Project description:Gene-expression divergence between species shapes morphological evolution, but the molecular basis is largely unknown. Here we show cis- and trans-regulatory elements and chromatin modifications on gene-expression diversity in genetically tractable Arabidopsis allotetraploids. In Arabidopsis thaliana and Arabidopsis arenosa, both cis and trans with predominant cis-regulatory effects mediate gene-expression divergence. The majority of genes with both cis- and trans-effects are subjected to compensating interactions and stabilizing selection. Interestingly, chromatin modifications correlate with cis - and trans -regulation. In F1 allotetraploids, Arabidopsis arenosa trans factors predominately affect allelic expression divergence. Arabidopsis arenosa trans factors tend to upregulate Arabidopsis thaliana alleles, whereas Arabidopsis thaliana trans factors up- or down-regulate Arabidopsis arenosa alleles. In resynthesized and natural allotetraploids, trans effects drive expression of both homoeologous loci into the same direction. We provide evidence for natural selection and chromatin regulation in shaping gene-expression diversity during plant evolution and speciation. Examination of gene expression in 5 tetraploid Arabidopsis using mRNA-seq
Project description:Gene-expression divergence between species shapes morphological evolution, but the molecular basis is largely unknown. Here we show cis- and trans-regulatory elements and chromatin modifications on gene-expression diversity in genetically tractable Arabidopsis allotetraploids. In Arabidopsis thaliana and Arabidopsis arenosa, both cis and trans with predominant cis-regulatory effects mediate gene-expression divergence. The majority of genes with both cis- and trans-effects are subjected to compensating interactions and stabilizing selection. Interestingly, chromatin modifications correlate with cis - and trans -regulation. In F1 allotetraploids, Arabidopsis arenosa trans factors predominately affect allelic expression divergence. Arabidopsis arenosa trans factors tend to upregulate Arabidopsis thaliana alleles, whereas Arabidopsis thaliana trans factors up- or down-regulate Arabidopsis arenosa alleles. In resynthesized and natural allotetraploids, trans effects drive expression of both homoeologous loci into the same direction. We provide evidence for natural selection and chromatin regulation in shaping gene-expression diversity during plant evolution and speciation.
Project description:Gene expression is regulated both by cis elements, which are DNA segments closely linked to the genes they regulate, and by trans activating factors, which are usually proteins capable of diffusing to unlinked genes. Understanding the patterns and sources of regulatory variation is crucial for understanding phenotypic and genome evolution. Here, we investigate the global patterns of gene expression evolution in Saccharomyces cerivisiae. We report statistical methods useful in quantifying cis and trans regulation using next generation sequencing data. Using these methods, measured genome-wide allele-specific expression by deep sequencing to investigate the genetic architecture of gene regulatory variation between two strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We find that expression polymorphism in yeast is common for both cis and trans regulation, though trans variation is more common. Our detailed analyses of the effects of functional constraint on expression variation as indicated by measures such as protein connectivity, gene essentiality, and the ratio of nonsynonymous substitutions to synonymous substitutions clearly reveal that both classes of variation are under purifying selection, but trans variation is more sensitive to selective constraint. Comparing interspecific expression divergence between S. cerevisiae and S. paradoxus to our intraspecific variation suggests that natural selection strongly influences the patterns of variation we observe. Further analyses revealed that cis divergence is more frequently mediated by positive Darwinian selection than trans divergence, which is compatible with neutral evolution. Study the gene expression patterns in two strains of yeast (BY and RM)
Project description:Divergence of gene function is a hallmark of evolution, but assessing functional divergence over deep time is not trivial. The few alleles available for cross-species studies often fail to expose the entire functional spectrum of genes, potentially obscuring deeply conserved pleiotropic roles. Here, we explore the functional divergence of WUSCHEL HOMEOBOX9 (WOX9), suggested to have species-specific roles in embryo and inflorescence development. Using a cis-regulatory editing drive system, we generated a comprehensive allelic series in tomato, which revealed hidden pleiotropic roles for WOX9. Analysis of accessible chromatin and conserved cis-regulatory sequences identified the regions responsible for this pleiotropic activity, the functions of which were conserved in groundcherry, a tomato relative. Mimicking these alleles in arabidopsis, distantly related to tomato and groundcherry, revealed new inflorescence phenotypes, exposing a deeply conserved pleiotropy. We suggest that targeted cis-regulatory mutations can uncover conserved gene functions and reduce undesirable effects in crop improvement.
Project description:Gene regulation can evolve either by cis-acting local changes to regulatory element DNA sequences or by global changes to the trans-acting regulatory environment; however, the modes favored during recent human evolution are unknown. To date, studies investigating gene regulatory divergence between closely-related species have produced limited estimates on the relative contributions of cis and trans effects on DNA regulatory element activities at a global-scale. By leveraging a comparative ATAC-STARR-seq framework, we identified 10,779 regulatory regions with divergent activity in cis and 10,608 regulatory regions with divergent activity in trans between human and rhesus macaque lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs). This revealed substantially more trans effects than predicted and indicates trans-regulatory mechanisms play a larger role in human evolution than previously expected. We also discover that most species-specific regulatory elements (67%) diverge in both cis and trans, suggesting these two mechanisms jointly drive divergent regulatory activity in a single sequence.
Project description:Although gene expression divergence has long been postulated to be the primary driver of human evolution, identifying the genes and genetic variants underlying uniquely human traits has proven to be quite challenging. Theory suggests that cell type-specific cis-regulatory variants may fuel evolutionary adaptation due to the specificity of their effects. These variants can precisely tune the expression of a single gene in a single cell type, avoiding the potentially deleterious consequences of trans-acting changes and non-cell type-specific changes that can impact many genes and cell types, respectively. It has recently become possible to quantify human-specific cis-acting regulatory divergence by measuring allele-specific expression in human-chimpanzee hybrid cells—the product of fusing induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells of each species in vitro. However, these cis-regulatory changes have only been explored in a limited number of tissues and cell types. Here, we quantify human-chimpanzee cis-regulatory divergence in gene expression and chromatin accessibility across six cell types, enabling the identification of highly cell type-specific cis-regulatory changes. We find that cell type-specific genes and regulatory elements evolve faster than those shared across cell types. Furthermore, we identify several instances of lineage-specific natural selection that may have played key roles in specific cell types, such as coordinated changes in the cis-regulation of dozens of genes involved in neuronal firing in motor neurons. Finally, using novel metrics and a machine learning model, we identify genetic variants that likely alter chromatin accessibility and transcription factor binding, leading to neuron-specific changes in the expression of the neurodevelopmentally important genes FABP7 and GAD1. Overall, our results demonstrate that integrative analysis of cis-regulatory divergence in chromatin accessibility and gene expression across cell types is a promising approach to identify the specific genes and genetic variants that make us human.
Project description:Gene expression evolution can be caused by changes in cis- or trans-regulatory elements or both. As cis and trans regulation operate through different molecular mechanisms, cis and trans mutations may show different inheritance patterns and may be subjected to different selective constraints. To investigate these issues, we obtained and analyzed gene expression data from two Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains and their hybrid, using high-throughput sequencing. Our data indicate that compared to other types of genes, those with antagonistic cis-trans interactions are more likely to exhibit over- or under-dominant inheritance of expression level. Moreover, in accordance with previous studies, genes with trans variants tend to have a dominant inheritance pattern while cis variants are enriched for additive inheritance. In addition, cis regulatory differences contribute more to expression differences between species than within species, whereas trans regulatory differences show a stronger association between divergence and polymorphism. Our data indicate that in the trans component of gene expression differences genes subjected to weaker selective constraints tend to have an excess of polymorphism over divergence compared to those subjected to stronger selective constraints. In contrast, in the cis component, this difference between genes under stronger and weaker selective constraint is mostly absent. To explain these observations, we propose that purifying selection more strongly shapes trans polymorphism than cis polymorphism. Study the gene expression patterns in two strains of yeast (BY and RM)
Project description:How evolution modifies complex, innate behaviors is largely unknown. Divergence in many morphological traits has been linked, at least in part, to cis-regulatory changes in gene expression, a pattern also observed for some behaviors in recently diverged populations. Given this, we compared the gene expression in the brains of two interfertile sister species of Peromyscus mice, including allele-specific expression (ASE) of their F1 hybrids, that show large and heritable differences in burrowing behavior. Because cis-regulation may contribute to constitutive as well as activity-dependent gene expression, we also captured a molecular signature of burrowing circuit divergence by quantifying gene expression in mice shortly after burrowing. We found that several thousand genes were differentially expressed between the two sister species regardless of behavioral context, with several thousand more showing behavior-dependent differences. Allele-specific expression in F1 hybrids showed a similar pattern, suggesting that much of the differential expression is driven by cis-regulatory divergence. Genes related to locomotor coordination showed the strongest signals of lineage-specific selection on burrowing-induced cis-regulatory changes. By comparing these candidate genes to independent quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping data, we found that the closest QTL markers to these candidate genes are associated with variation in burrow shape, demonstrating an enrichment for candidate locomotor genes near segregating causal loci. Together, our results provide insight into how cis-regulated gene expression can depend on behavioral context as well as how this dynamic regulatory divergence between species can be integrated with forward genetics to enrich our understanding of the genetic basis of behavioral evolution.
Project description:Cis-regulatory elements (CREs) are essential in precisely regulating gene expression, contributing significantly to the evolution of species. Identifying cell-type-specific CREs is essential for understanding plant evolution, domestication, and improving crops through genome editing. Here, we built a cis-regulatory atlas in Oryza sativa, encompassing 106,143 nuclei representing 138 discrete cell states from nine distinct organs. Within syntenic regions shared with four other grass species (Zea mays, Sorghum bicolor, Panicum miliaceum, and Urochloa fusca), we identified 10,219 cell-type-specific accessible chromatin regions (ACRs), serving as sources for investigating divergence of these species. To elucidate the roles of cell-type-specific ACRs in species divergence, we focused on leaf cells in O. sativa and the aforementioned grass species. We observed species-specific candidate CREs (cCREs) potentially associated with cell differentiation, especially in epidermal cells across species. These data also revealed presence of H3K27me3-associated ACRs in the majority of cell types across different organs and species, potentially harboring silencer cCREs. Together, this study significantly advances our understanding of the role of cCREs during cell differentiation, shedding light on their contribution to species divergence in plants