scholarly journals The need for high-quality oocyte mitochondria at extreme ploidy dictates germline development

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Colnaghi ◽  
Andrew Pomiankowski ◽  
Nick Lane

ABSTRACTSelection against severe mitochondrial mutations is facilitated by germline processes, lowering the risk of genetic diseases. How selection works is disputed: experimental data are conflicting and previous modelling work has not clarified the issues. Here we develop computational and evolutionary models that compare the outcome of selection at the level of individuals, cells and mitochondria. Using realistic de novo mutation rates and germline development parameters, the evolutionary model accurately predicts the observed prevalence of mitochondrial mutations and diseases in human populations. We show that biogenesis of high-quality mitochondria at extreme ploidy in mature oocytes can only be achieved under realistic parameters through selective pooling of mitochondria into the Balbiani body. The principal mechanisms debated in the literature, bottlenecks and follicular atresia, fail to predict these clinical data, because neither process effectively eliminates mitochondrial mutations under realistic conditions. Our findings explain the major features of female germline architecture, notably the longstanding paradox of over-proliferation of primordial germ cells followed by massive germ cell loss. The near-universality of these processes across animal taxa makes sense in light of the need to maintain mitochondrial quality at extreme ploidy in mature oocytes, in the absence of sex and recombination.

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Colnaghi ◽  
Andrew Pomiankowski ◽  
Nick Lane

Selection against deleterious mitochondrial mutations is facilitated by germline processes, lowering the risk of genetic diseases. How selection works is disputed: experimental data are conflicting and previous modelling work has not clarified the issues. Here we develop computational and evolutionary models that compare the outcome of selection at the level of individuals, cells and mitochondria. Using realistic de novo mutation rates and germline development parameters from mouse and humans, the evolutionary model predicts the observed prevalence of mitochondrial mutations and diseases in human populations. We show the importance of organelle-level selection, seen in the selective pooling of mitochondria into the Balbiani body, in achieving high-quality mitochondria at extreme ploidy in mature oocytes. Alternative mechanisms debated in the literature, bottlenecks and follicular atresia, are unlikely to account for the clinical data, because neither process effectively eliminates mitochondrial mutations under realistic conditions. Our findings explain the major features of female germline architecture, notably the longstanding paradox of over-proliferation of primordial germ cells followed by massive loss. The near-universality of these processes across animal taxa makes sense in light of the need to maintain mitochondrial quality at extreme ploidy in mature oocytes, in the absence of sex and recombination.


2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 624-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Edson ◽  
Ankur K. Nagaraja ◽  
Martin M. Matzuk

Abstract Two major functions of the mammalian ovary are the production of germ cells (oocytes), which allow continuation of the species, and the generation of bioactive molecules, primarily steroids (mainly estrogens and progestins) and peptide growth factors, which are critical for ovarian function, regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis, and development of secondary sex characteristics. The female germline is created during embryogenesis when the precursors of primordial germ cells differentiate from somatic lineages of the embryo and take a unique route to reach the urogenital ridge. This undifferentiated gonad will differentiate along a female pathway, and the newly formed oocytes will proliferate and subsequently enter meiosis. At this point, the oocyte has two alternative fates: die, a common destiny of millions of oocytes, or be fertilized, a fate of at most approximately 100 oocytes, depending on the species. At every step from germline development and ovary formation to oogenesis and ovarian development and differentiation, there are coordinated interactions of hundreds of proteins and small RNAs. These studies have helped reproductive biologists to understand not only the normal functioning of the ovary but also the pathophysiology and genetics of diseases such as infertility and ovarian cancer. Over the last two decades, parallel progress has been made in the assisted reproductive technology clinic including better hormonal preparations, prenatal genetic testing, and optimal oocyte and embryo analysis and cryopreservation. Clearly, we have learned much about the mammalian ovary and manipulating its most important cargo, the oocyte, since the birth of Louise Brown over 30 yr ago.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marine Poulain ◽  
Sophie Tourpin ◽  
Vincent Muczynski ◽  
Sebastien Messiaen ◽  
Delphine Moison ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 321-332
Author(s):  
Yunbo Liu ◽  
Xu Zhang ◽  
Lin Yang

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) is a promising vector for in vivo gene therapy because of its excellent safety profile and ability to mediate stable gene expression in human subjects. However, there are still numerous challenges that need to be resolved before this gene delivery vehicle is used in clinical applications, such as the inability of AAV to effectively target specific tissues, preexisting neutralizing antibodies in human populations, and a limited AAV packaging capacity. Over the past two decades, much genetic modification work has been performed with the AAV capsid gene, resulting in a large number of variants with modified characteristics, rendering AAV a versatile vector for more efficient gene therapy applications for different genetic diseases.


Author(s):  
Seyoung Mun ◽  
Songmi Kim ◽  
Wooseok Lee ◽  
Keunsoo Kang ◽  
Thomas J. Meyer ◽  
...  

AbstractAdvances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology have made personal genome sequencing possible, and indeed, many individual human genomes have now been sequenced. Comparisons of these individual genomes have revealed substantial genomic differences between human populations as well as between individuals from closely related ethnic groups. Transposable elements (TEs) are known to be one of the major sources of these variations and act through various mechanisms, including de novo insertion, insertion-mediated deletion, and TE–TE recombination-mediated deletion. In this study, we carried out de novo whole-genome sequencing of one Korean individual (KPGP9) via multiple insert-size libraries. The de novo whole-genome assembly resulted in 31,305 scaffolds with a scaffold N50 size of 13.23 Mb. Furthermore, through computational data analysis and experimental verification, we revealed that 182 TE-associated structural variation (TASV) insertions and 89 TASV deletions contributed 64,232 bp in sequence gain and 82,772 bp in sequence loss, respectively, in the KPGP9 genome relative to the hg19 reference genome. We also verified structural differences associated with TASVs by comparative analysis with TASVs in recent genomes (AK1 and TCGA genomes) and reported their details. Here, we constructed a new Korean de novo whole-genome assembly and provide the first study, to our knowledge, focused on the identification of TASVs in an individual Korean genome. Our findings again highlight the role of TEs as a major driver of structural variations in human individual genomes.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1342
Author(s):  
Shaghayegh Mehravi ◽  
Gholam Ali Ranjbar ◽  
Ghader Mirzaghaderi ◽  
Anita Alice Severn-Ellis ◽  
Armin Scheben ◽  
...  

The species of Pimpinella, one of the largest genera of the family Apiaceae, are traditionally cultivated for medicinal purposes. In this study, high-throughput double digest restriction-site associated DNA sequencing technology (ddRAD-seq) was used to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in eight Pimpinella species from Iran. After double-digestion with the enzymes HpyCH4IV and HinfI, a total of 334,702,966 paired-end reads were de novo assembled into 1,270,791 loci with an average of 28.8 reads per locus. After stringent filtering, 2440 high-quality SNPs were identified for downstream analysis. Analysis of genetic relationships and population structure, based on these retained SNPs, indicated the presence of three major groups. Gene ontology and pathway analysis were determined by using comparison SNP-associated flanking sequences with a public non-redundant database. Due to the lack of genomic resources in this genus, our present study is the first report to provide high-quality SNPs in Pimpinella based on a de novo analysis pipeline using ddRAD-seq. This data will enhance the molecular knowledge of the genus Pimpinella and will provide an important source of information for breeders and the research community to enhance breeding programs and support the management of Pimpinella genomic resources.


Author(s):  
Corrinne E Grover ◽  
Daojun Yuan ◽  
Mark A Arick ◽  
Emma R Miller ◽  
Guanjing Hu ◽  
...  

Abstract Cotton is an important textile crop whose gains in production over the last century have been challenged by various diseases. Because many modern cultivars are susceptible to several pests and pathogens, breeding efforts have included attempts to introgress wild, naturally resistant germplasm into elite lines. Gossypium stocksii is a wild cotton species native to Africa, which is part of a clade of vastly understudied species. Most of what is known about this species comes from pest resistance surveys and/or breeding efforts, which suggests that G. stocksii could be a valuable reservoir of natural pest resistance. Here we present a high-quality de novo genome sequence for G. stocksii. We compare the G. stocksii genome with resequencing data from a closely related, understudied species (G. somalense) to generate insight into the relatedness of these cotton species. Finally, we discuss the utility of the G. stocksii genome for understanding pest resistance in cotton, particularly resistance to cotton leaf curl virus.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Momchilo Vuyisich ◽  
Ayesha Arefin ◽  
Karen Davenport ◽  
Shihai Feng ◽  
Cheryl Gleasner ◽  
...  

Sequencing bacterial genomes has traditionally required large amounts of genomic DNA (~1 μg). There have been few studies to determine the effects of the input DNA amount or library preparation method on the quality of sequencing data. Several new commercially available library preparation methods enable shotgun sequencing from as little as 1 ng of input DNA. In this study, we evaluated the NEBNext Ultra library preparation reagents for sequencing bacterial genomes. We have evaluated the utility of NEBNext Ultra for resequencing andde novoassembly of four bacterial genomes and compared its performance with the TruSeq library preparation kit. The NEBNext Ultra reagents enable high quality resequencing andde novoassembly of a variety of bacterial genomes when using 100 ng of input genomic DNA. For the two most challenging genomes (Burkholderiaspp.), which have the highest GC content and are the longest, we also show that the quality of both resequencing andde novoassembly is not decreased when only 10 ng of input genomic DNA is used.


Author(s):  
Valentina Peona ◽  
Mozes P.K. Blom ◽  
Luohao Xu ◽  
Reto Burri ◽  
Shawn Sullivan ◽  
...  

AbstractGenome assemblies are currently being produced at an impressive rate by consortia and individual laboratories. The low costs and increasing efficiency of sequencing technologies have opened up a whole new world of genomic biodiversity. Although these technologies generate high-quality genome assemblies, there are still genomic regions difficult to assemble, like repetitive elements and GC-rich regions (genomic “dark matter”). In this study, we compare the efficiency of currently used sequencing technologies (short/linked/long reads and proximity ligation maps) and combinations thereof in assembling genomic dark matter starting from the same sample. By adopting different de-novo assembly strategies, we were able to compare each individual draft assembly to a curated multiplatform one and identify the nature of the previously missing dark matter with a particular focus on transposable elements, multi-copy MHC genes, and GC-rich regions. Thanks to this multiplatform approach, we demonstrate the feasibility of producing a high-quality chromosome-level assembly for a non-model organism (paradise crow) for which only suboptimal samples are available. Our approach was able to reconstruct complex chromosomes like the repeat-rich W sex chromosome and several GC-rich microchromosomes. Telomere-to-telomere assemblies are not a reality yet for most organisms, but by leveraging technology choice it is possible to minimize genome assembly gaps for downstream analysis. We provide a roadmap to tailor sequencing projects around the completeness of both the coding and non-coding parts of the genomes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (11) ◽  
pp. e1009631
Author(s):  
Raquel Linheiro ◽  
John Archer

With the exponential growth of sequence information stored over the last decade, including that of de novo assembled contigs from RNA-Seq experiments, quantification of chimeric sequences has become essential when assembling read data. In transcriptomics, de novo assembled chimeras can closely resemble underlying transcripts, but patterns such as those seen between co-evolving sites, or mapped read counts, become obscured. We have created a de Bruijn based de novo assembler for RNA-Seq data that utilizes a classification system to describe the complexity of underlying graphs from which contigs are created. Each contig is labelled with one of three levels, indicating whether or not ambiguous paths exist. A by-product of this is information on the range of complexity of the underlying gene families present. As a demonstration of CStones ability to assemble high-quality contigs, and to label them in this manner, both simulated and real data were used. For simulated data, ten million read pairs were generated from cDNA libraries representing four species, Drosophila melanogaster, Panthera pardus, Rattus norvegicus and Serinus canaria. These were assembled using CStone, Trinity and rnaSPAdes; the latter two being high-quality, well established, de novo assembers. For real data, two RNA-Seq datasets, each consisting of ≈30 million read pairs, representing two adult D. melanogaster whole-body samples were used. The contigs that CStone produced were comparable in quality to those of Trinity and rnaSPAdes in terms of length, sequence identity of aligned regions and the range of cDNA transcripts represented, whilst providing additional information on chimerism. Here we describe the details of CStones assembly and classification process, and propose that similar classification systems can be incorporated into other de novo assembly tools. Within a related side study, we explore the effects that chimera’s within reference sets have on the identification of differentially expression genes. CStone is available at: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cstone/.


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