Biology subjects

Cao, Q.

Publications and source records attributed to Cao, Q..

9 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Epiclomal: probabilistic clustering of sparse single-cell DNA methylation data

We present Epiclomal, a probabilistic clustering method arising from a hierarchical mixture model to simultaneously cluster sparse single-cell DNA methylation data and impute missing values. Using synthetic and published single-cell CpG datasets we show that Epiclomal outperforms non-probabilistic methods and is able to handle the inherent missing data feature which dominates single-cell CpG genome sequences. Using a recently published single-cell 5mCpG sequencing method (PBAL), we show that Epiclomal discovers sub-clonal patterns of methylation in aneuploid tumour genomes, thus defining epiclones. We show that epiclones may transcend copy number determined clonal lineages, thus opening this important form of clonal analysis in cancer. Epiclomal is written in R and Python and is available at https://github.com/shahcompbio/Epiclomal.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2018

Cul4-Ddb1 ubiquitin ligases facilitate DNA replication-coupled sister chromatid cohesion through regulation of cohesin acetyltransferase Esco2

Cohesin acetyltransferases Esco1 and Esco2 play a vital role in establishing sister chromatid cohesion. How Esco1 and Esco2 are controlled to achieve this in a DNA replication-coupled manner remains unclear in higher eukaryotes. Here we show that Cul4-RING ligases (CRL4s) play a critical role in sister chromatid cohesion in human cells. Depletion of Cul4A, Cul4B or Ddb1 subunits substantially reduces normal cohesion efficiency. We also show that Mms22L, a vertebrate ortholog of yeast Mms22, is one of Ddb1 and Cul4-associated factors (DCAFs) involved in cohesion. Several lines of evidence suggest a selective interaction of CRL4s with Esco2, but not Esco1. Depletion of either CRL4s or Esco2 causes a defect in Smc3 acetylation which can be rescued by HDAC8 inhibition. More importantly, both CRL4s and PCNA act as mediators for efficiently stabilizing Esco2 on chromatin and catalyzing Smc3 acetylation. Taken together, we propose an evolutionarily conserved mechanism in which CRL4s and PCNA regulate Esco2-dependent establishment of sister chromatid cohesion.\n\nAuthor summaryWe identified human Mms22L as a substrate specific adaptor of Cul4-Ddb1 E3 ubiquitin ligase. Downregulation of Cul4A, Cul4B or Ddb1 subunit causes reduction of acetylated Smc3, via interaction with Esco2 acetyltransferase, and then impairs sister chromatid cohesion in 293T cells. We found functional complementation between Cul4-Ddb1-Mms22L E3 ligase and Esco2 in Smc3 acetylation and sister chromatid cohesion. Interestingly, both Cul4-Ddb1 E3 ubiquitin ligase and PCNA contribute to Esco2 mediated Smc3 acetylation. To summarise, we demonstrated an evolutionarily conserved mechanism in which Cul4-Ddb1 E3 ubiquitin ligases and PCNA regulate Esco2-dependent establishment of sister chromatid cohesion.

genetics↗

bioRxiv2018

Flexibly-oriented double Cdc45-MCM-GINS intermediates during eukaryotic replicative helicase maturation

The core of the eukaryotic helicase MCM is loaded as an inactive double hexamer (DH). How it is assembled into two active Cdc45-MCM-GINS (CMG) helicases remains elusive. Here, we report that at the onset of S phase, both Cdc45 and GINS are loaded as dimers onto MCM DH, resulting in formation of double CMG (d-CMG). As S phase proceeds, d-CMGs gradually mature into two single CMG-centered replisome progression complexes (RPCs). Mass spectra reveal that RPA and DNA Pol /primase co-purify exclusively with RPCs, but not with d-CMGs. Consistently, d-CMGs are not able to catalyze either the unwinding or de novo DNA synthesis, while RPCs can do both. Using single-particle electron microscopy, we have obtained 2D class averages of d-CMGs. Compared to MCM DHs, they display heterogeneous, flexibly orientated and partially loosened conformations with changed interfaces. The dumbbell-shaped d-CMGs are mediated by Ctf4, while other types of d-CMGs are independent of Ctf4. These data suggest CMG dimers as bona fide intermediates during MCM maturation, providing an additional quality control for symmetric origin activation and bidirectional replication.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Genome-wide characterization, evolutionary analysis of WRKY genes in Cucurbitaceae species and assessment of its roles in resisting to powdery mildew disease

The WRKY proteins constitute a large family of transcription factors that have been known to play a wide range of regulatory roles in multiple biological processes. Over the past few years, many reports have focused on analysis of evolution and biological function of WRKY genes at the whole genome level in different plant species. However, little information is known about WRKY genes in melon (Cucumis melo L.). In the present study, a total of 56 putative WRKY genes were identified in melon, which were randomly distributed on their respective chromosomes. A multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis using melon, cucumber and watermelon predicted WRKY domains indicated that melon WRKY proteins could be classified into three main groups (I-III). Our analysis indicated that no recent duplication events of WRKY genes were detected in melon, and strong purifying selection was observed among the 85 orthologous pairs of Cucurbitaceae species. Expression profiles of CmWRKY derived from RNA-seq data and quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) analyses showed distinct expression patterns in various tissues, and the expression of 16 CmWRKY were altered following powdery mildew infection in melon. Besides, we also found that a total of 24 WRKY genes were co-expressed with 11 VQ family genes in melon. Our comparative genomic analysis provides a foundation for future functional dissection and understanding the evolution of WRKY genes in cucurbitaceae species, and will promote powdery mildew resistance study in melon.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Identification of pathogens in culture-negative infective endocarditis with metagenomic analysis

Pathogens identification is critical for the proper diagnosis and precise treatment of infective endocarditis. Although blood and valve cultures are the gold standard for IE pathogens detection, many cases are culture-negative, especially in patients who had received long-term antibiotic treatment, and precise diagnosis has therefore become a major challenge in the clinic. Metagenomic sequencing can provide both information on the pathogenic strain and the antibiotic susceptibility profile of patient samples without culturing, offering a powerful method to deal with culture-negative cases. In this work, we assessed the feasibility of a metagenomic approach to detect the causative pathogens in resected valves from IE patients.\n\nUsing our in-house developed bioinformatics pipeline, we analyzed the sequencing results generated from both next-generation sequencing and Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION nanopore sequencing for the direct identification of pathogens from the resected valves of seven clinically culture-negative IE patients according to the modified Duke criteria. Moreover, we were able to simultaneously characterize respective antimicrobial resistance features. This provides clinicians with valuable information to diagnose and treat IE patients after valve replacement surgery.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2017

Uncovering Medical Insights from Vast Amounts of Biomedical Data in Clinical Case Reports

Clinical case reports (CCRs) have a time-honored tradition in serving as an important means of sharing clinical experiences on patients presenting with atypical disease phenotypes or receiving new therapies. However, the huge amount of accumulated case reports are isolated, unstructured, and heterogeneous clinical data, posing a great challenge to clinicians and researchers in mining relevant information through existing indexing tools. In this investigation, in order to render CCRs more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) by the biomedical community, we created a resource platform, including the construction of a test dataset consisting of 1000 CCRs spanning 14 disease phenotypes, a standardized metadata template and metrics, and a set of computational tools to automatically retrieve relevant medical information and to analyze all published PubMed clinical case reports with respect to trends in publication journals, citations impact, MeSH Terms, drug use, distributions of patient demographics, and relationships with other case reports and databases. Our standardized metadata template and CCR test dataset may be valuable resources to advance medical science and improve patient care for researchers who are using machine learning approaches with a high-quality dataset to train and validate their algorithms. In the future, our analytical tools may be applied towards other large clinical data sources as well.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2017

Parallel loss of symbiosis genes in relatives of nitrogen-fixing non-legume Parasponia

Rhizobium nitrogen-fixing nodules are a well-known trait of legumes, but nodules also occur in other plant lineages either with rhizobium or the actinomycete Frankia as microsymbiont. The widely accepted hypothesis is that nodulation evolved independently multiple times, with only a few losses. However, insight in the evolutionary trajectory of nodulation is lacking. We conducted comparative studies using Parasponia (Cannabaceae), the only non-legume able to establish nitrogen fixing nodules with rhizobium. This revealed that Parasponia and legumes utilize a large set of orthologous symbiosis genes. Comparing genomes of Parasponia and its non-nodulating relative Trema did not reveal specific gene duplications that could explain a recent gain of nodulation in Parasponia. Rather, Trema and other non-nodulating species in the Order Rosales show evidence of pseudogenization or loss of key symbiosis genes. This demonstrates that these species have lost the potential to nodulate. This finding challenges a long-standing hypothesis on evolution of nitrogen-fixing symbioses, and has profound implications for translational approaches aimed at engineering nitrogen-fixing nodules in crop plants.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2017

Generation And Comparative Analysis Of Full-Length Transcriptomes In Sweetpotato And Its Putative Wild Ancestor I. trifida

Sweetpotato [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.] is one of the most important crops in many developing countries and provides a candidate source of bioenergy. However, neither high-quality reference genome nor large-scale full-length cDNA sequences for this outcrossing hexaploid are still lacking, which in turn impedes progress in research studies in sweetpotato functional genomics and molecular breeding. In this study, we apply a combination of second- and third-generation sequencing technologies to sequence full-length transcriptomes in sweetpotato and its putative ancestor I. trifida. In total, we obtained 53,861/51,184 high-quality transcripts, which includes 34,963/33,637 putative full-length cDNA sequences, from sweetpotato/I. trifida. Amongst, we identified 104,540/94,174 open reading frames, 1476/1475 transcription factors, 25,315/27,090 simple sequence repeats, 417/531 long non-coding RNAs out of the sweetpotato/I. trifida dataset. By utilizing public available genomic contigs, we analyzed the gene features (including exon number, exon size, intron number, intron size, exon-intron structure) of 33,119 and 32,793 full-length transcripts in sweetpotato and I. trifida, respectively. Furthermore, comparative analysis between our transcript datasets and other large-scale cDNA datasets from different plant species enables us assessing the quality of public datasets, estimating the genetic similarity across relative species, and surveyed the evolutionary pattern of genes. Overall, our study provided fundamental resources of large-scale full-length transcripts in sweetpotato and its putative ancestor, for the first time, and would facilitate structural, functional and comparative genomics studies in this important crop.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2017

Dynamic response to initial stage blindness in visual system development

Sensitive periods and experience-dependent plasticity have become core issues in visual system development. Converging evidence indicates that visual experience is an indispensable factor in establishing mature visual system circuitry during sensitive periods and the visual system exhibits substantial plasticity when facing deprivation. The mechanisms that underlie the environmental regulation of visual system development and plasticity are of great interest but need further exploration. Here, we investigated a unique sample of human infants who experienced initial stage blindness (beginning at birth and lasting 2 to 8 months) before the removal of bilateral cataracts. Retinal thickness, axial length, refractive status, visual grating acuity and genetic integrity were recorded during the preoperative period or at surgery, and then during follow-up. The results showed that the development of the retina is malleable and associated with external environment influences. Our work supported that the retina might play critical roles in the development of the experience-dependent visual system and its malleability might partly contribute to the sensitive period plasticity.\n\nSUMMARY STATEMENTThe follow-up investigation of a group of human infants, who experienced initial stage blindness before the removal of bilateral cataracts, revealed that retinal development is associated with environment influences and its malleability might be a potential basis of plasticity.

developmental biology↗