Project description:Huntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited genetic disease caused by mutant huntingtin (htt) protein with expanded polyglutamine tracts. A neuropathological hallmark of HD is the presence of neuronal inclusions of mutant htt. p62 is an important regulatory protein in selective autophagy, a process by which aggregated proteins are degraded, and it is associated with several neurodegenerative disorders including HD. Here we investigated the effect of p62 depletion in three HD model mice: R6/2, HD190QG and HD120QG mice. We found that loss of p62 in these models led to longer lifespans and reduced nuclear inclusions, although cytoplasmic inclusions increased with polyglutamine length. In mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) with or without p62, mutant htt with a nuclear localization signal (NLS) showed no difference in nuclear inclusion between the two MEF types. In the case of mutant htt without NLS, however, p62 depletion increased cytoplasmic inclusions. Furthermore, to examine the effect of impaired autophagy in HD model mice, we crossed R6/2 mice with Atg5 conditional knockout mice. These mice also showed decreased nuclear inclusions and increased cytoplasmic inclusions, similar to HD mice lacking p62. These data suggest that the genetic ablation of p62 in HD model mice enhances cytoplasmic inclusion formation by interrupting autophagic clearance of polyQ inclusions. This reduces polyQ nuclear influx and paradoxically ameliorates disease phenotypes by decreasing toxic nuclear inclusions. Gene expression profiles were analyzed to examine the effects of p62 depletion in mouse with or without mutant huntingtin exon 1 To examine the effect of p62 depletion on the transcriptome of Huntington's disease model mice, we crossed p62 knockout mice with HD model mice. We extracted total RNA from the striatum of these mice at 8 weeks and used for a microaaray analysis. The samples are HD transgenic mice with p62 knockout (HD_p62KO), HD mice with normal p62 (HD_p62WT), non-HD-transgenic mice with p62 knockout (NT_p62KO), and non-HD-transgenic mice with normal p62 (NT_p62WT).

Project description:Chromosome segregation errors have been linked to DNA damage and genomic rearrangements. Accumulating evidence has shown that catastrophic genomic rearrangements, like chromothripsis, can result from lagging chromosomes undergoing aberrant DNA replication and DNA damage in micronuclei. Detailed characterization of genomic rearrangements resulting from DNA damage in micronuclei has been hampered because of difficulties in culturing daughter cells with DNA damage. Here, we employ a method by which a specific single chromosome is trapped in a micronucleus, followed by transfer to an acceptor cell. Next, stably propagating clonal cell lines with an extra chromosome were established and analyzed by copy number profiling and whole genome sequencing. While non-transformed, p53 proficient and telomerase-immortalized RPE1 cells showed a stable genome following addition of the transferred chromosome, we observed frequent de novo genomic rearrangements in cells derived from the HCT116 colorectal cancer cell line after chromosome transfer. The de novo rearrangements varied from simple deletions and duplications to complex rearrangements. Phase-informative SNPs revealed that the rearrangements specifically occurred on the transferred chromosome. We found that the complex rearrangements recapitulated all features of chromothripsis, including massive oscillation between two copy number states, localization to a single chromosome, random joining of chromosome fragments and non-homologous or micro-homologous repair. We describe an approach that enables the isolation of clonal cell lines with genomic rearrangements and chromothripsis on a specific chromosome in p53 proficient cells. The procedure enables further investigation of the exact mechanism leading to chromothripsis and the analysis of its consequences for cell survival (viability) and cancer development. We analyzed 38 cell clones, originating from HCT116 or RPE1 cells respectively, with Illumina beadchip arrays to test for unique de novo copy number variants and to determine the chromosome affacted by the CNAs.

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A p62-dependent rheostat dictates micronuclei catastrophe and chromosome rearrangements A p62-dependent rheostat dictates micronuclei catastrophe and chromosome rearrangements

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