Dataset Information

Conserved noncoding sequences provide insights into regulatory sequence and loss of gene expression in maize.

ABSTRACT: Thousands of species will be sequenced in the next few years; however, understanding how their genomes work, without an unlimited budget, requires both molecular and novel evolutionary approaches. We developed a sensitive sequence alignment pipeline to identify conserved noncoding sequences (CNSs) in the Andropogoneae tribe (multiple crop species descended from a common ancestor ∼18 million years ago). The Andropogoneae share similar physiology while being tremendously genomically diverse, harboring a broad range of ploidy levels, structural variation, and transposons. These contribute to the potential of Andropogoneae as a powerful system for studying CNSs and are factors we leverage to understand the function of maize CNSs. We found that 86% of CNSs were comprised of annotated features, including introns, UTRs, putative cis-regulatory elements, chromatin loop anchors, noncoding RNA (ncRNA) genes, and several transposable element superfamilies. CNSs were enriched in active regions of DNA replication in the early S phase of the mitotic cell cycle and showed different DNA methylation ratios compared to the genome-wide background. More than half of putative cis-regulatory sequences (identified via other methods) overlapped with CNSs detected in this study. Variants in CNSs were associated with gene expression levels, and CNS absence contributed to loss of gene expression. Furthermore, the evolution of CNSs was associated with the functional diversification of duplicated genes in the context of maize subgenomes. Our results provide a quantitative understanding of the molecular processes governing the evolution of CNSs in maize.

SUBMITTER: Song B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8256870 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Here we focus on identifying conserved elements that are required for Chaserr function, a lncRNA that we recently characterized as being essential for mouse viability (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13075-8). Chaserr is highly conserved in different species, and is located in close proximity (<2kb) to the transcription start site of CHD2. It acts in concert with the CHD2 protein to maintain proper Chd2 expression levels. Using the LncLOOM framework we identified AUGG enriched conserved elements which are located in the last exon of mouse Chaserr. In order to identify proteins that potentially bind to these conserved regions, we used in vitro transcription to generate the following biotinylated RNAs; along with their antisense controls: 1) The WT sequence, containing the first 322 nt of the last exon of Chaserr (bases 764–1086 of the NR_037601 isoform). An antisense control fragment was also prepared, labelled as AWT 2) The mutant conserved (MC) sequence, that contained AUGG→UACC mutations in four conserved motifs that were found using LncLOOM. An antisense control fragment was also prepared, labelled as AMC 3) The muatant all (MA) sequence in which all seven of the AUGG sites in the last exon were mutated to UACC. An antisense control fragment was also prepared, labelled as AMA 4) We also included a No Probe Control, which did not contain an RNA fragment. The fragments were incubated with N2a cell lysates followed by RNA-pulldown and Mass Spec analysis. The experiment was performed in triplicate. A total of 938 proteins were found to associate with the WT sequence: 74 of these were enriched ≥3-fold compared to the antisense sequence.We identified 9 proteins that had ≥2-fold higher recovery when using the WT sequence compared to both mutants. Included in these proteins was DHX36, which showed the highest enrichment compared to the mutated sequences. We validated the association of DHX36 with Chaserr through RNA immunoprecipitation experiments.

Dataset Information

Conserved noncoding sequences provide insights into regulatory sequence and loss of gene expression in maize.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets