Project description:Progranulin (PGRN) haploinsufficiency is a major risk factor for Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration with TDP-43 pathology (FTLD-TDP). Protein replacement therapeutic strategies are currently in clinical development, intended to restore PGRN levels in the central nervous system and slow or halt disease progression. However, such approaches require repeated dosing. Here, we explored the use of adeno-associated virus (AAV) to achieve sustained expression of a brain penetrant PGRN fusion protein, composed of a single chain variable fragment (scFv) recognizing mouse transferrin receptor (TfR) fused to human PGRN (AAV(L):bPGRN). We evaluated this approach for its ability to rescue pathological phenotypes in a double knockout mouse model lacking both PGRN and TMEM106b. A single administration of AAV(L):bPGRN reduced FTLD-TDP associated pathologies including severe motor function deficits, formation of insoluble, abnormally processed and phosphorylated TDP-43, as well as dysfunctional protein degradation, lipid dysregulation and gliosis.
Project description:Transposable elements hold regulatory functions to impact cell fate determination by controlling gene expression, which when altered can promote oncogenesis. Despite accounting for half of the human genome, little is known about the transcriptional mechanisms that confer regulatory properties to transposable elements in pluripotent, mature versus oncogenic cell states. Through positional analysis over repetitive DNA sequence of H3K27ac ChIP-seq from 32 different normal cell and tissue states, we report pluripotent stem and mature cell states-specific “regulatory transposable elements”. Those specific to pluripotent stem cells are binding sites for the pluripotency factors NANOG, SOX2 and OCT4. In mature cell and tissue states, regulatory transposable elements are docking sites for lineage-specific transcription factors, such as AR and FOXA1 in benign prostate epithelium. Expanding the positional analysis to localized prostate tumors, we show how cancer cell states remaining dependent on AR share regulatory transposable elements with pluripotent stem cells. These include regulatory transposable elements, such as Tigger3a, that serve as binding sites for AR and whose regulatory functions are required for prostate cancer cell growth. Together, our results suggest that oncogenesis differs from normal cell fate determination by hijacking pluripotent stem cells regulatory transposable elements that serve as docking sites for lineage-specific transcription factors.
Project description:Pleurotus ostreatus, also known as the oyster mushroom, is an active lignin decomposer in the forests. The genomes of the monokaryotic strains PC15 and PC9 have been used to characterize the content and distribution of transposable elements. This study analyzes the impact of transposable element insertions on the global transcriptome of P. ostreatus. The transcriptome of PC15 and PC9 has been analyzed in exponential growth during submerged fermentation in malt-yeast extract-sucrose medium RNAseq of two P. ostreatus strains: PC15 and PC9
Project description:We analysed changes in transcript levels and alternative splicing in the temporal cortex of individuals of different ages that were cognitively normal, affected by frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), or affected by Alzheimer's disease (AD). Our experiment's purpose is to provide new insights into the gene expression changes that distinguish healthy aging from neurodegeneration and identify the candidate regulators of alternative splicing that are associated with both processes.
Project description:A major challenge in biology is to determine how evolutionarily novel characters originate, however, mechanistic explanations for the origin of novelties are almost completely unknown. The evolution of mammalianM-BM- pregnancy is an excellent system in which to study the origin of novelties because extant mammals preserve major stages in the transition from egg-laying to live-birth. To determine the molecular bases of this transition we characterized the pregnant/gravid uterine transcriptome from tetrapods, including species in the three major mammalian lineages, and used ancestral transcriptome reconstruction to trace the evolutionary history of uterine gene expression. We show that thousands of genes evolved endometrial expression during the origins of mammalian pregnancy, including numerous genes that mediate maternal-fetal communication and immunotolerance.Furthermore we show that thousands of regulatory elements active inM-BM- decidualized human endometrial stromal cellsM-BM- are derived from ancient mammalian transposable elements which provided binding sites for transcription factors that mediate decidualization and endometrial cell-type identity.M-BM- Our results indicate that one of the defining mammalian novelties evolved via domestication of ancient mammalian transposable elements into hormone-responsive regulatory elements throughout the genome. Examination of histone modification and DNAse hypersensitivity in decidualized dESC