Mingze Dong, David Su, Harriet Kluger, Rong Fan, Yuval Kluger
{"title":"SIMVI reveals intrinsic and spatial-induced states in spatial omics data.","authors":"Mingze Dong, David Su, Harriet Kluger, Rong Fan, Yuval Kluger","doi":"10.1101/2023.08.28.554970","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2023.08.28.554970","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Spatial omics technologies enable the analysis of gene expression and interaction dynamics in relation to tissue structure and function. However, existing computational methods may not properly distinguish cellular intrinsic variability and intercellular interactions, and may thus fail to capture spatial regulations for further biological discoveries. Here, we present Spatial Interaction Modeling using Variational Inference (SIMVI), an annotation-free framework that disentangles cell intrinsic and spatial-induced latent variables for modeling gene expression in spatial omics data. We derive theoretical support for SIMVI in disentangling intrinsic and spatial-induced variations. By this disentanglement, SIMVI enables estimation of spatial effects (SE) at a single-cell resolution, and opens up various opportunities for novel downstream analyses. To demonstrate the potential of SIMVI, we applied SIMVI to spatial omics data from diverse platforms and tissues (MERFISH human cortex, Slide-seqv2 mouse hippocampus, Slide-tags human tonsil, spatial multiome human melanoma, cohort-level CosMx melanoma). In all tested datasets, SIMVI effectively disentangles variations and infers accurate spatial effects compared with alternative methods. Moreover, on these datasets, SIMVI uniquely uncovers complex spatial regulations and dynamics of biological significance. In the human tonsil data, SIMVI illuminates the cyclical spatial dynamics of germinal center B cells during maturation. Applying SIMVI to both RNA and ATAC modalities of the multiome melanoma data reveals potential tumor epigenetic reprogramming states. Application of SIMVI on our newly-collected cohort-level CosMx melanoma dataset uncovers space-and-outcome-dependent macrophage states and the underlying cellular communication machinery in the tumor microenvironments.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/93/94/nihpp-2023.08.28.554970v1.PMC10491129.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10257642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hibernation reduces GABA signaling in the brainstem to enhance motor activity of breathing at cool temperatures.","authors":"Sandy E Saunders, Joseph M Santin","doi":"10.1101/2023.10.09.561534","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2023.10.09.561534","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Neural circuits produce reliable activity patterns despite disturbances in the environment. For this to occur, neurons elicit synaptic plasticity during perturbations. However, recent work suggests that plasticity not only regulates circuit activity during disturbances, but these modifications may also linger to stabilize circuits during future perturbations. The implementation of such a regulation scheme for real-life environmental challenges of animals remains unclear. Amphibians provide insight into this problem in a rather extreme way, as circuits that generate breathing are inactive for several months during underwater hibernation and use compensatory plasticity to promote ventilation upon emergence.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Using <i>ex vivo</i> brainstem preparations and electrophysiology, we find that hibernation in American bullfrogs reduces GABA<sub>A</sub> receptor (GABA<sub>A</sub>R) inhibition in respiratory rhythm generating circuits and motor neurons, consistent with a compensatory response to chronic inactivity. Although GABA<sub>A</sub>Rs are normally critical for breathing, baseline network output at warm temperatures was not affected. However, when assessed across a range of temperatures, hibernators with reduced GABA<sub>A</sub>R signaling had greater activity at cooler temperatures, enhancing respiratory motor output under conditions that otherwise strongly depress breathing.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Hibernation reduces GABA<sub>A</sub>R signaling to promote robust respiratory output only at cooler temperatures. Although animals do not ventilate lungs during hibernation, we suggest this would be beneficial for stabilizing breathing when the animal passes through a large temperature range during emergence in the spring. More broadly, these results demonstrate that compensatory synaptic plasticity can increase the operating range of circuits in harsh environments, thereby promoting adaptive behavior in conditions that suppress activity.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10592683/pdf/nihpp-2023.10.09.561534v1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49694511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nicholas Koelsch, Faridoddin Mirshahi, Hussein F Aqbi, Mulugeta Seneshaw, Michael O Idowu, Amy L Olex, Arun J Sanyal, Masoud H Manjili
{"title":"Effective anti-tumor immune responses are orchestrated by immune cell partnership network that functions through tissue homeostatic pathways, not direct cytotoxicity.","authors":"Nicholas Koelsch, Faridoddin Mirshahi, Hussein F Aqbi, Mulugeta Seneshaw, Michael O Idowu, Amy L Olex, Arun J Sanyal, Masoud H Manjili","doi":"10.1101/2024.06.12.598563","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2024.06.12.598563","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The liver hosts a diverse array of immune cells that play pivotal roles in both maintaining tissue homeostasis and responding to disease. However, the precise contributions of these immune cells in the progression of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain unclear. Utilizing a systems immunology approach, we reveal that liver immune responses are governed by a dominant-subdominant hierarchy of ligand-receptor-mediated homeostatic pathways. In healthy individuals, inflammatory immune responses operate within these pathways, challenging the notion of the liver as a purely tolerogenic organ. Chronic consumption of a Western diet (WD) disrupts hepatocyte function and reconfigures immune interactions, resulting in hepatic stellate cells (HSCs), cancer cells, and NKT cells driving 80% of the immune activity during NAFLD. In HCC, 80% of immune response involves NKT cells and monocytes collaborating with hepatocytes and myofibroblasts to restore disrupted homeostasis. Interestingly, dietary correction during NAFLD yields nonlinear outcomes: tumor progression coincides with the failure of mounting homeostatic immune responses, whereas tumor prevention is associated with sustained immune responses, predominantly orchestrated by monocytes. These monocytes actively target fibroblasts and myofibroblasts, creating a tumor-suppressive microenvironment. Notably, only 5% of T cells displayed apoptosis-inducing activity, selectively contributing to the turnover of hepatic stromal cells, particularly myofibroblasts and fibroblasts. Our findings suggest that effective anti-tumor immune responses in the liver are primarily mediated by immune cells sustaining tissue homeostasis, rather than relying on direct cytotoxic mechanisms.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11188117/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141433482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dhanesh Sivadasan Bindu, Justin T Savage, Nicholas Brose, Luke Bradley, Kylie Dimond, Christabel Xin Tan, Cagla Eroglu
{"title":"GEARBOCS: An Adeno Associated Virus Tool for <i>In Vivo</i> Gene Editing in Astrocytes.","authors":"Dhanesh Sivadasan Bindu, Justin T Savage, Nicholas Brose, Luke Bradley, Kylie Dimond, Christabel Xin Tan, Cagla Eroglu","doi":"10.1101/2023.01.17.524433","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2023.01.17.524433","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>CRISPR/Cas9-based genome engineering enables rapid and precise gene manipulations in the CNS. Here, we developed a non-invasive astrocyte-specific method utilizing a single AAV vector, which we named GEARBOCS (Gene Editing in AstRocytes Based On CRISPR/Cas9 System). We verified GEARBOCS' specificity to mouse cortical astrocytes and demonstrated its utility for three types of gene manipulations: knockout (KO); tagging (TagIn); and reporter knock-in (GeneTrap) strategies. Next, we deployed GEARBOCS in two test cases. First, we determined that astrocytes are a necessary source of the synaptogenic factor Sparcl1 for thalamocortical synapse maintenance in the mouse primary visual cortex. Second, we determined that cortical astrocytes express the synaptic vesicle associated Vamp2 protein and found that it is required for maintaining excitatory and inhibitory synapse numbers in the visual cortex. These results show that the GEARBOCS strategy provides a fast and efficient means to study astrocyte biology <i>in vivo</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9884502/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9533315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vitaly V Ganusov, Afsal Kolloli, Selvakumar Subbian
{"title":"Mathematical modeling suggests heterogeneous replication of <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> in rabbits.","authors":"Vitaly V Ganusov, Afsal Kolloli, Selvakumar Subbian","doi":"10.1101/2024.02.07.579301","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2024.02.07.579301","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Tuberculosis (<b>TB</b>), the disease caused by <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> (<b>Mtb</b>), remains a major health problem with 10.6 million cases of the disease and 1.6 million deaths in 2021. It is well understood that pulmonary TB is due to Mtb growth in the lung but quantitative estimates of rates of Mtb replication and death in lungs of patients or animals such as monkeys or rabbits remain largely unknown. We performed experiments with rabbits infected with a novel, virulent clinical Mtb isolate of the Beijing lineage, HN878, carrying an unstable plasmid pBP10. In our in vitro experiments we found that pBP10 is more stable in HN878 strain than in a more commonly used laboratory-adapted Mtb strain H37Rv (the segregation coefficient being <i>s</i> = 0.10 in HN878 vs. <i>s</i> = 0.18 in H37Rv). Interestingly, the kinetics of plasmid-bearing bacteria in lungs of Mtb-infected rabbits did not follow an expected monotonic decline; the percent of plasmid-bearing cells increased between 28 and 56 days post-infection and remained stable between 84 and 112 days post-infection despite a large increase in bacterial numbers in the lung at late time points. Mathematical modeling suggested that such a non-monotonic change in the percent of plasmid-bearing cells can be explained if the lung Mtb population consists of several (at least 2) sub-populations with different replication/death kinetics: one major population expanding early and being controlled/eliminated, while another, a smaller population expanding at later times causing a counterintuitive increase in the percent of plasmid-bearing cells. Importantly, a model with one kinetically homogeneous Mtb population could not explain the data including when the model was run stochastically. Given that in rabbits HN878 strain forms well circumscribed granulomas, our results suggest independent bacterial dynamics in subsets of such granulomas. Our model predictions can be tested in future experiments in which HN878-pBP10 dynamics in individual granulomas is followed over time. Taken together, our new data and mathematical modeling-based analyses illustrate differences in Mtb dynamics in mice and rabbits confirming a perhaps somewhat obvious observation that \"rabbits are not mice\".</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10871370/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139900988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stephen A Goldstein, Teagan M Feeley, Kristina M Babler, Zoë A Hilbert, Diane M Downhour, Niema Moshiri, Nels C Elde
{"title":"Hidden evolutionary constraints dictate the retention of coronavirus accessory genes.","authors":"Stephen A Goldstein, Teagan M Feeley, Kristina M Babler, Zoë A Hilbert, Diane M Downhour, Niema Moshiri, Nels C Elde","doi":"10.1101/2023.10.12.561935","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2023.10.12.561935","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Coronaviruses exhibit many mechanisms of genetic innovation, including the acquisition of accessory genes that originate by capture of cellular genes or through duplication of existing viral genes. Accessory genes influence viral host range and cellular tropism, but little is known about how selection acts on these variable regions of virus genomes. We used experimental evolution of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) encoding a cellular AKAP7 phosphodiesterase and an inactive native phosphodiesterase, NS2 to model the evolutionary fate of accessory genes. After courses of serial infection, the gene encoding inactive NS2, ORF2, unexpectedly remained intact, suggesting it is under cryptic constraint uncoupled from the function of NS2. In contrast, AKAP7 was retained under strong selection but rapidly lost under relaxed selection. Experimental evolution also led to altered viral replication in a cell type-specific manner and changed the relative proportions of subgenomic viral RNA in plaque-purified viral isolates, revealing additional mechanisms of adaptation. Guided by the retention of ORF2 and similar patterns in related betacoronaviruses, we analyzed ORF8 of SARS-CoV-2, which arose via gene duplication and contains premature stop codons in several globally successful lineages. As with MHV ORF2, the coding-defective SARS-CoV-2 ORF8 gene remains largely intact, mirroring patterns observed during MHV experimental evolution, challenging assumptions on the dynamics of gene loss in virus genomes and extending these findings to viruses currently adapting to humans.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10592793/pdf/nihpp-2023.10.12.561935v1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49694552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Julia Moser, Steven M Nelson, Sanju Koirala, Thomas J Madison, Alyssa K Labonte, Cristian Morales Carrasco, Eric Feczko, Lucille A Moore, Jacob T Lundquist, Kimberly B Weldon, Gracie Grimsrud, Kristina Hufnagle, Weli Ahmed, Michael J Myers, Babatunde Adeyemo, Abraham Z Snyder, Evan M Gordon, Nico U F Dosenbach, Brenden Tervo-Clemmens, Bart Larsen, Steen Moeller, Essa Yacoub, Luca Vizioli, Kamil Uğurbil, Timothy O Laumann, Chad M Sylvester, Damien A Fair
{"title":"Multi-echo Acquisition and Thermal Denoising Advances Precision Functional Imaging.","authors":"Julia Moser, Steven M Nelson, Sanju Koirala, Thomas J Madison, Alyssa K Labonte, Cristian Morales Carrasco, Eric Feczko, Lucille A Moore, Jacob T Lundquist, Kimberly B Weldon, Gracie Grimsrud, Kristina Hufnagle, Weli Ahmed, Michael J Myers, Babatunde Adeyemo, Abraham Z Snyder, Evan M Gordon, Nico U F Dosenbach, Brenden Tervo-Clemmens, Bart Larsen, Steen Moeller, Essa Yacoub, Luca Vizioli, Kamil Uğurbil, Timothy O Laumann, Chad M Sylvester, Damien A Fair","doi":"10.1101/2023.10.27.564416","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2023.10.27.564416","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The characterization of individual functional brain organization with Precision Functional Mapping has provided important insights in recent years in adults. However, little is known about the ontogeny of inter-individual differences in brain functional organization during human development. Precise characterization of systems organization during periods of high plasticity is likely to be essential for discoveries promoting lifelong health. Obtaining precision fMRI data during development has unique challenges that highlight the importance of establishing new methods to improve data acquisition, processing, and analysis. Here, we investigate two methods that can facilitate attaining this goal: multi-echo (ME) data acquisition and thermal noise removal with Noise Reduction with Distribution Corrected (NORDIC) principal component analysis. We applied these methods to precision fMRI data from adults, children, and newborn infants. In adults, both ME acquisitions and NORDIC increased temporal signal to noise ratio (tSNR) as well as the split-half reliability of functional connectivity matrices, with the combination helping more than either technique alone. The benefits of NORDIC denoising replicated in both our developmental samples. ME acquisitions revealed longer and more variable T2* relaxation times across the brain in infants relative to older children and adults, leading to major differences in the echo weighting for optimally combining ME data. This result suggests ME acquisitions may be a promising tool for optimizing developmental fMRI, albeit application in infants needs further investigation. The present work showcases methodological advances that improve Precision Functional Mapping in adults and developmental populations and, at the same time, highlights the need for further improvements in infant specific fMRI.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10634909/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"92157834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Srivarsha Rajshekar, Omar Adame-Arana, Gaurav Bajpai, Serafin Colmenares, Kyle Lin, Samuel Safran, Gary H Karpen
{"title":"Affinity hierarchies and amphiphilic proteins underlie the co-assembly of nucleolar and heterochromatin condensates.","authors":"Srivarsha Rajshekar, Omar Adame-Arana, Gaurav Bajpai, Serafin Colmenares, Kyle Lin, Samuel Safran, Gary H Karpen","doi":"10.1101/2023.07.06.547894","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2023.07.06.547894","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Nucleoli are surrounded by Pericentromeric Heterochromatin (PCH), reflecting a close spatial association between the two largest biomolecular condensates in eukaryotic nuclei. Nucleoli are the sites of ribosome synthesis, while the repeat-rich PCH is essential for chromosome segregation, genome stability, and transcriptional silencing. How and why these two distinct condensates co-assemble is unclear. Here, using high-resolution live imaging of <i>Drosophila</i> embryogenesis, we find that <i>de novo</i> establishment of PCH around the nucleolus is highly dynamic, transitioning from the nuclear edge to surrounding the nucleolus. Eliminating the nucleolus by removing the ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) resulted in increased PCH compaction and subsequent reorganization into a toroidal structure. In addition, in embryos lacking rDNA, some nucleolar proteins were redistributed into new bodies or 'neocondensates', including enrichment in the PCH toroidal hole. Combining these observations with physical modeling revealed that nucleolar-PCH associations can be mediated by a hierarchy of interaction strengths between PCH, nucleoli, and 'amphiphilic' protein(s) that have affinities for both nucleolar and PCH components. We validated this model by identifying a candidate amphiphile, a DEAD-Box RNA Helicase called Pitchoune, whose depletion or mutation of its PCH interaction motif disrupted PCH-nucleolar associations. Together, this study unveils a dynamic program for establishing nucleolar-PCH associations during animal development, demonstrates that nucleoli are required for normal PCH organization, and identifies Pitchoune as an amphiphilic molecular link required for PCH-nucleolar associations.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/52/32/nihpp-2023.07.06.547894v2.PMC10557603.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41163097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ashley R Albright, Connie Yan, David Angeles-Albores, Tatyana Makushok, Jamarc Allen-Henderson, Wallace F Marshall
{"title":"Genome-wide analysis of anterior-posterior mRNA regionalization in <i>Stentor coeruleus</i> reveals a role for the microtubule cytoskeleton.","authors":"Ashley R Albright, Connie Yan, David Angeles-Albores, Tatyana Makushok, Jamarc Allen-Henderson, Wallace F Marshall","doi":"10.1101/2023.01.09.523364","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2023.01.09.523364","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cells have complex and beautiful structures that are important for their function. However, understanding the molecular mechanisms that produce these structures is a challenging problem due to the gap in size scales between molecular interactions and cellular structures. The giant ciliate <i>Stentor coeruleus</i> is a unicellular model organism whose large size, reproducible structure, and ability to heal wounds and regenerate have historically allowed the formation of structure in a single cell to be addressed using methods of experimental embryology. Such studies have shown that specific cellular structures, such as the membranellar band, always form in particular regions of the cell, which raises the question: what is the source of positional information within this organism? By analogy with embryonic development, in which regionalized mRNA is often used to mark position, we asked whether specific regionalized mRNAs might mark position along the anterior-posterior axis of <i>Stentor</i>. By physically bisecting cells and conducting bulk RNA sequencing, we were able to identify sets of messages enriched in either the anterior or posterior half. We then conducted half-cell RNA-sequencing in paired anteriors and posteriors of cells in which the microtubule cytoskeleton was disrupted by RNAi of β-tubulin or dynein intermediate chains. We found that many messages either lost their regionalized distribution or switched to an opposite distribution, such that anterior-enriched messages in control became posterior-enriched in the RNAi cells, or vice versa. This study indicates that mRNA can be regionalized within a single giant cell and that microtubules may play a role, possibly by serving as tracks for the movement of the messages.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/06/5b/nihpp-2023.01.09.523364v2.PMC9882060.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10229517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stuti K Desai, Yiyang Zhou, Rahul Dilawari, Andrew L Routh, Vsevolod Popov, Linda J Kenney
{"title":"RpoS activates formation of <i>Salmonella</i> Typhi biofilms and drives persistence in the gall bladder.","authors":"Stuti K Desai, Yiyang Zhou, Rahul Dilawari, Andrew L Routh, Vsevolod Popov, Linda J Kenney","doi":"10.1101/2023.10.26.564249","DOIUrl":"10.1101/2023.10.26.564249","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The development of strategies for targeting the asymptomatic carriage of <i>Salmonella</i> Typhi in chronic typhoid patients has suffered owing to our basic lack of understanding of the molecular mechanisms that enable the formation of <i>S</i>. Typhi biofilms. Traditionally, studies have relied on cholesterol-attached biofilms formed by a closely related serovar, Typhimurium, to mimic multicellular Typhi communities formed on human gallstones. In long-term infections, <i>S</i>. Typhi adopts the biofilm lifestyle to persist in vivo and survive in the carrier state, ultimately leading to the spread of infections via the fecal-oral route of transmission. In the present work, we studied <i>S</i>. Typhi biofilms directly, applied targeted as well as genome-wide genetic approaches to uncover unique biofilm components that do not conform to the CsgD-dependent pathway established in <i>S</i>. Typhimurium. We undertook a genome-wide <i>Tn5</i> mutation screen in H58, a clinically relevant multidrug resistance strain of <i>S</i>. Typhi, in gallstone-mimicking conditions. We generated New Generation Sequencing libraries based on the ClickSeq technology to identify the key regulators, IraP and RpoS, and the matrix components Sth fimbriae, Vi capsule and lipopolysaccharide. We discovered that the starvation sigma factor, RpoS, was required for the transcriptional activation of matrix-encoding genes in vitro, and for <i>S</i>. Typhi colonization in persistent infections in vivo, using a heterologous fish larval model. An <i>rpoS</i> null mutant failed to colonize the gall bladder in chronic zebrafish infections. Overall, our work uncovered a novel RpoS-driven, CsgD-independent paradigm for the formation of cholesterol-attached Typhi biofilms, and emphasized the role(s) of stress signaling pathways for adaptation in chronic infections. Our identification of the biofilm regulators in <i>S</i>. Typhi paves the way for the development of drugs against typhoid carriage, which will ultimately control the increased incidence of gall bladder cancer in typhoid carriers.</p>","PeriodicalId":72407,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10634867/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"92157932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}