Project description:We carried out a high throughput analysis of insulin-induced kinase signaling pathways in primary fibroblasts from 35 unrelated individuals. We found that extensive individual variation exists in induction of various signaling pathways. ERK signaling displayed the greatest variation, which led to extensive variation in expression of downstream target genes. Our results suggest that phenotypic variation in kinase signaling mediates variation in downstream processes of insulin response. Future study of such phenotypic variation is important to linking genetic variants to individual susceptibility to complex diseases such as diabetes.
Project description:Copy number variants (CNVs) affect both disease and normal phenotypic variation but those lying within heavily duplicated, highly identical sequence have been difficult to assay. By analyzing short-read mapping depth for 159 human genomes, we demonstrate accurate estimation of absolute copy number for duplications as small as 1.9 kbp, ranging from 0-48 copies. We identified 4.1 million ‘singly unique nucleotide’ (SUN) positions informative in distinguishing specific copies, and use them to genotype the copy and content of specific paralogs within highly duplicated gene families. These data identify human-specific expansions in genes associated with brain development, reveal extensive population genetic diversity, and detect signatures consistent with gene conversion in the human species. Our approach makes ~1000 genes accessible to genetic studies of disease association. This dataset complements the results from short read sequencing by performing validation on five individuals. We analyzed the 17q21.1 locus in 5 HapMap individuals by array CGH on a custom Agilent 4-plex 310k array performing 1 experiment for each sample. This array was targeted at high density (1 probe/105bp) to 7 genomic loci, including 17q21. The reference individual used was NA19240.
Project description:Staphylococcus aureus causes disease in humans and a wide array of animals. Of note, S. aureus mastitis of ruminants, including cows, sheep and goats, results in major economic losses worldwide. Extensive variation in genome content exists among S. aureus pathogenic clones. However, the genomic variation among S. aureus strains infecting different animal species has not been well examined. To investigate variation in the genome content of human and ruminant S. aureus we carried out whole genome PCR scanning (WGPS), comparative genomic hybridizations (CGH), and directed DNA sequence analysis of strains of human, bovine, ovine, and caprine origin. Extensive variation in genome content was discovered including host- and ruminant-specific genetic loci. Ovine and caprine strains were genetically allied whereas bovine strains were heterogenous in gene content. As expected, mobile genetic elements such as pathogenicity islands and bacteriophages contributed to the variation in genome content between strains. However, remarkably, most host-specific differences were restricted to regions of the conserved core genome, which contained allelic variation in genes encoding proteins of known and unknown function. Many of these proteins are predicted to be exported and could play a role in host-pathogen interactions. These data suggest that diversification of the core genome may be more important than acquisition of novel genes for S. aureus host-adaptation. The host-specific determinants identified by the whole-genome approaches adopted in the current study represent excellent targets for studies of the evolution and molecular basis of S. aureus host specificity. Keywords: Strain vs strain eleven strains of Sa were compared at the DNA level in triplicate.
Project description:Copy number variants (CNVs) affect both disease and normal phenotypic variation but those lying within heavily duplicated, highly identical sequence have been difficult to assay. By analyzing short-read mapping depth for 159 human genomes, we demonstrate accurate estimation of absolute copy number for duplications as small as 1.9 kbp, ranging from 0-48 copies. We identified 4.1 million ‘singly unique nucleotide’ (SUN) positions informative in distinguishing specific copies, and use them to genotype the copy and content of specific paralogs within highly duplicated gene families. These data identify human-specific expansions in genes associated with brain development, reveal extensive population genetic diversity, and detect signatures consistent with gene conversion in the human species. Our approach makes ~1000 genes accessible to genetic studies of disease association.
Project description:Staphylococcus aureus causes disease in humans and a wide array of animals. Of note, S. aureus mastitis of ruminants, including cows, sheep and goats, results in major economic losses worldwide. Extensive variation in genome content exists among S. aureus pathogenic clones. However, the genomic variation among S. aureus strains infecting different animal species has not been well examined. To investigate variation in the genome content of human and ruminant S. aureus we carried out whole genome PCR scanning (WGPS), comparative genomic hybridizations (CGH), and directed DNA sequence analysis of strains of human, bovine, ovine, and caprine origin. Extensive variation in genome content was discovered including host- and ruminant-specific genetic loci. Ovine and caprine strains were genetically allied whereas bovine strains were heterogenous in gene content. As expected, mobile genetic elements such as pathogenicity islands and bacteriophages contributed to the variation in genome content between strains. However, remarkably, most host-specific differences were restricted to regions of the conserved core genome, which contained allelic variation in genes encoding proteins of known and unknown function. Many of these proteins are predicted to be exported and could play a role in host-pathogen interactions. These data suggest that diversification of the core genome may be more important than acquisition of novel genes for S. aureus host-adaptation. The host-specific determinants identified by the whole-genome approaches adopted in the current study represent excellent targets for studies of the evolution and molecular basis of S. aureus host specificity. Keywords: Strain vs strain
Project description:We carried out a high throughput analysis of insulin-induced kinase signaling pathways in primary fibroblasts from 35 unrelated individuals. We found that extensive individual variation exists in induction of various signaling pathways. ERK signaling displayed the greatest variation, which led to extensive variation in expression of downstream target genes. Our results suggest that phenotypic variation in kinase signaling mediates variation in downstream processes of insulin response. Future study of such phenotypic variation is important to linking genetic variants to individual susceptibility to complex diseases such as diabetes. Passage-matched primary fibroblasts from 35 unrelated newborns (foreskin) were treated with 100 nM insulin. We measured gene expression levels in each of 35 individuals at baseline, and 1 hour and 6 hours after insulin treatment using expression arrays. In order to examine effects of ERK inhibition on insulin-induced gene expression, we treated fibroblasts from 4 individuals with DMSO or 10uM of U0126 for 1 hour, followed by insulin treatment for one hour and 6 hours. We then harvested cells and measured gene expression in each sample using expression arrays.
Project description:Copy number variants (CNVs) represent a substantial source of genomic variation in vertebrates, but the zebrafish reference genome has no annotated CNV information. We developed a zebrafish CNV map using 80 zebrafish genomes from laboratory strains (AB, Tubingen, and WIK) and one native population, identifying 6,080 CNV elements. Overlapping or adjacent CNVs account for 14.6% of the genome, representing four times the CNV levels from other vertebrates including humans. Highest intra-specific CNV levels were observed for Tubingen, a common laboratory strain due to high fecundity. Tubingen variation likely represents higher initial population size and composite population founders initiating the laboratory strain. Extensive zebrafish CNVs, along with associated phenotypic impacts, advocates for increased usage of isogenic strains for genetic studies intended for human disease translation.? 19 zebrafish from 3 laboratory strains and one native population were analyzed using a strain specific reference for each group
Project description:To study the evolutionary dynamics of regulatory DNA, we mapped >1.3 million deoxyribonuclease I–hypersensitive sites (DHSs) in 45 mouse cell and tissue types, and systematically compared these with human DHS maps from orthologous compartments. We found that the mouse and human genomes have undergone extensive cis-regulatory rewiring that combines branch-specific evolutionary innovation and loss with widespread repurposing of conserved DHSs to alternative cell fates, and that this process is mediated by turnover of transcription factor (TF) recognition elements. Despite pervasive evolutionary remodeling of the location and content of individual cis-regulatory regions, within orthologous mouse and human cell types the global fraction of regulatory DNA bases encoding recognition sites for each TF has been strictly conserved. Our findings provide new insights into the evolutionary forces shaping mammalian regulatory DNA landscapes.
Project description:Genetic variation amongst individual humans occurs on many different scales, ranging from gross alterations in the human karyotype to single-nucleotide changes. In this manuscript we explore variation on an intermediate scale-particularly insertions, deletions, and inversions affecting from a few thousand to a few million base pairs. We employed a clone-based method to interrogate this intermediate structural variation in eight individuals of diverse geographic ancestry. Our analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the normal pattern of structural variation present in these genomes, refining the location of 1695 structural variants. We find that 50% were seen in more than one individual and that nearly half lay outside regions of the genome previously described as structurally variant. We discover 525 new insertion sequences that are not present in the human reference genome and show that many of these are variable in copy number among individuals. Sequencing of a subset of structural variants reveals considerable locus complexity and provides insights into the different mutational processes that have shaped the human genome. These data provide the first high-resolution sequence-map of human structural variation-an important standard for genotyping platforms and a prelude to future individual genome sequencing projects. Keywords: comparitive genomic hybridization, copy number variation, structural variation, fosmid end sequencing