Project description:Hypoxia is one of the major driving forces mediating tumor angiogenesis, aggressiveness, as well as resistance to chemo- and radiotherapy. It has also been suggested to play important roles in stem cell maintenance for both normal and cancer tissues. However, the mechanisms by which hypoxia-driven epigenetic changes modulate tumorigenesis remain poorly understood. As the histone H3 lysine 9 (H3K9) demethylase Jmjd1a and methyltransferase G9a are upregulated downstream targets of hypoxia, we focused on these two catalytically opposing epigenetic modifiers to address this question. Through the use of homozygous Jmjd1a and G9a knockout mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, we found that Jmjd1a was not required for stem cell self-renewal and that anti-angiogenesis related genes were epigenetically dysregulated in both Jmjd1a- and G9a deficient ES cells under hypoxic conditions, accompanied by corresponding changes in H3K9 dimethylation and H3K4 trimethylation levels in the proximal promoter regions of these target genes. Most importantly, these genetic alterations led to opposing tumor phenotypes: loss of Jmjd1a results in increased tumor growth, whereas loss of G9a produces smaller tumors. These findings provide new insights on the importance of hypoxia signalling in regulating the epigenetic status and expression of angiogenesis genes that promote tumor progression. 63 microarray samples consisting of 7 mouse ES cell lines of which 2 are wild type (control), 2 Jmjd1a knockout, 2 G9a knockout and 1 G9a knockout that was reconstituted for G9a (G9a control). Each cell line and condition was seeded at 3 different densities (2X10^5, 4X10^5 and 6X10^5) in 6 cm dishes to control for the effects of cell confluency on gene expression. 18 hours after plating, the cells were subjected to normoxia (21% O2) for 24 hours (control), normoxia 20 hours followed by hypoxia (1% O2) for 4 hours (acute hypoxia) and 24 hours hypoxia (chronic treatment). Total RNA was harvested from all samples for microarrays after the 24 hour treatments.
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.