildtype and albino animals. The aim was to establish whether the deer mouse is a more suitable model species than the house mouse for photoreceptor studies, and whether oculocutaneous albinism affects its photoreceptor properties. In retinal flatmounts, cone photoreceptors were identified by opsin immunostaining, and their numbers, spectral types, and distributions across the retina were determined. Rod photoreceptors were counted using differential interference contrast microscopy. Pigmented P. maniculatus have a rod-dominated retina with rod densities of about 450.000/mm(2 and cone densities of 3000-6500/mm(2. Two cone opsins, shortwave sensitive (S and middle-to-longwave sensitive (M, are present and expressed in distinct cone types. Partial sequencing of the S opsin gene strongly supports UV sensitivity of the S cone visual pigment. The S cones constitute a 5-15% minority of the cones. Different from house mouse, S and M cone distributions do not have dorsoventral gradients, and coexpression of both opsins in single cones is exceptional (<2% of the cones. In albino P. maniculatus, rod densities are reduced by approximately 40% (270.000/mm(2. Overall, cone density and the density of cones exclusively expressing S opsin are not significantly different from pigmented P. maniculatus. However, in albino retinas S opsin is coexpressed with M opsin in 60-90% of the cones and therefore the population of cones expressing only M opsin is significantly reduced to 5-25%. In conclusion, deer mouse cone properties largely conform to the general mammalian pattern, hence the deer mouse may be better suited than the house mouse for the study of certain basic cone properties, including the effects of albinism on cone opsin expression.

Physiology of SLC12 transporters: lessons from inherited human genetic mutations and genetically engineered mouse knockouts.

Science.gov (United States)

Gagnon, Kenneth B; Delpire, Eric

2013-04-15

Among the over 300 members of the solute carrier (SLC) group of integral plasma membrane transport proteins are the nine electroneutral cation-chloride cotransporters belonging to the SLC12 gene family. Seven of these transporters have been functionally described as coupling the electrically silent movement of chloride with sodium and/or potassium. Although in silico analysis has identified two additional SLC12 family members, no physiological role has been ascribed to the proteins encoded by either the SLC12A8 or the SLC12A9 genes. Evolutionary conservation of this gene family from protists to humans confirms their importance. A wealth of physiological, immunohistochemical, and biochemical studies have revealed a great deal of information regarding the importance of this gene family to human health and disease. The sequencing of the human genome has provided investigators with the capability to link several human diseases with mutations in the genes encoding these plasma membrane proteins. The availability of bacterial artificial chromosomes, recombination engineering techniques, and the mouse genome sequence has simplified the creation of targeting constructs to manipulate the expression/function of these cation-chloride cotransporters in the mouse in an attempt to recapitulate some of these human pathologies. This review will summarize the three human disorders that have been linked to the mutation/dysfunction of the Na-Cl, Na-K-2Cl, and K-Cl cotransporters (i.e., Bartter's, Gitleman's, and Andermann's syndromes), examine some additional pathologies arising from genetically modified mouse models of these cotransporters including deafness, blood pressure, hyperexcitability, and epithelial transport deficit phenotypes.

Comparative mapping of DNA markers from the familial Alzheimer disease and Down syndrome regions of human chromosome 21 to mouse chromosomes 16 and 17

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cheng, S.V.; Nadeau, J.H.; Tanzi, R.E.; Watkins, P.C.; Jagadesh, J.; Taylor, B.A.; Haines, J.L.; Sacchi, N.; Gusella, J.F. (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (USA))

1988-08-01

Mouse trisomy 16 has been proposed as an animal model of Down syndrome (DS), since this chromosome contains homologues of several loci from the q22 band of human chromosome 21. The recent mapping of the defect causing familial Alzheimer disease (FAD) and the locus encoding the Alzheimer amyloid {beta} precursor protein (APP) to human chromosome 21 has prompted a more detailed examination of the extent of conservation of this linkage group between the two species. Using anonymous DNA probes and cloned genes from human chromosome 21 in a combination of recombinant inbred and interspecific mouse backcross analyses, the authors have established that the linkage group shared by mouse chromosome 16 includes not only the critical DS region of human chromosome 21 but also the APP gene and FAD-linked markers. Extending from the anonymous DNA locus D21S52 to ETS2, the linkage map of six loci spans 39% recombination in man but only 6.4% recombination in the mouse. A break in synteny occurs distal to ETS2, with the homologue of the human marker D21S56 mapping to mouse chromosome 17. Conservation of the linkage relationships of markers in the FAD region suggests that the murine homologue of the FAD locus probably maps to chromosome 16 and that detailed comparison of the corresponding region in both species could facilitate identification of the primary defect in this disorder. The break in synteny between the terminal portion of human chromosome 21 and mouse chromosome 16 indicates, however, that mouse trisomy 16 may not represent a complete model of DS.

Comparative mapping of DNA markers from the familial Alzheimer disease and Down syndrome regions of human chromosome 21 to mouse chromosomes 16 and 17

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cheng, S.V.; Nadeau, J.H.; Tanzi, R.E.; Watkins, P.C.; Jagadesh, J.; Taylor, B.A.; Haines, J.L.; Sacchi, N.; Gusella, J.F.

1988-01-01

Mouse trisomy 16 has been proposed as an animal model of Down syndrome (DS), since this chromosome contains homologues of several loci from the q22 band of human chromosome 21. The recent mapping of the defect causing familial Alzheimer disease (FAD) and the locus encoding the Alzheimer amyloid β precursor protein (APP) to human chromosome 21 has prompted a more detailed examination of the extent of conservation of this linkage group between the two species. Using anonymous DNA probes and cloned genes from human chromosome 21 in a combination of recombinant inbred and interspecific mouse backcross analyses, the authors have established that the linkage group shared by mouse chromosome 16 includes not only the critical DS region of human chromosome 21 but also the APP gene and FAD-linked markers. Extending from the anonymous DNA locus D21S52 to ETS2, the linkage map of six loci spans 39% recombination in man but only 6.4% recombination in the mouse. A break in synteny occurs distal to ETS2, with the homologue of the human marker D21S56 mapping to mouse chromosome 17. Conservation of the linkage relationships of markers in the FAD region suggests that the murine homologue of the FAD locus probably maps to chromosome 16 and that detailed comparison of the corresponding region in both species could facilitate identification of the primary defect in this disorder. The break in synteny between the terminal portion of human chromosome 21 and mouse chromosome 16 indicates, however, that mouse trisomy 16 may not represent a complete model of DS

Regulatory Forum commentary: alternative mouse models for future cancer risk assessment.

Science.gov (United States)

Morton, Daniel; Sistare, Frank D; Nambiar, Prashant R; Turner, Oliver C; Radi, Zaher; Bower, Nancy

2014-07-01

International regulatory and pharmaceutical industry scientists are discussing revision of the International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) S1 guidance on rodent carcinogenicity assessment of small molecule pharmaceuticals. A weight-of-evidence approach is proposed to determine the need for rodent carcinogenicity studies. For compounds with high human cancer risk, the product may be labeled appropriately without conducting rodent carcinogenicity studies. For compounds with minimal cancer risk, only a 6-month transgenic mouse study (rasH2 mouse or p53+/- mouse) or a 2-year mouse study would be needed. If rodent carcinogenicity testing may add significant value to cancer risk assessment, a 2-year rat study and either a 6-month transgenic mouse or a 2-year mouse study is appropriate. In many cases, therefore, one rodent carcinogenicity study could be sufficient. The rasH2 model predicts neoplastic findings relevant to human cancer risk assessment as well as 2-year rodent models, produces fewer irrelevant neoplastic outcomes, and often will be preferable to a 2-year rodent study. Before revising ICH S1 guidance, a prospective evaluation will be conducted to test the proposed weight-of-evidence approach. This evaluation offers an opportunity for a secondary analysis comparing the value of alternative mouse models and 2-year rodent studies in the proposed ICH S1 weight-of-evidence approach for human cancer risk assessment. © 2014 by The Author(s).

Integrating Multiple Analytical Datasets to Compare Metabolite Profiles of Mouse Colonic-Cecal Contents and Feces.

Science.gov (United States)

Zeng, Huawei; Grapov, Dmitry; Jackson, Matthew I; Fahrmann, Johannes; Fiehn, Oliver; Combs, Gerald F

2015-09-11

The pattern of metabolites produced by the gut microbiome comprises a phenotype indicative of the means by which that microbiome affects the gut. We characterized that phenotype in mice by conducting metabolomic analyses of the colonic-cecal contents, comparing that to the metabolite patterns of feces in order to determine the suitability of fecal specimens as proxies for assessing the metabolic impact of the gut microbiome. We detected a total of 270 low molecular weight metabolites in colonic-cecal contents and feces by gas chromatograph, time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOF) and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography, quadrapole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF). Of that number, 251 (93%) were present in both types of specimen, representing almost all known biochemical pathways related to the amino acid, carbohydrate, energy, lipid, membrane transport, nucleotide, genetic information processing, and cancer-related metabolism. A total of 115 metabolites differed significantly in relative abundance between both colonic-cecal contents and feces. These data comprise the first characterization of relationships among metabolites present in the colonic-cecal contents and feces in a healthy mouse model, and shows that feces can be a useful proxy for assessing the pattern of metabolites to which the colonic mucosum is exposed.

Integrating Multiple Analytical Datasets to Compare Metabolite Profiles of Mouse Colonic-Cecal Contents and Feces

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Huawei Zeng

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The pattern of metabolites produced by the gut microbiome comprises a phenotype indicative of the means by which that microbiome affects the gut. We characterized that phenotype in mice by conducting metabolomic analyses of the colonic-cecal contents, comparing that to the metabolite patterns of feces in order to determine the suitability of fecal specimens as proxies for assessing the metabolic impact of the gut microbiome. We detected a total of 270 low molecular weight metabolites in colonic-cecal contents and feces by gas chromatograph, time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOF and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography, quadrapole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF. Of that number, 251 (93% were present in both types of specimen, representing almost all known biochemical pathways related to the amino acid, carbohydrate, energy, lipid, membrane transport, nucleotide, genetic information processing, and cancer-related metabolism. A total of 115 metabolites differed significantly in relative abundance between both colonic-cecal contents and feces. These data comprise the first characterization of relationships among metabolites present in the colonic-cecal contents and feces in a healthy mouse model, and shows that feces can be a useful proxy for assessing the pattern of metabolites to which the colonic mucosum is exposed.

A series of N-terminal epitope tagged Hdh knock-in alleles expressing normal and mutant huntingtin: their application to understanding the effect of increasing the length of normal huntingtin’s polyglutamine stretch on CAG140 mouse model pathogenesis

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Zheng Shuqiu

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Huntington’s disease (HD is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease that is caused by the expansion of a polyglutamine (polyQ stretch within Huntingtin (htt, the protein product of the HD gene. Although studies in vitro have suggested that the mutant htt can act in a potentially dominant negative fashion by sequestering wild-type htt into insoluble protein aggregates, the role of the length of the normal htt polyQ stretch, and the adjacent proline-rich region (PRR in modulating HD mouse model pathogenesis is currently unknown. Results We describe the generation and characterization of a series of knock-in HD mouse models that express versions of the mouse HD gene (Hdh encoding N-terminal hemaglutinin (HA or 3xFlag epitope tagged full-length htt with different polyQ lengths (HA7Q-, 3xFlag7Q-, 3xFlag20Q-, and 3xFlag140Q-htt and substitution of the adjacent mouse PRR with the human PRR (3xFlag20Q- and 3xFlag140Q-htt. Using co-immunoprecipitation and immunohistochemistry analyses, we detect no significant interaction between soluble full-length normal 7Q- htt and mutant (140Q htt, but we do observe N-terminal fragments of epitope-tagged normal htt in mutant htt aggregates. When the sequences encoding normal mouse htt’s polyQ stretch and PRR are replaced with non-pathogenic human sequence in mice also expressing 140Q-htt, aggregation foci within the striatum, and the mean size of htt inclusions are increased, along with an increase in striatal lipofuscin and gliosis. Conclusion In mice, soluble full-length normal and mutant htt are predominantly monomeric. In heterozygous knock-in HD mouse models, substituting the normal mouse polyQ and PRR with normal human sequence can exacerbate some neuropathological phenotypes.

Identification of a mouse synaptic glycoprotein gene in cultured neurons.

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Albert Cheung-Hoi; Sun, Chun Xiao; Li, Qiang; Liu, Hua Dong; Wang, Chen Ran; Zhao, Guo Ping; Jin, Meilei; Lau, Lok Ting; Fung, Yin-Wan Wendy; Liu, Shuang

2005-10-01

Neuronal differentiation and aging are known to involve many genes, which may also be differentially expressed during these developmental processes. From primary cultured cerebral cortical neurons, we have previously identified various differentially expressed gene transcripts from cultured cortical neurons using the technique of arbitrarily primed PCR (RAP-PCR). Among these transcripts, clone 0-2 was found to have high homology to rat and human synaptic glycoprotein. By in silico analysis using an EST database and the FACTURA software, the full-length sequence of 0-2 was assembled and the clone was named as mouse synaptic glycoprotein homolog 2 (mSC2). DNA sequencing revealed transcript size of mSC2 being smaller than the human and rat homologs. RT-PCR indicated that mSC2 was expressed differentially at various culture days. The mSC2 gene was located in various tissues with higher expression in brain, lung, and liver. Functions of mSC2 in neurons and other tissues remain elusive and will require more investigation.

Detection of M-Sequences from Spike Sequence in Neuronal Networks

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Yoshi Nishitani

2012-01-01

Full Text Available In circuit theory, it is well known that a linear feedback shift register (LFSR circuit generates pseudorandom bit sequences (PRBS, including an M-sequence with the maximum period of length. In this study, we tried to detect M-sequences known as a pseudorandom sequence generated by the LFSR circuit from time series patterns of stimulated action potentials. Stimulated action potentials were recorded from dissociated cultures of hippocampal neurons grown on a multielectrode array. We could find several M-sequences from a 3-stage LFSR circuit (M3. These results show the possibility of assembling LFSR circuits or its equivalent ones in a neuronal network. However, since the M3 pattern was composed of only four spike intervals, the possibility of an accidental detection was not zero. Then, we detected M-sequences from random spike sequences which were not generated from an LFSR circuit and compare the result with the number of M-sequences from the originally observed raster data. As a result, a significant difference was confirmed: a greater number of “0–1” reversed the 3-stage M-sequences occurred than would have accidentally be detected. This result suggests that some LFSR equivalent circuits are assembled in neuronal networks.

Effect of potassium channel modulators in mouse forced swimming test

Science.gov (United States)

Galeotti, Nicoletta; Ghelardini, Carla; Caldari, Bernardetta; Bartolini, Alessandro

1999-01-01

The effect of intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) administration of different potassium channel blockers (tetraethylammonium, apamin, charybdotoxin, gliquidone), potassium channel openers (pinacidil, minoxidil, cromakalim) and aODN to mKv1.1 on immobility time was evaluated in the mouse forced swimming test, an animal model of depression. Tetraethylammonium (TEA; 5 μg per mouse i.c.v.), apamin (3 ng per mouse i.c.v.), charybdotoxin (1 μg per mouse i.c.v.) and gliquidone (6 μg per mouse i.c.v.) administered 20 min before the test produced anti-immobility comparable to that induced by the tricyclic antidepressants amitriptyline (15 mg kg−1 s.c.) and imipramine (30 mg kg−1 s.c.). By contrast pinacidil (10–20 μg per mouse i.c.v.), minoxidil (10–20 μg per mouse i.c.v.) and cromakalim (20–30 μg per mouse i.c.v.) increased immobility time when administered in the same experimental conditions. Repeated administration of an antisense oligonucleotide (aODN) to the mKv1.1 gene (1 and 3 nmol per single i.c.v. injection) produced a dose-dependent increase in immobility time of mice 72 h after the last injection. At day 7, the increasing effect produced by aODN disappeared. A degenerate mKv1.1 oligonucleotide (dODN), used as control, did not produce any effect in comparison with saline- and vector-treated mice. At the highest effective dose, potassium channels modulators and the mKv1.1 aODN did not impair motor coordination, as revealed by the rota rod test, nor did they modify spontaneous motility as revealed by the Animex apparatus. These results suggest that modulation of potassium channels plays an important role in the regulation of immobility time in the mouse forced swimming test. PMID:10323599

Phylogenetic and Comparative Sequence Analysis of Thermostable Alpha Amylases of kingdom Archea, Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes.

Science.gov (United States)

Huma, Tayyaba; Maryam, Arooma; Rehman, Shahid Ur; Qamar, Muhammad Tahir Ul; Shaheen, Tayyaba; Haque, Asma; Shaheen, Bushra

2014-01-01

Alpha amylase family is generally defined as a group of enzymes that can hydrolyse and transglycosylase α-(1, 4) or α-(1, 6) glycosidic bonds along with the preservation of anomeric configuration. For the comparative analysis of alpha amylase family, nucleotide sequences of seven thermo stable organisms of Kingdom Archea i.e. Pyrococcus furiosus (100-105°C), Kingdom Prokaryotes i.e. Bacillus licheniformis (90-95°C), Geobacillus stearothermophilus (75°C), Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (72°C), Bacillus subtilis (70°C) and Bacillus KSM K38 (55°C) and Eukaryotes i.e. Aspergillus oryzae (60°C) were selected from NCBI. Primary structure composition analysis and Conserved sequence analysis were conducted through Bio Edit tools. Results from BioEdit shown only three conserved regions of base pairs and least similarity in MSA of the above mentioned alpha amylases. In Mega 5.1 Phylogeny of thermo stable alpha amylases of Kingdom Archea, Prokaryotes and Eukaryote was handled by Neighbor-Joining (NJ) algorithm. Mega 5.1 phylogenetic results suggested that alpha amylases of thermo stable organisms i.e. Pyrococcus furiosus (100-105°C), Bacillus licheniformis (90-95°C), Geobacillus stearothermophilus (75°C) and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (72°C) are more distantly related as compared to less thermo stable organisms. By keeping in mind the characteristics of most thermo stable alpha amylases novel and improved features can be introduced in less thermo stable alpha amylases so that they become more thermo tolerant and productive for industry.

Mason: a JavaScript web site widget for visualizing and comparing annotated features in nucleotide or protein sequences.

Science.gov (United States)

Jaschob, Daniel; Davis, Trisha N; Riffle, Michael

2015-03-07

Sequence feature annotations (e.g., protein domain boundaries, binding sites, and secondary structure predictions) are an essential part of biological research. Annotations are widely used by scientists during research and experimental design, and are frequently the result of biological studies. A generalized and simple means of disseminating and visualizing these data via the web would be of value to the research community. Mason is a web site widget designed to visualize and compare annotated features of one or more nucleotide or protein sequence. Annotated features may be of virtually any type, ranging from annotating transcription binding sites or exons and introns in DNA to secondary structure or domain boundaries in proteins. Mason is simple to use and easy to integrate into web sites. Mason has a highly dynamic and configurable interface supporting multiple sets of annotations per sequence, overlapping regions, customization of interface and user-driven events (e.g., clicks and text to appear for tooltips). It is written purely in JavaScript and SVG, requiring no 3(rd) party plugins or browser customization. Mason is a solution for dissemination of sequence annotation data on the web. It is highly flexible, customizable, simple to use, and is designed to be easily integrated into web sites. Mason is open source and freely available at https://github.com/yeastrc/mason.

Comparison of C. elegans and C. briggsae genome sequences reveals extensive conservation of chromosome organization and synteny.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

LaDeana W Hillier

2007-07-01

Full Text Available To determine whether the distinctive features of Caenorhabditis elegans chromosomal organization are shared with the C. briggsae genome, we constructed a single nucleotide polymorphism-based genetic map to order and orient the whole genome shotgun assembly along the six C. briggsae chromosomes. Although these species are of the same genus, their most recent common ancestor existed 80-110 million years ago, and thus they are more evolutionarily distant than, for example, human and mouse. We found that, like C. elegans chromosomes, C. briggsae chromosomes exhibit high levels of recombination on the arms along with higher repeat density, a higher fraction of intronic sequence, and a lower fraction of exonic sequence compared with chromosome centers. Despite extensive intrachromosomal rearrangements, 1:1 orthologs tend to remain in the same region of the chromosome, and colinear blocks of orthologs tend to be longer in chromosome centers compared with arms. More strikingly, the two species show an almost complete conservation of synteny, with 1:1 orthologs present on a single chromosome in one species also found on a single chromosome in the other. The conservation of both chromosomal organization and synteny between these two distantly related species suggests roles for chromosome organization in the fitness of an organism that are only poorly understood presently.

Assessment of plasminogen synthesis in vitro by mouse tumor cells using a competition radioimmunoassay for mouse plasminogen

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Roblin, R.O.; Bell, T.E.; Young, P.L.

1978-01-01

A sensitive, specific competition radioimmunoassay for mouse plasmin(ogen) has been developed in order to determine whether mouse tumor cells can synthesize plasminogen in vitro. The rabbit anti-BALB/c mouse plasminogen antibodies used in the assay react with the plasminogen present in serum from BALB/c, C3H, AKR and C57BL/6 mice, and also recognized mouse plasmin. The competition radiommunoassay can detect as little as 50 ng of mouse plasminogen. No competition was observed with preparations of fetal calf, human and rabbit plasminogens. A variety of virus-transformed and mouse tumor cell lines were all found to contain less than 100 ng mouse plasminogen/mg of cell extract protein. Thus, if the plasminogen activator/plasmin system is important in the growth or movement of this group of tumor cells, the cells will be dependent upon the circulatory system of the host for their plasminogen supply. (Auth.)

Nonparametric combinatorial sequence models.

Science.gov (United States)

Wauthier, Fabian L; Jordan, Michael I; Jojic, Nebojsa

2011-11-01

This work considers biological sequences that exhibit combinatorial structures in their composition: groups of positions of the aligned sequences are "linked" and covary as one unit across sequences. If multiple such groups exist, complex interactions can emerge between them. Sequences of this kind arise frequently in biology but methodologies for analyzing them are still being developed. This article presents a nonparametric prior on sequences which allows combinatorial structures to emerge and which induces a posterior distribution over factorized sequence representations. We carry out experiments on three biological sequence families which indicate that combinatorial structures are indeed present and that combinatorial sequence models can more succinctly describe them than simpler mixture models. We conclude with an application to MHC binding prediction which highlights the utility of the posterior distribution over sequence representations induced by the prior. By integrating out the posterior, our method compares favorably to leading binding predictors.

Sequence-based prediction of protein-binding sites in DNA: comparative study of two SVM models.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Byungkyu; Im, Jinyong; Tuvshinjargal, Narankhuu; Lee, Wook; Han, Kyungsook

2014-11-01

As many structures of protein-DNA complexes have been known in the past years, several computational methods have been developed to predict DNA-binding sites in proteins. However, its inverse problem (i.e., predicting protein-binding sites in DNA) has received much less attention. One of the reasons is that the differences between the interaction propensities of nucleotides are much smaller than those between amino acids. Another reason is that DNA exhibits less diverse sequence patterns than protein. Therefore, predicting protein-binding DNA nucleotides is much harder than predicting DNA-binding amino acids. We computed the interaction propensity (IP) of nucleotide triplets with amino acids using an extensive dataset of protein-DNA complexes, and developed two support vector machine (SVM) models that predict protein-binding nucleotides from sequence data alone. One SVM model predicts protein-binding nucleotides using DNA sequence data alone, and the other SVM model predicts protein-binding nucleotides using both DNA and protein sequences. In a 10-fold cross-validation with 1519 DNA sequences, the SVM model that uses DNA sequence data only predicted protein-binding nucleotides with an accuracy of 67.0%, an F-measure of 67.1%, and a Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.340. With an independent dataset of 181 DNAs that were not used in training, it achieved an accuracy of 66.2%, an F-measure 66.3% and a MCC of 0.324. Another SVM model that uses both DNA and protein sequences achieved an accuracy of 69.6%, an F-measure of 69.6%, and a MCC of 0.383 in a 10-fold cross-validation with 1519 DNA sequences and 859 protein sequences. With an independent dataset of 181 DNAs and 143 proteins, it showed an accuracy of 67.3%, an F-measure of 66.5% and a MCC of 0.329. Both in cross-validation and independent testing, the second SVM model that used both DNA and protein sequence data showed better performance than the first model that used DNA sequence data. To the best of

A Single Amino Acid Difference between Mouse and Human 5-Lipoxygenase Activating Protein (FLAP) Explains the Speciation and Differential Pharmacology of Novel FLAP Inhibitors.

Science.gov (United States)

Blevitt, Jonathan M; Hack, Michael D; Herman, Krystal; Chang, Leon; Keith, John M; Mirzadegan, Tara; Rao, Navin L; Lebsack, Alec D; Milla, Marcos E

2016-06-10

5-Lipoxygenase activating protein (FLAP) plays a critical role in the metabolism of arachidonic acid to leukotriene A4, the precursor to the potent pro-inflammatory mediators leukotriene B4 and leukotriene C4 Studies with small molecule inhibitors of FLAP have led to the discovery of a drug binding pocket on the protein surface, and several pharmaceutical companies have developed compounds and performed clinical trials. Crystallographic studies and mutational analyses have contributed to a general understanding of compound binding modes. During our own efforts, we identified two unique chemical series. One series demonstrated strong inhibition of human FLAP but differential pharmacology across species and was completely inactive in assays with mouse or rat FLAP. The other series was active across rodent FLAP, as well as human and dog FLAP. Comparison of rodent and human FLAP amino acid sequences together with an analysis of a published crystal structure led to the identification of amino acid residue 24 in the floor of the putative binding pocket as a likely candidate for the observed speciation. On that basis, we tested compounds for binding to human G24A and mouse A24G FLAP mutant variants and compared the data to that generated for wild type human and mouse FLAP. These studies confirmed that a single amino acid mutation was sufficient to reverse the speciation observed in wild type FLAP. In addition, a PK/PD method was established in canines to enable preclinical profiling of mouse-inactive compounds. © 2016 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

Cloning and analysis of the mouse Fanconi anemia group A cDNA and an overlapping penta zinc finger cDNA.

Science.gov (United States)

Wong, J C; Alon, N; Norga, K; Kruyt, F A; Youssoufian, H; Buchwald, M

2000-08-01

Despite the cloning of four disease-associated genes for Fanconi anemia (FA), the molecular pathogenesis of FA remains largely unknown. To study FA complementation group A using the mouse as a model system, we cloned and characterized the mouse homolog of the human FANCA cDNA. The mouse cDNA (Fanca) encodes a 161-kDa protein that shares 65% amino acid sequence identity with human FANCA. Fanca is located at the distal region of mouse chromosome 8 and has a ubiquitous pattern of expression in embryonic and adult tissues. Expression of the mouse cDNA in human FA-A cells restores the cellular drug sensitivity to normal levels. Thus, the expression pattern, protein structure, chromosomal location, and function of FANCA are conserved in the mouse. We also isolated a novel zinc finger protein, Zfp276, which has five C(2)H(2) domains. Interestingly, Zfp276 is situated in the Fanca locus, and the 3'UTR of its cDNA overlaps with the last four exons of Fanca in a tail-to-tail manner. Zfp276 is expressed in the same tissues as Fanca, but does not complement the mitomycin C (MMC)-sensitive phenotype of FA-A cells. The overlapping genomic organization between Zfp276 and Fanca may have relevance to the disease phenotype of FA. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Generation and Characterization of a Transgenic Mouse Carrying a Functional Human β-Globin Gene with the IVSI-6 Thalassemia Mutation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Giulia Breveglieri

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Mouse models that carry mutations causing thalassemia represent a suitable tool to test in vivo new mutation-specific therapeutic approaches. Transgenic mice carrying the β-globin IVSI-6 mutation (the most frequent in Middle-Eastern regions and recurrent in Italy and Greece are, at present, not available. We report the production and characterization of a transgenic mouse line (TG-β-IVSI-6 carrying the IVSI-6 thalassemia point mutation within the human β-globin gene. In the TG-β-IVSI-6 mouse (a the transgenic integration region is located in mouse chromosome 7; (b the expression of the transgene is tissue specific; (c as expected, normally spliced human β-globin mRNA is produced, giving rise to β-globin production and formation of a human-mouse tetrameric chimeric hemoglobin αmu-globin2/βhu-globin2 and, more importantly, (d the aberrant β-globin-IVSI-6 RNAs are present in blood cells. The TG-β-IVSI-6 mouse reproduces the molecular features of IVSI-6 β-thalassemia and might be used as an in vivo model to characterize the effects of antisense oligodeoxynucleotides targeting the cryptic sites responsible for the generation of aberrantly spliced β-globin RNA sequences, caused by the IVSI-6 mutation. These experiments are expected to be crucial for the development of a personalized therapy for β-thalassemia.

Generation and Characterization of a Transgenic Mouse Carrying a Functional Human β-Globin Gene with the IVSI-6 Thalassemia Mutation

Science.gov (United States)

Mancini, Irene; Lampronti, Ilaria; Salvatori, Francesca; Fabbri, Enrica; Zuccato, Cristina; Cosenza, Lucia C.; Montagner, Giulia; Borgatti, Monica; Altruda, Fiorella; Fagoonee, Sharmila; Carandina, Gianni; Aiello, Vincenzo; Breda, Laura; Rivella, Stefano; Gambari, Roberto

2015-01-01

Mouse models that carry mutations causing thalassemia represent a suitable tool to test in vivo new mutation-specific therapeutic approaches. Transgenic mice carrying the β-globin IVSI-6 mutation (the most frequent in Middle-Eastern regions and recurrent in Italy and Greece) are, at present, not available. We report the production and characterization of a transgenic mouse line (TG-β-IVSI-6) carrying the IVSI-6 thalassemia point mutation within the human β-globin gene. In the TG-β-IVSI-6 mouse (a) the transgenic integration region is located in mouse chromosome 7; (b) the expression of the transgene is tissue specific; (c) as expected, normally spliced human β-globin mRNA is produced, giving rise to β-globin production and formation of a human-mouse tetrameric chimeric hemoglobin mu α-globin2/hu β-globin2 and, more importantly, (d) the aberrant β-globin-IVSI-6 RNAs are present in blood cells. The TG-β-IVSI-6 mouse reproduces the molecular features of IVSI-6 β-thalassemia and might be used as an in vivo model to characterize the effects of antisense oligodeoxynucleotides targeting the cryptic sites responsible for the generation of aberrantly spliced β-globin RNA sequences, caused by the IVSI-6 mutation. These experiments are expected to be crucial for the development of a personalized therapy for β-thalassemia. PMID:26097845

Sequence and comparative analysis of the chicken genome provide unique perspectives on vertebrate evolution.

Science.gov (United States)

2004-12-09

We present here a draft genome sequence of the red jungle fowl, Gallus gallus. Because the chicken is a modern descendant of the dinosaurs and the first non-mammalian amniote to have its genome sequenced, the draft sequence of its genome--composed of approximately one billion base pairs of sequence and an estimated 20,000-23,000 genes--provides a new perspective on vertebrate genome evolution, while also improving the annotation of mammalian genomes. For example, the evolutionary distance between chicken and human provides high specificity in detecting functional elements, both non-coding and coding. Notably, many conserved non-coding sequences are far from genes and cannot be assigned to defined functional classes. In coding regions the evolutionary dynamics of protein domains and orthologous groups illustrate processes that distinguish the lineages leading to birds and mammals. The distinctive properties of avian microchromosomes, together with the inferred patterns of conserved synteny, provide additional insights into vertebrate chromosome architecture.

Clinical evaluation of further-developed MRCP sequences in comparison with standard MRCP sequences

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hundt, W.; Scheidler, J.; Reiser, M.; Petsch, R.

2002-01-01

The purpose of this study was the comparison of technically improved single-shot magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) sequences with standard single-shot rapid acquisition with relaxation enhancement (RARE) and half-Fourier acquired single-shot turbo spin-echo (HASTE) sequences in evaluating the normal and abnormal biliary duct system. The bile duct system of 45 patients was prospectively investigated on a 1.5-T MRI system. The investigation was performed with RARE and HASTE MR cholangiography sequences with standard and high spatial resolutions, and with a delayed-echo half-Fourier RARE (HASTE) sequence. Findings of the improved MRCP sequences were compared with the standard MRCP sequences. The level of confidence in assessing the diagnosis was divided into five groups. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test at a level of p<0.05 was applied. In 15 patients no pathology was found. The MRCP showed stenoses of the bile duct system in 10 patients and choledocholithiasis and cholecystolithiasis in 16 patients. In 12 patients a dilatation of the bile duct system was found. Comparison of the low- and high spatial resolution sequences and the short and long TE times of the half-Fourier RARE (HASTE) sequence revealed no statistically significant differences regarding accuracy of the examination. The diagnostic confidence level in assessing normal or pathological findings for the high-resolution RARE and half-Fourier RARE (HASTE) was significantly better than for the standard sequences. For the delayed-echo half-Fourier RARE (HASTE) sequence no statistically significant difference was seen. The high-resolution RARE and half-Fourier RARE (HASTE) sequences had a higher confidence level, but there was no significant difference in diagnosis in terms of detection and assessment of pathological changes in the biliary duct system compared with standard sequences. (orig.)

A novel bioinformatics method for efficient knowledge discovery by BLSOM from big genomic sequence data.