Project description:Gene regulation is one of the most ubiquitous processes in biology. And yet, while the catalogue of 15 bacterial genomes continues to expand rapidly, we remain ignorant about how almost all of the genes in 16 these genomes are regulated. Characterizing the molecular mechanisms by which regulatory sequences 17 operate still requires focused efforts using low-throughput methods. Here we show how a combination of 18 massively parallel reporter assays, mass spectrometry, and information-theoretic modeling can be used 19 to dissect bacterial promoters in a systematic and scalable way. We demonstrate this method on both 20 well-studied and previously uncharacterized promoters in the enteric bacterium Escherichia coli. In all 21 cases we recover nucleotide-resolution models of promoter mechanism. For some promoters, including 22 previously unannotated ones, we can further extract quantitative biophysical models describing 23 input-output relationships. This method opens up the possibility of exhaustively dissecting the 24 mechanisms of promoter function in E. coli and a wide range of other bacteria.
Project description:N4-methylcytosine is a major DNA modification integral to restriction-modification (R-M) systems in bacterial genomes. Here we describe 4mC-Tet-Assisted Bisulfite-sequencing (4mC-TAB-seq), a method that accurately and rapidly reveals the genome-wide locations of N4-methylcytosines at single-base resolution. By coupling Tet-mediated oxidation with a modified sodium bisulfite conversion reaction, unmodified cytosines and 5-methylcytosines are read out as thymines, whereas N4-methylcytosines are read out as cytosines revealing their positions throughout the genome. 4mC-TAB-seq