Project description:Genome duplication has played a pivotal role in the evolution of many eukaryotic lineages, including the vertebrates.The most recent vertebrate genome duplication is that in Xenopus laevis, which resulted from the hybridization of two closely related species about 17 million years ago. Here we generated epigenetic profiles and determined gene expression in X.laevis embryos to study the consequences of this duplication at the level of the genome, the epigenome and gene expression.
Project description:Genome duplication has played a pivotal role in the evolution of many eukaryotic lineages, including the vertebrates. The most recent vertebrate genome duplication is that in Xenopus laevis, which resulted from the hybridization of two closely related species about 17 million years ago. Here we generated epigenetic profiles and determined gene expression in X.laevis embryos to study the consequences of this duplication at the level of the genome, the epigenome, and gene expression.
Project description:Since the early 1980s, the population of European eels (Anguilla anguilla) has dramatically declined. Nowadays, the European eel is listed on the red list of threatened species (IUCN Red List) and is considered as critically endangered of extinction. Pollution is one of the explanations of the collapse of this species. Among their possible effects, pollutants gradually accumulated in eels during their somatic growth phase (yellow eel stage) would be remobilized during their reproductive migration leading to potential toxic events in gonads. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential effect of pollution on the gonad development of wild female silver eels. Female silver eels from two sites with differing contamination levels were artificially matured. Transcriptomic analyses by means of a 1000 candidate gene cDNA microarray were performed on gonads after 11 weeks of maturation. The results showed that the transcription levels of several genes that were associated to the gonadosomatic index (GSI) were involved in mitotic cell division but also in spermatogenesis. Genes associated to pollution were mainly involved in the mechanisms of protection against oxidative stress, in DNA repair, in the purinergic signaling pathway and in steroidogenesis, suggesting an impairment of gonad development in eels from the polluted site. This was in agreement with the fact that eels from the reference site showed a higher gonad growth in comparison to contaminated fish.
2015-01-01 | GSE64278 | GEO
Project description:Natural selection maintains species despite frequent hybridization in the desert shrub Encelia
Project description:Here we characterize microglia transcriptional program across ten species spanning more than 450 million years of evolution. We find that microglia express a conserved core gene program of orthologous genes from rodents to human, including ligands and receptors associated with interactions between glia and neurons. In most species, microglia show a single dominant transcriptional state, while humans express significant microglia heterogeneity. In addition, we observed notable differences in complement, phagocytic and several critical signaling pathways that are enriched with susceptibility genes to brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease in microglia of common animal models as compared to human. Our study provides an essential resource of conserved and divergent microglia pathways across evolution with important implications for future development of microglia-based therapies in humans.
Project description:Here we characterize microglia transcriptional program across ten species spanning more than 450 million years of evolution. We find that microglia express a conserved core gene program of orthologous genes from rodents to human, including ligands and receptors associated with interactions between glia and neurons. In most species, microglia show a single dominant transcriptional state, while humans express significant microglia heterogeneity. In addition, we observed notable differences in complement, phagocytic and several critical signaling pathways that are enriched with susceptibility genes to brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease in microglia of common animal models as compared to human. Our study provides an essential resource of conserved and divergent microglia pathways across evolution with important implications for future development of microglia-based therapies in humans.
Project description:Topological associating domains (TADs) are self-interacting genomic units crucial for shaping gene regulation patterns. Despite their importance, the extent of their evolutionary conservation and its functional implications remain largely unknown. In this study, we generate Hi-C and ChIP-seq data and compare TAD organization across four primate and four rodent species, and characterize the genetic and epigenetic properties of TAD boundaries in correspondence to their evolutionary conservation. We find 14% of all human TAD boundaries to be shared among all eight species (ultraconserved), while 15% are human-specific. Ultraconserved TAD boundaries have stronger insulation strength, CTCF binding, and enrichment of older retrotransposons, compared to species-specific boundaries. CRISPR-Cas9 knockouts of two ultraconserved boundaries in mouse models leads to tissue-specific gene expression changes and morphological phenotypes. Deletion of a human-specific boundary near the autism-related AUTS2 gene results in upregulation of this gene in neurons. Overall, our study provides pertinent TAD boundary evolutionary conservation annotations, and showcase the functional importance of TAD evolution.
Project description:Ecotoxicogenomic studies face the problem of the lack of gene sequence information available for toxicologically relevant non-model pollution sentinel species. In this sense, next generation sequencing technologies allow obtaining deep de novo sequence information cost-effectively. We have thus employed the platform GS-FLX of Roche technologies, in order to sequence the multitissue transcriptome of a fish species under severe population decline, the European eel (Anguilla anguilla), using normalized cDNA (Evrogen). The European eel could be successfully employed in pollution biomonitoring studies as it is a euryhaline teleost that is quite resistant to chemical exposure. We have completed a one whole plate sequencing-run using the Titanium kit of Roche from which a total of 7.8x105 reads were obtained with a length average of 303.53 bp. Annotated genes, for instance, could be further assessed as biomarkers of exposure to specific chemical compounds in marine, estuarine and river waters. Designed tool will be thus useful, in the study of: a.- the mode of action of chemical compounds in active monitoring studies using caged eels, b.- the physiological processes that are specific to freshwater eels such as the one of sexual development and reproduction, c.- reasons that could explain the disappearance of the species from European waters. In the first context, a caging experiment was performed to measure the putative effects of a paper industry effluent on eel hepatic transcription levels. For this purpose, eels were caged upstream and downstream to the SMURFFIT-KAPPA paper industry in Iurreta (Biscay, Basque Country). Thus, hepatic transcription profiles reflect the stress levels suffered by eels. The experiment contains a time serial sampling: T0 = before sampling; T1 = after 3 days of exposure; T2=after 15 days of exposure. In addition, caged eels were placed in 2 sites, Upstream (Up) and Downstream (Do) of the hotspot. 6 samples were dissected per sampling group (5 groups= ToUP; T1UP; T1Do; T2Up; T2Do), 30 samples in total