Project description:The transposon site hybridization (TraSH) technique (Sassetti, CM et al. 2001. PNAS 98:12712-7) was utilized to identify genes important for the survival of Y. pestis within murine macrophages. A transposon library was created with ~31,500 Y. pestis KIM6+ insertion mutants. A portion of the Y. pestis transposon insertion mutant library was used to infect BMMs and the surviving bacteria (output pool) were recovered. TraSH was used to compare the output pool to a portion of the library that was not subjected to selection (input pool) in order to identify Y. pestis genes important for survival in macrophages. Each end of the transposon used for mutagenesis contains an outward-reading T7 RNA polymerase promoter. RNAs transcribed from the T7 promoters are complementary to the chromosomal DNA flanking each transposon in the library, so the RNAs can be used as “targets” to identify the approximate position of each transposon insertion in the mutant pool. Differentially labeled targets generated from the output and input pools are competitively hybridized to the 70-mer oligonucleotide microarrays obtained from Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center/J. Craig Venter Institute. Genes important for survival of Y. pestis in macrophages are identified by determining the ratio of the signal intensities for the output and input targets hybridizing to a given probe. A transposon library was created with ~31,500 Y. pestis KIM6+ insertion mutants. A portion of the Y. pestis transposon insertion mutant library was used to infect BMMs and the surviving bacteria (output pool) were recovered. TraSH was used to compare the output pool to a portion of the library that was not subjected to selection (input pool). Each end of the transposon used for mutagenesis contains an outward-reading T7 RNA polymerase promoter. RNAs transcribed from the T7 promoters are complementary to the chromosomal DNA flanking each transposon in the library, so the RNAs was used as “targets” to identify the approximate position of each transposon insertion in the mutant pool. Differentially labeled targets generated from the output and input pools are competitively hybridized to the 70-mer oligonucleotide microarrays obtained from Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center/J. Craig Venter Institute. Genes important for survival of Y. pestis in macrophages are identified by determining the ratio of the signal intensities for the output and input targets hybridizing to a given probe.
Project description:The transposon site hybridization (TraSH) technique (Sassetti, CM et al. 2001. PNAS 98:12712-7) was utilized to identify genes important for the survival of Y. pestis within murine macrophages. A transposon library was created with ~31,500 Y. pestis KIM6+ insertion mutants. A portion of the Y. pestis transposon insertion mutant library was used to infect BMMs and the surviving bacteria (output pool) were recovered. TraSH was used to compare the output pool to a portion of the library that was not subjected to selection (input pool) in order to identify Y. pestis genes important for survival in macrophages. Each end of the transposon used for mutagenesis contains an outward-reading T7 RNA polymerase promoter. RNAs transcribed from the T7 promoters are complementary to the chromosomal DNA flanking each transposon in the library, so the RNAs can be used as “targets” to identify the approximate position of each transposon insertion in the mutant pool. Differentially labeled targets generated from the output and input pools are competitively hybridized to the 70-mer oligonucleotide microarrays obtained from Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center/J. Craig Venter Institute. Genes important for survival of Y. pestis in macrophages are identified by determining the ratio of the signal intensities for the output and input targets hybridizing to a given probe.
Project description:The most basic level of transcription regulation in Streptococcus pneumoniae is the organization of its chromosome in topological domains. In response to drugs that caused DNA-relaxation, a global transcriptional response was observed. Separate domains were identified depending of the transcription of their genes: up-regulated (U), down-regulated (D), non-regulated (N), and flanking (F). We show here that these distinct domains have different expression and conservation tendencies. Microarray fluorescence units under non-relaxation conditions, taken as a measure of gene transcription level, were significantly lower in F genes than in the other domains in the same range of AT content. Transcription level categorization of the domains was D>U>F. In addition, a comparison of 12 S. pneumoniae genome sequences evidenced conservation of gene composition in the U and D domains and extensive gene interchange in F domains. We tested domain organization by measuring the relaxation-mediated transcription of eight insertions of a heterologous Ptccat cassette, two in each type of domain, showing that transcription depended on their chromosomal location. Moreover, transcription from the four promoters directing the five genes involved in supercoiling homeostasis, located either in U (gyrB), D (topA), or N (gyrA and parEC) domains was analyzed both in their chromosomal locations and in a replicating plasmid. Although expression from the chromosomal PgyrB and PtopA showed the expected domain regulation, their expression was down-regulated in the plasmid, which behaved as a D domain. However, both PparE and PgyrA carried their own regulatory signals, their topology-dependent expression being equivalent in the plasmid or in the chromosome. In PgyrA a DNA bend acted as a DNA supercoiling sensor. These results revealed that DNA topology works as a general transcriptional regulator, superimposed to other kind of more specific regulatory mechanisms.
Project description:Streptococcus pneumoniae is among the most significant causes of bacterial disease in humans. Here we report the 2,038,615-bp genomic sequence of the gram-positive bacterium S. pneumoniae R6. Because the R6 strain is avirulent and, more importantly, because it is readily transformed with DNA from homologous species and many heterologous species, it is the principal platform for investigation of the biology of this important pathogen. It is also used as a primary vehicle for genomics-based development of antibiotics for gram-positive bacteria. In our analysis of the genome, we identified a large number of new uncharacterized genes predicted to encode proteins that either reside on the surface of the cell or are secreted. Among those proteins there may be new targets for vaccine and antibiotic development.
Project description:Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major cause of serious infections such as pneumonia and meningitis in both children and adults worldwide. Here, we describe the development of a high-throughput genome-wide technique, Genomic Array Footprinting (GAF), for the identification of genes essential for this bacterium at various stages during infection. GAF enables negative screens by means of a combination of transposon mutagenesis and microarray technology for the detection of transposon insertion sites. We tested several methods for the identification of transposon insertion sites and found that amplification of DNA adjacent to the insertion site by PCR resulted in non-reproducible results, even when combined with an adapter. However, restriction of genomic DNA followed directly by in vitro transcription circumvented these problems. Analysis of parallel reactions generated with this method on a large mariner transposon library, showed that it was highly reproducible and correctly identified essential genes. Comparison of a mariner library to one generated with the in vivo transposition plasmid pGh:ISS1, showed that both have an equal degree of saturation, but that 9% of the genome is preferentially mutated by either one. The usefulness of GAF was demonstrated in a screen for genes essential for survival of zinc stress. This identified a gene encoding a putative cation efflux transporter, and its deletion resulted in an inability to grow under high zinc conditions. In conclusion, we developed a fast, versatile, specific, and high-throughput method for the identification of conditionally essential genes in S. pneumoniae. Keywords: GAF Identification of transposon insertion sites
Project description:Chromatin profiling in single cells has been extremely challenging and almost exclusively limited to histone proteins. In cases where single cell methods have shown promise, many require highly specialized equipment or cell type specific protocols and are relatively low throughput. Here, we combine the advantages of tagmentation, linear amplification and combinatorial indexing to produce a high throughput single cell DNA binding site mapping method that is simple, inexpensive and capable of multiplexing several independent samples per experiment. Targeted Insertion of Promoters (TIP-seq) uses Tn5 fused to protein A to insert a T7 RNA polymerase promoter adjacent to a chromatin protein of interest. Linear amplification of flanking DNA with T7 polymerase prior to sequencing library preparation provides ~10-fold higher unique reads per single cell compared to other methods. We apply TIP-seq to map histone modifications, RNA Polymerase II (RNAPII) and transcription factor CTCF binding sites in single human and mouse cells.
Project description:Transposon screens are powerful in vivo assays used to identify loci driving carcinogenesis. These loci are identified as Common Insertion Sites (CIS), i.e. regions with more transposon insertions than expected by chance. However, the identification of CIS is strongly affected by biases in the insertion behaviour of transposon systems. Here, we introduce Transmicron, a novel method that differs from previous methods by i) modelling neutral insertion rates based on chromatin accessibility, transcriptional activity, and sequence context, and ii) estimating oncogenic selection for each genomic region using Poisson regression to model insertion counts while controlling for neutral insertion rates. To assess the benefits of our approach, we generated a dataset applying two different transposon systems under comparable conditions. Benchmarking for enrichment of known cancer genes showed improved performance of Transmicron against state-of-the-art methods. Modelling neutral insertion rates allowed for better control of false positives and stronger agreement of the results between transposon systems. Moreover, using Poisson regression to consider intra-sample and inter-sample information proved beneficial in small and moderately-sized datasets. Transmicron is open-source and freely available. Overall, this study contributes to the understanding of transposon biology and introduces a novel approach to use this knowledge for discovering cancer driver genes.
Project description:The large (1767-amino acid) endo-alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase from Streptococcus pneumoniae (SpGH101) specifically removes an O-linked disaccharide Gal-beta-1,3-GalNAc-alpha from glycoproteins. While the enzyme from natural sources has been used as a reagent for many years, very few mechanistic studies have been performed. Using the recently determined three-dimensional structure of the recombinant protein as a background, we report here a mechanistic investigation of the SpGH101 retaining alpha-glycoside hydrolase using a combination of synthetic and natural substrates. On the basis of a model of the substrate complex of SpGH101, we propose D764 and E796 as the nucleophile and general acid-base residues, respectively. These roles were confirmed by kinetic and mechanistic analysis of mutants at those positions using synthetic substrates and anion rescue experiments. pK(a) values of 5.3 and 7.2 were assigned to D764 and E796 on the basis of the pK(a) values derived from the bell-shaped dependence of k(cat)/K(m) upon pH. The enzyme contains several putative carbohydrate binding modules whose glycan binding specificities were probed using the printed glycan array of the Consortium for Functional Glycomics using the inactive D764A and D764F mutants that had been labeled with Alexafluor 488. These studies revealed binding to galacto-N-biose, consistent with a role for these domains in localizing the enzyme near its substrates.
Project description:Transposon insertion site sequencing (TIS) is a powerful method for associating genotype to phenotype. However, all TIS methods described to date use short nucleotide sequence reads which cannot uniquely determine the locations of transposon insertions within repeating genomic sequences where the repeat units are longer than the sequence read length. To overcome this limitation, we have developed a TIS method using Oxford Nanopore sequencing technology that generates and uses long nucleotide sequence reads; we have called this method LoRTIS (Long Read Transposon Insertion-site Sequencing). This experiment data contains sequence files generated using Nanopore and Illumina platforms. Biotin1308.fastq.gz and Biotin2508.fastq.gz are fastq files generated from nanopore technology. Rep1-Tn.fastq.gz and Rep1-Tn.fastq.gz are fastq files generated using Illumina platform. In this study, we have compared the efficiency of two methods in identification of transposon insertion sites.
Project description:An increase in negative supercoiling in bacteria reveals topology-reacting gene clusters and a homeostatic response mediated by the DNA topoisomerase I gene [array]