scholarly journals Categorization of prophage genes in Bacillus subtilis 168 and assessing their relative importance through RNA-seq gene expression analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenfa Ng

Bacteriophage evolves to control the population of fast-growing bacterial cells, without which explosion in bacterial population may induce unimaginable harm to diverse ecosystems. But, bacteriophage also hide in bacterial genomes when nutritional and environmental circumstances are unfavourable. This involves the integration of phage genome into the host genome at appropriate genomic loci in a process known as lysogeny. This work sought to delineate the prophages present in the annotated genome of Bacillus subtilis 168, and assess their relative importance through RNA-seq expression analysis. Firstly, examination of the annotated genome of the model Gram-positive bacterium revealed five distinct prophage regions: SPBeta, prophage 6, PBSX, prophage 3 region, and prophage 1 region. All prophage regions contain host genes, which suggests that host transposase activity have swapped in host genes for phage genes in the prophage genome. Given the significant number of phage genes that have been swapped into each of the prophage genome, all prophage regions are deemed to be defective. BLAST analysis further highlighted that many of the prophages in B. subtilis are extinct given that they do not have ancestral or daughter brethren. However, RNA-seq transcriptome analysis of B. subtilis turned out an interesting paradox indicative of the important role that host transposase have in swapping in host promoters for prophage genes. Specifically, a significant number of prophage genes are highly expressed, which is implausible given that phage genes should be transcriptionally silent. The result and phenomenon further suggests the relative facile nature in which host promoters could be swapped in for phage genes, which is indicative of presence of genomic motifs in prophage genome recognizable by host transposase. Existence of such sequence motifs is thus indicative of possible co-evolution of transposase and phages where transposases were originally a part of the phage genome, which latter jumped out into the host genome to aid the swapping in of host genes into the prophage genome for augmenting prophage genetic repertoire in the face of changing environmental conditions. Overall, it is not uncommon for bacterial species to harbour multiple prophages. But, lysogeny may not be a viable option for long-term preservation of prophage genetic repertoire given that host transposase would inevitable swap in host genes at random locations in the prophage genome.

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeeshan Ahmed ◽  
Eduard Gibert Renart ◽  
Saman Zeeshan ◽  
XinQi Dong

Abstract Background Genetic disposition is considered critical for identifying subjects at high risk for disease development. Investigating disease-causing and high and low expressed genes can support finding the root causes of uncertainties in patient care. However, independent and timely high-throughput next-generation sequencing data analysis is still a challenge for non-computational biologists and geneticists. Results In this manuscript, we present a findable, accessible, interactive, and reusable (FAIR) bioinformatics platform, i.e., GVViZ (visualizing genes with disease-causing variants). GVViZ is a user-friendly, cross-platform, and database application for RNA-seq-driven variable and complex gene-disease data annotation and expression analysis with a dynamic heat map visualization. GVViZ has the potential to find patterns across millions of features and extract actionable information, which can support the early detection of complex disorders and the development of new therapies for personalized patient care. The execution of GVViZ is based on a set of simple instructions that users without a computational background can follow to design and perform customized data analysis. It can assimilate patients’ transcriptomics data with the public, proprietary, and our in-house developed gene-disease databases to query, easily explore, and access information on gene annotation and classified disease phenotypes with greater visibility and customization. To test its performance and understand the clinical and scientific impact of GVViZ, we present GVViZ analysis for different chronic diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, asthma, diabetes mellitus, heart failure, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis, and multiple cancer disorders. The results are visualized using GVViZ and can be exported as image (PNF/TIFF) and text (CSV) files that include gene names, Ensembl (ENSG) IDs, quantified abundances, expressed transcript lengths, and annotated oncology and non-oncology diseases. Conclusions We emphasize that automated and interactive visualization should be an indispensable component of modern RNA-seq analysis, which is currently not the case. However, experts in clinics and researchers in life sciences can use GVViZ to visualize and interpret the transcriptomics data, making it a powerful tool to study the dynamics of gene expression and regulation. Furthermore, with successful deployment in clinical settings, GVViZ has the potential to enable high-throughput correlations between patient diagnoses based on clinical and transcriptomics data.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Chung ◽  
Vincent M. Bruno ◽  
David A. Rasko ◽  
Christina A. Cuomo ◽  
José F. Muñoz ◽  
...  

AbstractAdvances in transcriptome sequencing allow for simultaneous interrogation of differentially expressed genes from multiple species originating from a single RNA sample, termed dual or multi-species transcriptomics. Compared to single-species differential expression analysis, the design of multi-species differential expression experiments must account for the relative abundances of each organism of interest within the sample, often requiring enrichment methods and yielding differences in total read counts across samples. The analysis of multi-species transcriptomics datasets requires modifications to the alignment, quantification, and downstream analysis steps compared to the single-species analysis pipelines. We describe best practices for multi-species transcriptomics and differential gene expression.


Plants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 1465
Author(s):  
Ramon de Koning ◽  
Raphaël Kiekens ◽  
Mary Esther Muyoka Toili ◽  
Geert Angenon

Raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFO) play an important role in plants but are also considered to be antinutritional factors. A profound understanding of the galactinol and RFO biosynthetic gene families and the expression patterns of the individual genes is a prerequisite for the sustainable reduction of the RFO content in the seeds, without compromising normal plant development and functioning. In this paper, an overview of the annotation and genetic structure of all galactinol- and RFO biosynthesis genes is given for soybean and common bean. In common bean, three galactinol synthase genes, two raffinose synthase genes and one stachyose synthase gene were identified for the first time. To discover the expression patterns of these genes in different tissues, two expression atlases have been created through re-analysis of publicly available RNA-seq data. De novo expression analysis through an RNA-seq study during seed development of three varieties of common bean gave more insight into the expression patterns of these genes during the seed development. The results of the expression analysis suggest that different classes of galactinol- and RFO synthase genes have tissue-specific expression patterns in soybean and common bean. With the obtained knowledge, important galactinol- and RFO synthase genes that specifically play a key role in the accumulation of RFOs in the seeds are identified. These candidate genes may play a pivotal role in reducing the RFO content in the seeds of important legumes which could improve the nutritional quality of these beans and would solve the discomforts associated with their consumption.


2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (7) ◽  
pp. 1126-1133 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Nayab ◽  
S. A. Moududee ◽  
Y. Shi ◽  
Y. Jiang ◽  
Q. Gong

2003 ◽  
Vol 185 (4) ◽  
pp. 1326-1337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philina S. Lee ◽  
Daniel Chi-Hong Lin ◽  
Shigeki Moriya ◽  
Alan D. Grossman

ABSTRACT Spo0J (ParB) of Bacillus subtilis is a DNA-binding protein that belongs to a conserved family of proteins required for efficient plasmid and chromosome partitioning in many bacterial species. We found that Spo0J contributes to the positioning of the chromosomal oriC region, but probably not by recruiting the origin regions to specific subcellular locations. In wild-type cells during exponential growth, duplicated origin regions were generally positioned around the cell quarters. In a spo0J null mutant, sister origin regions were often closer together, nearer to midcell. We found, by using a Spo0J-green fluorescent protein [GFP] fusion, that the subcellular location of Spo0J was a consequence of the chromosomal positions of the Spo0J binding sites. When an array of binding sites (parS sites) were inserted at various chromosomal locations in the absence of six of the eight known parS sites, Spo0J-GFP was no longer found predominantly at the cell quarters, indicating that Spo0J is not sufficient to recruit chromosomal parS sites to the cell quarters. spo0J also affected chromosome positioning during sporulation. A spo0J null mutant showed an increase in the number of cells with some origin-distal regions located in the forespore. In addition, a spo0J null mutation caused an increase in the number of foci per cell of LacI-GFP bound to arrays of lac operators inserted in various positions in the chromosome, including the origin region, an increase in the DNA-protein ratio, and an increase in origins per cell, as determined by flow cytometry. These results indicate that the spo0J mutant produced a significant proportion of cells with increased chromosome content, probably due to increased and asynchronous initiation of DNA replication.


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