Dataset Information

Evolution of the Exon-Intron Structure in Ciliate Genomes.

ABSTRACT: A typical eukaryotic gene is comprised of alternating stretches of regions, exons and introns, retained in and spliced out a mature mRNA, respectively. Although the length of introns may vary substantially among organisms, a large fraction of genes contains short introns in many species. Notably, some Ciliates (Paramecium and Nyctotherus) possess only ultra-short introns, around 25 bp long. In Paramecium, ultra-short introns with length divisible by three (3n) are under strong evolutionary pressure and have a high frequency of in-frame stop codons, which, in the case of intron retention, cause premature termination of mRNA translation and consequent degradation of the mis-spliced mRNA by the nonsense-mediated decay mechanism. Here, we analyzed introns in five genera of Ciliates, Paramecium, Tetrahymena, Ichthyophthirius, Oxytricha, and Stylonychia. Introns can be classified into two length classes in Tetrahymena and Ichthyophthirius (with means 48 bp, 69 bp, and 55 bp, 64 bp, respectively), but, surprisingly, comprise three distinct length classes in Oxytricha and Stylonychia (with means 33-35 bp, 47-51 bp, and 78-80 bp). In most ranges of the intron lengths, 3n introns are underrepresented and have a high frequency of in-frame stop codons in all studied species. Introns of Paramecium, Tetrahymena, and Ichthyophthirius are preferentially located at the 5' and 3' ends of genes, whereas introns of Oxytricha and Stylonychia are strongly skewed towards the 5' end. Analysis of evolutionary conservation shows that, in each studied genome, a significant fraction of intron positions is conserved between the orthologs, but intron lengths are not correlated between the species. In summary, our study provides a detailed characterization of introns in several genera of Ciliates and highlights some of their distinctive properties, which, together, indicate that splicing spellchecking is a universal and evolutionarily conserved process in the biogenesis of short introns in various representatives of Ciliates.

SUBMITTER: Bondarenko VS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5014332 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evolution of the Exon-Intron Structure in Ciliate Genomes.

Bondarenko Vladyslav S VS Gelfand Mikhail S MS

PloS one 20160907 9

A typical eukaryotic gene is comprised of alternating stretches of regions, exons and introns, retained in and spliced out a mature mRNA, respectively. Although the length of introns may vary substantially among organisms, a large fraction of genes contains short introns in many species. Notably, some Ciliates (Paramecium and Nyctotherus) possess only ultra-short introns, around 25 bp long. In Paramecium, ultra-short introns with length divisible by three (3n) are under strong evolutionary press ...[more]

PMID: 27603699

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Project description:BackgroundMost eukaryotic genes are interrupted by spliceosomal introns. The evolution of exon-intron structure remains mysterious despite rapid advance in genome sequencing technique. In this work, a novel approach is taken based on the assumptions that the evolution of exon-intron structure is a stochastic process, and that the characteristics of this process can be understood by examining its historical outcome, the present-day size distribution of internal translated exons (exon). Through the combination of simulation and modeling the size distribution of exons in different species, we propose a general random fragmentation process (GRFP) to characterize the evolution dynamics of exon-intron structure. This model accurately predicts the probability that an exon will be split by a new intron and the distribution of novel insertions along the length of the exon.ResultsAs the first observation from this model, we show that the chance for an exon to obtain an intron is proportional to its size to the 3rd power. We also show that such size dependence is nearly constant across gene, with the exception of the exons adjacent to the 5' UTR. As the second conclusion from the model, we show that intron insertion loci follow a normal distribution with a mean of 0.5 (center of the exon) and a standard deviation of 0.11. Finally, we show that intron insertions within a gene are independent of each other for vertebrates, but are more negatively correlated for non-vertebrate. We use simulation to demonstrate that the negative correlation might result from significant intron loss during evolution, which could be explained by selection against multi-intron genes in these organisms.ConclusionsThe GRFP model suggests that intron gain is dynamic with a higher chance for longer exons; introns are inserted into exons randomly with the highest probability at the center of the exon. GRFP estimates that there are 78 introns in every 10 kb coding sequences for vertebrate genomes, agreeing with empirical observations. GRFP also estimates that there are significant intron losses in the evolution of non-vertebrate genomes, with extreme cases of around 57% intron loss in Drosophila melanogaster, 28% in Caenorhabditis elegans, and 24% in Oryza sativa.

Project description:BackgroundInvertebrate and vertebrate GATA transcription factors play important roles in ectoderm and mesendoderm development, as well as in cardiovascular and blood cell fate specification. However, the assignment of evolutionarily conserved roles to GATA homologs requires a detailed framework of orthologous relationships. Although two distinct classes, GATA123 and GATA456, have been unambiguously recognized among deuterostome GATA genes, it has been difficult to resolve exact orthologous relationships among protostome homologs. Protostome GATA genes are often present in multiple copies within any one genome, and rapidly evolving gene sequences have obscured orthology among arthropod and nematode GATA homologs. In addition, a lack of taxonomic sampling has prevented a stepwise reconstruction of protostome GATA gene family evolution.ResultsWe have identified the complete GATA complement (53 genes) from a diverse sampling of protostome genomes, including six arthropods, three lophotrochozoans, and two nematodes. Reciprocal best hit BLAST analysis suggested orthology of these GATA genes to either the ancestral bilaterian GATA123 or the GATA456 class. Using molecular phylogenetic analyses of gene sequences, together with conserved synteny and comparisons of intron/exon structure, we inferred the evolutionary relationships among these 53 protostome GATA homologs. In particular, we resolved the orthology and evolutionary birth order of all arthropod GATA homologs including the highly divergent Drosophila GATA genes.ConclusionOur combined analyses confirm that all protostome GATA transcription factor genes are members of either the GATA123 or GATA456 class, and indicate that there have been multiple protostome-specific duplications of GATA456 homologs. Three GATA456 genes exhibit linkage in multiple protostome species, suggesting that this gene cluster arose by tandem duplications from an ancestral GATA456 gene. Within arthropods this GATA456 cluster appears orthologous and widely conserved. Furthermore, the intron/exon structures of the arthropod GATA456 orthologs suggest a distinct order of gene duplication events. At present, however, the evolutionary relationship to similarly linked GATA456 paralogs in lophotrochozoans remains unclear. Our study shows how sampling of additional genomic data, especially from less derived and interspersed protostome taxa, can be used to resolve the orthologous relationships within more divergent gene families.

Project description:BACKGROUND:In-depth study of the intron retention levels of transcripts provide insights on the mechanisms regulating pre-mRNA splicing efficiency. Additionally, detailed analysis of retained introns can link these introns to post-transcriptional regulation or identify aberrant splicing events in human diseases. RESULTS:We present IntEREst, Intron-Exon Retention Estimator, an R package that supports rigorous analysis of non-annotated intron retention events (in addition to the ones annotated by RefSeq or similar databases), and support intra-sample in addition to inter-sample comparisons. It accepts binary sequence alignment/map (.bam) files as input and determines genome-wide estimates of intron retention or exon-exon junction levels. Moreover, it includes functions for comparing subsets of user-defined introns (e.g. U12-type vs U2-type) and its plotting functions allow visualization of the distribution of the retention levels of the introns. Statistical methods are adapted from the DESeq2, edgeR and DEXSeq R packages to extract the significantly more or less retained introns. Analyses can be performed either sequentially (on single core) or in parallel (on multiple cores). We used IntEREst to investigate the U12- and U2-type intron retention in human and plant RNAseq dataset with defects in the U12-dependent spliceosome due to mutations in the ZRSR2 component of this spliceosome. Additionally, we compared the retained introns discovered by IntEREst with that of other methods and studies. CONCLUSION:IntEREst is an R package for Intron retention and exon-exon junction levels analysis of RNA-seq data. Both the human and plant analyses show that the U12-type introns are retained at higher level compared to the U2-type introns already in the control samples, but the retention is exacerbated in patient or plant samples carrying a mutated ZRSR2 gene. Intron retention events caused by ZRSR2 mutation that we discovered using IntEREst (DESeq2 based function) show considerable overlap with the retained introns discovered by other methods (e.g. IRFinder and edgeR based function of IntEREst). Our results indicate that increase in both the number of biological replicates and the depth of sequencing library promote the discovery of retained introns, but the effect of library size gradually decreases with more than 35 million reads mapped to the introns.

Dataset Information

Evolution of the Exon-Intron Structure in Ciliate Genomes.

Publications

Evolution of the Exon-Intron Structure in Ciliate Genomes.

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