Project description:We set up a pilot study using Affymetrix Gene Chip® Porcine Genome Arrays to evaluate the impact of time lags from death on gene expression profiling of porcine skeletal muscle at four post mortem time points (up to 24 hrs) during the routine processing of fresh tights
Project description:Islet transplantation for treatment of diabetes is limited by availability of donor islets and requirements for immunosuppression. Stem cell-derived islets might circumvent these issues. SC-islets effectively control glucose metabolism post transplantation, but do not yet achieve full function in vitro with currently published differentiation protocols. We aimed to identify markers of mature subpopulations of SC-β cells by studying transcriptional changes associated with in vivo maturation of SC-β cells using RNA-seq and co-expression network analysis. The β cell-specific hormone islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) emerged as the top candidate to be such a marker. IAPP+ cells had more mature β cell gene expression and higher cellular insulin content than IAPP- cells in vitro. IAPP+ INS+ cells were more stable in long-term culture than IAPP- INS+ cells and retained insulin expression after transplantation into mice. Finally, we conducted a small molecule screen to identify compounds that enhance IAPP expression. Aconitine up-regulated IAPP and could help to optimize differentiation protocols.
Project description:Set up and modification of Agilent standard protocols for a new custom 60-mer array for C. acetobutylicum. Keywords: Test of platform and protocols
Project description:We performed an RNA pulldown against a methyl group on the mRNA cap using a fusion protein, GST-eIF4E, highly specific for a m7G-mRNA cap. We performed RNA-seq on both the pulldowns and inputs and normalized our pulldown to input in order to determine which genes MYC targets for mRNA cap methylation above and beyond any affect at the transcriptional level. We found that MYC targets approximately 30% of transcripts for enhanced mRNA cap methylation above 1.2 fold on a global scale following 24 h of MYC induction, specifically transcripts involved in the canonical Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. We used this dataset to validate transcripts targeted by MYC for mRNA cap methylation and to help us determine the mechanism responsible for this phenomenon.
Project description:Cytosine methylation of DNA CpG dinucleotides in gene promoters is an epigenetic modification that regulates gene transcription. While many methods exist to interrogate methylation states, no current methods offer large-scale, targeted, single CpG resolution. We report an approach combining bisulfite treatment followed by RainDance microdroplet PCR with next-generation sequencing to assay the methylation state of 50 genes in the regions 1 kb upstream and downstream of their transcription start sites. Wildtype and hypermethylated Jurkat DNA (New Englad Biolabs) was treated with bisulfite to convert all unmethylated cytosines to uracil. Following bisulfite treatment, targeted amplification was carried out using a custom primer library and microdroplet PCR. PCR product was sheared to 200 bp and ligated to sequencing adapters following standard protocols. Sequencing was conducted with single-end 100 bp reads on an Illumina GAIIx for wild type Jurkat DNA or Jurkat CpG DNA with a single sample per lane.
Project description:A pilot to establish the feasability of using a custom Agilent targeted pulldown of 110 genes implicated in colorectal tumourigensis to sequence for driver mutations in a set of 30 FFPE colorectal adenomas. If successful, we propose to sequence an additional 350 adenomas as part of a MRC research study in order to define the pattern of driver mutations across the spectrum of pathological subtypes including coventional adenomas, serrated adenomas and hyperplastic polyps
Project description:The objective of this study is to resequence of targeted intervals containing autosomal recessive variants causing neurological disorders in consanguineous pedigrees. Using homozygosity mapping, three intervals of very different sizes have previously been unambiguously mapped for three different neurological diseases: 2.4Mb, 8Mb and 14.3Mb in size, for Microlissencephaly, Severe Mental Retardation and Complicated hereditary spastic paraplegia respectively. This study is a pilot to assess how well custom targeted resequencing performs across a broad size range of intervals. The study design is to use a different custom capture probe set for each interval, pulldown from a single patient from each family, and sequence 1 lane using Illumina paired-reads for each sample. Candidate variants will be followed up in the families themselves, and in patients with similar phenotypes from outbred populations
Project description:We propose to definitively characterise the somatic genetics of Triple negative breast cancer through generation of comprehensive catalogues of somatic mutations in 500 cases by high coverage genome sequencing coupled with integrated transcriptomic and methylation analyses. This study will use a bespoke bait set to pulldown regions of interest found in whole genome sequencing to validate mutations found.
Project description:Here we present clear patterns of age-associated changes in DNA methylation in the aquatic vertebrate species Xenopus tropicalis. We selected approximately 3500 sites highly correlated with age from WGBS data from 9 frogs of 3 different age groups (young, approx. 1 year old; mature, approx. 5 years old; old, approx. 9 years old - GSE221656) and designed probes for the development of cost effective targeted bisulfite sequencing (TBSeq) assay. Here, we present the TBSeq assay in sixteen different frogs as a pilot experiment to validate our previous findings.