Project description:we used DNA microarray analysis to identify genes that are induced by neuronal activity in excitatory neurons at the time when inhibitory synapses are forming and maturing on them. Experiment Overall Design: We cultured cortical neurons for 7 DIV until the process of inhibitory synapse development was underway, and then depolarized the neurons with 50 mM of KCl to activate L-type voltage-sensitive calcium channels (L-VSCCs) for 0, 1 or 6 hours, the cells were lysed, mRNA isolated and hybridized to Affymetrix arrays. Data were collected from 3 independent experiments.
Project description:Introgressed variants from other species can be an important source of genetic variation because they may arise rapidly, can include multiple mutations on a single haplotype, and have often been pretested by selection in the species of origin. Although introgressed alleles are generally deleterious, several studies have reported introgression as the source of adaptive alleles-including the rodenticide-resistant variant of Vkorc1 that introgressed from Mus spretus into European populations of Mus musculus domesticus. Here, we conducted bidirectional genome scans to characterize introgressed regions into one wild population of M. spretus from Spain and three wild populations of M. m. domesticus from France, Germany, and Iran. Despite the fact that these species show considerable intrinsic postzygotic reproductive isolation, introgression was observed in all individuals, including in the M. musculus reference genome (GRCm38). Mus spretus individuals had a greater proportion of introgression compared with M. m. domesticus, and within M. m. domesticus, the proportion of introgression decreased with geographic distance from the area of sympatry. Introgression was observed on all autosomes for both species, but not on the X-chromosome in M. m. domesticus, consistent with known X-linked hybrid sterility and inviability genes that have been mapped to the M. spretus X-chromosome. Tract lengths were generally short with a few outliers of up to 2.7 Mb. Interestingly, the longest introgressed tracts were in olfactory receptor regions, and introgressed tracts were significantly enriched for olfactory receptor genes in both species, suggesting that introgression may be a source of functional novelty even between species with high barriers to gene flow.
Project description:This experiment comprises RNA-seq data used to study evolutionary differences between humans and mice in neuronal activity-dependent transcriptional responses. Activity-dependent transcriptional responses in developing human stem cell-derived cortical neurons were compared with those induced in developing primary- or stem cell-derived mouse cortical neurons 4 hours after KCl-induced membrane depolarisation. Activity-dependent transcriptional responses were also measured in aneuploid mouse neurons carrying human chromosome 21, allowing study of the regulation of Hsa21 genes, plus their mouse orthologs, side-by-side in the same cellular environment of a mouse primary neuron.