Project description:Little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying mammalian touch transduction. To identify novel candidate transducers, we examined the molecular and cellular basis of touch in one of the most sensitive tactile organs in the animal kingdom, the star of the star-nosed mole. Our findings demonstrate that the trigeminal ganglia innervating the star are enriched in tactile-sensitive neurons, resulting in a higher proportion of light touch fibers and lower proportion of nociceptors compared to the dorsal root ganglia innervating the rest of the body. We exploit this difference using transcriptome analysis of the star-nosed mole sensory ganglia to identify novel candidate mammalian touch and pain transducers. The most enriched candidates are also expressed in mouse somatosesensory ganglia, suggesting they may mediate transduction in diverse species and are not unique to moles. These findings highlight the utility of examining diverse and specialized species to address fundamental questions in mammalian biology. Examination of the transcriptome of 3 trigeminal and 3 dorsal root ganglia
Project description:Little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying mammalian touch transduction. To identify novel candidate transducers, we examined the molecular and cellular basis of touch in one of the most sensitive tactile organs in the animal kingdom, the star of the star-nosed mole. Our findings demonstrate that the trigeminal ganglia innervating the star are enriched in tactile-sensitive neurons, resulting in a higher proportion of light touch fibers and lower proportion of nociceptors compared to the dorsal root ganglia innervating the rest of the body. We exploit this difference using transcriptome analysis of the star-nosed mole sensory ganglia to identify novel candidate mammalian touch and pain transducers. The most enriched candidates are also expressed in mouse somatosesensory ganglia, suggesting they may mediate transduction in diverse species and are not unique to moles. These findings highlight the utility of examining diverse and specialized species to address fundamental questions in mammalian biology.
Project description:Changes in gene regulation have long been though to underlie most phenotypic differences between species. Subterranean rodents, and in particular the naked mole-rat (NMR), have attracted substantial attention due to their proposed phenotypic adaptations, which include hypoxia tolerance, metabolic changes and cancer resistance. However, it is largely unknown what regulatory changes may associate with these phenotypic traits, and whether these are unique to the NMR, the mole-rat clade or also present in other mammals. Here, we undertook a comparative genomics approach to identify genome-wide promoter and enhancer regions harbouring epigenomic hallmarks of regulatory activity, in heart and liver from two mole-rat species (NMR and DMR) and two rodent outgroups. To identify promoters and enhancers displaying robust shifts in regulatory activity in the mole-rat clade, we adapted and applied a phylogenetic modeling approach to quantitatively compare epigenomic signals at orthologous locations, while accounting for phylogenetic distance and inter-species variation. This method identified thousands of orthologous promoter and enhancer regions with increased activity in ancestral or single-species mole-rat branches, as well as hundreds of promoters and enhancers with reduced activity in mole-rats versus other rodents. These elements underlie both shared tissue-specific changes in gene regulation associated with mole-rat evolution, which include metabolic and functional adaptations in heart and liver. Moreover, by comparing mole-rat specific changes in promoters and enhancers between ancestral and single-species branches, our data revealed a number of candidate pathways with stepwise regulatory changes during mole-rat evolution. Lastly, we analysed the genomic properties of non-alignable promoters and enhancers in mole-rats, and report (i) their overlap with specific repetitive elements and transcription factor binding sites; and (ii) their association with metabolic gene functions. On the whole, these comparative analyses reveal mole-rat specific epigenomic changes across orthologous and non-mappable promoters and enhancers - which inform previously reported mole-rat adaptations from a gene regulation perspective.
Project description:To optimize the golden snub-nosed monkey genome annotation, one RNA library of mixed tissues from one individual were constructed using the Illumina mRNA-Seq Prep Kit.
Project description:We performed RNAseq, metabolomics and pathway enrichment analysis on cardiac tissue from naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) and from seven other members of African mole rat genera, Cape mole-rat (Georychus capensis), Cape dune mole-rat (Bathyergus suillus), Common mole-rat (Cryptomys hottentotus hottentotus), Natal mole-rat (C. h. natalenesis), Mahali mole rat (C. h. mahali), Highveld mole-rat (C. h. pretoriae) and Damaraland mole-rats (Fukomys damarensis) representing differing burrow and soil types, degrees of sociality, lifespan and hypoxia tolerance. In addition, we include the evolutionarily highly divergent hottentot golden mole (Ambysomus hottentotus), an Afrotherian subterranean, solitary mammal, and the C57/BL6 laboratory mouse as a standard mammal control. After RNA sequencing, we removed the reads mapped to rRNAs and get rawdata, then we filtered the low quality reads (More than 20% of the bases qualities are lower than 10), reads with adaptors and reads with unknown bases (N bases more than 5%) to get the clean reads. These are the data uploaded.
Project description:BackgroundSpecies of Sarcocystis are parasitic protozoa in poikilothermic and homeothermic animals. Out of the 26 valid species in birds as intermediate hosts, none has been reported in those of the order Musophagiformes, such as the great blue turaco Corythaeola cristata (Vieillot, 1816), which is a bird endemic to Central and Western Africa. The examination of great blue turacos imported from the Central Africa Republic to Czech Republic allowed the morphological and molecular characterization of a new species of Sarcocystis.MethodsFour turacos imported from the Central Africa Republic to a private breeder (Czech Republic) underwent parasitological examination for the presence of sarcocysts through wet mounts of breast, heart and leg muscles. Found parasites were molecularly and histologically studied by four loci (18S rRNA, 28S rRNA, ITS1 and cox1) and haematoxylin and eosin staining, respectively.ResultsThree out of four examined birds harboured numerous sarcocysts in the breast and leg muscles. No macroscopic lesions where observed. Sarcocysts were microscopic, elongate and ribbon-shaped with a wall characterised by the presence of finger-shaped villar protrusions and filled with numerous elongate, banana-shaped bradyzoites, 11.87-14.84 × 2.05-2.92 µm in size. The new species was most closely related to Sarcocystis albifronsi, Sarcocystis anasi, Sarcocystis atraii, Sarcocystis chloropusae, Sarcocystis rileyi, Sarcocystis wenzeli and Sarcocystis sp. isolate from chicken in the four loci.ConclusionsTo our knowledge, this is the first species of Sarcocystis found in a musophagiform bird worldwide. Genetically, S. cristata sp. nov. represents a distinct species. Phylogenetic analyses are useful for predicting potential definitive hosts of the new Sarcocystis species.
Project description:Linking genomic variation to phenotypical traits remains a major challenge in evolutionary genetics. In this study, we use phylogenomic strategies to investigate a distinctive trait among mammals: the development of masculinizing ovotestes in female moles. By combining a chromosome-scale genome assembly of the Iberian mole, Talpa occidentalis, with transcriptomic, epigenetic, and chromatin interaction datasets, we identify rearrangements altering the regulatory landscape of genes with distinct gonadal expression patterns. These include a tandem triplication involving CYP17A1, a gene controlling androgen synthesis, and an intrachromosomal inversion involving the pro-testicular growth factor FGF9, which is heterochronically expressed in mole ovotestes. Transgenic mice with a knock-in mole CYP17A1 enhancer or overexpressing FGF9 showed phenotypes recapitulating mole sexual features. Our results highlight how integrative genomic approaches can reveal the phenotypic impact of noncoding sequence changes.
Project description:Linking genomic variation to phenotypical traits remains a major challenge in evolutionary genetics. In this study, we use phylogenomic strategies to investigate a distinctive trait among mammals: the development of masculinizing ovotestes in female moles. By combining a chromosome-scale genome assembly of the Iberian mole, Talpa occidentalis, with transcriptomic, epigenetic, and chromatin interaction datasets, we identify rearrangements altering the regulatory landscape of genes with distinct gonadal expression patterns. These include a tandem triplication involving CYP17A1, a gene controlling androgen synthesis, and an intrachromosomal inversion involving the pro-testicular growth factor FGF9, which is heterochronically expressed in mole ovotestes. Transgenic mice with a knock-in mole CYP17A1 enhancer or overexpressing FGF9 showed phenotypes recapitulating mole sexual features. Our results highlight how integrative genomic approaches can reveal the phenotypic impact of noncoding sequence changes.
Project description:To optimize the golden snub-nosed monkey genome annotation, one RNA library of mixed tissues from one individual were constructed using the Illumina mRNA-Seq Prep Kit. We sequenced mixed tissues using the Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform.