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Asset Tag: RNA sequencing

September 22, 2019

Introduction to isoform sequencing using Pacific Biosciences technology (Iso-Seq)

Alternative RNA splicing is a known phenomenon, but we still do not have a complete catalog of isoforms that explain variability in the human transcriptome. We have made significant progress in developing methods to study variability of the transcriptome, but we are far away of having a complete picture of the transcriptome. The initial methods to study gene expression were based on cloning of cDNAs and Sanger sequencing. The strategy was labor-intensive and expensive. With the development of microarrays, different methods based on exon arrays and tiling arrays provided valuable information about RNA expression. However, the microarray presented significant limitations. Most of the limitations became apparent by 2005, but it was not until 2008 that an alternative method to study the transcriptome was developed. RNA Sequencing using next-generation sequencing (RNA-Seq) quickly became the technology of choice for gene expression profiling. Recently, the precision and sensitivity of RNA-Seq have come into question, especially for transcriptome reconstruction. This chapter will describe a relatively new method, “Isoform Sequencing (Iso-Seq). Iso-Seq was developed by Pacific Biosciences (PacBio), and it is capable of identifying new isoforms with extraordinary precision due to its long-read technology. The technique to create libraries is straightforward, and the PacBio RS II instrument generates the information in hours. The bioinformatics analysis is performed using the freely available SMRT® Portal software. The SMRT Portal is easy to use and capable of performing all the steps necessary to analyze the raw data and to generate high-quality full-length isoforms. For the universal acceptance of the Iso-Seq method, the capacity of the SMRT Cells needs to improve at least 10- to 100-fold to make the system affordable and attractive to users.

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September 22, 2019

JAFFA: High sensitivity transcriptome-focused fusion gene detection.

Genomic instability is a hallmark of cancer and, as such, structural alterations and fusion genes are common events in the cancer landscape. RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) is a powerful method for profiling cancers, but current methods for identifying fusion genes are optimised for short reads. JAFFA (https://github.com/Oshlack/JAFFA/wiki) is a sensitive fusion detection method that outperforms other methods with reads of 100 bp or greater. JAFFA compares a cancer transcriptome to the reference transcriptome, rather than the genome, where the cancer transcriptome is inferred using long reads directly or by de novo assembling short reads.

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September 22, 2019

Transcript profiling of a bitter variety of narrow-leafed lupin to discover alkaloid biosynthetic genes.

Lupins (Lupinus spp.) are nitrogen-fixing legumes that accumulate toxic alkaloids in their protein-rich beans. These anti-nutritional compounds belong to the family of quinolizidine alkaloids (QAs), which are of interest to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. To unleash the potential of lupins as protein crops and as sources of QAs, a thorough understanding of the QA pathway is needed. However, only the first enzyme in the pathway, lysine decarboxylase (LDC), is known. Here, we report the transcriptome of a high-QA variety of narrow-leafed lupin (L. angustifolius), obtained using eight different tissues and two different sequencing technologies. In addition, we present a list of 33 genes that are closely co-expressed with LDC and that represent strong candidates for involvement in lupin alkaloid biosynthesis. One of these genes encodes a copper amine oxidase able to convert the product of LDC, cadaverine, into 1-piperideine, as shown by heterologous expression and enzyme assays. Kinetic analysis revealed a low KM value for cadaverine, supporting a role as the second enzyme in the QA pathway. Our transcriptomic data set represents a crucial step towards the discovery of enzymes, transporters, and regulators involved in lupin alkaloid biosynthesis.© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology.

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September 22, 2019

Neural circular RNAs are derived from synaptic genes and regulated by development and plasticity.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have re-emerged as an interesting RNA species. Using deep RNA profiling in different mouse tissues, we observed that circRNAs were substantially enriched in brain and a disproportionate fraction of them were derived from host genes that encode synaptic proteins. Moreover, on the basis of separate profiling of the RNAs localized in neuronal cell bodies and neuropil, circRNAs were, on average, more enriched in the neuropil than their host gene mRNA isoforms. Using high-resolution in situ hybridization, we visualized circRNA punctae in the dendrites of neurons. Consistent with the idea that circRNAs might regulate synaptic function during development, many circRNAs changed their abundance abruptly at a time corresponding to synaptogenesis. In addition, following a homeostatic downscaling of neuronal activity many circRNAs exhibited substantial up- or downregulation. Together, our data indicate that brain circRNAs are positioned to respond to and regulate synaptic function.

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September 22, 2019

The industrial melanism mutation in British peppered moths is a transposable element.

Discovering the mutational events that fuel adaptation to environmental change remains an important challenge for evolutionary biology. The classroom example of a visible evolutionary response is industrial melanism in the peppered moth (Biston betularia): the replacement, during the Industrial Revolution, of the common pale typica form by a previously unknown black (carbonaria) form, driven by the interaction between bird predation and coal pollution. The carbonaria locus has been coarsely localized to a 200-kilobase region, but the specific identity and nature of the sequence difference controlling the carbonaria-typica polymorphism, and the gene it influences, are unknown. Here we show that the mutation event giving rise to industrial melanism in Britain was the insertion of a large, tandemly repeated, transposable element into the first intron of the gene cortex. Statistical inference based on the distribution of recombined carbonaria haplotypes indicates that this transposition event occurred around 1819, consistent with the historical record. We have begun to dissect the mode of action of the carbonaria transposable element by showing that it increases the abundance of a cortex transcript, the protein product of which plays an important role in cell-cycle regulation, during early wing disc development. Our findings fill a substantial knowledge gap in the iconic example of microevolutionary change, adding a further layer of insight into the mechanism of adaptation in response to natural selection. The discovery that the mutation itself is a transposable element will stimulate further debate about the importance of ‘jumping genes’ as a source of major phenotypic novelty.

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September 22, 2019

Complex rearrangements and oncogene amplifications revealed by long-read DNA and RNA sequencing of a breast cancer cell line.

The SK-BR-3 cell line is one of the most important models for HER2+ breast cancers, which affect one in five breast cancer patients. SK-BR-3 is known to be highly rearranged, although much of the variation is in complex and repetitive regions that may be underreported. Addressing this, we sequenced SK-BR-3 using long-read single molecule sequencing from Pacific Biosciences and develop one of the most detailed maps of structural variations (SVs) in a cancer genome available, with nearly 20,000 variants present, most of which were missed by short-read sequencing. Surrounding the important ERBB2 oncogene (also known as HER2), we discover a complex sequence of nested duplications and translocations, suggesting a punctuated progression. Full-length transcriptome sequencing further revealed several novel gene fusions within the nested genomic variants. Combining long-read genome and transcriptome sequencing enables an in-depth analysis of how SVs disrupt the genome and sheds new light on the complex mechanisms involved in cancer genome evolution.© 2018 Nattestad et al.; Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

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September 22, 2019

A novel enrichment strategy reveals unprecedented number of novel transcription start sites at single base resolution in a model prokaryote and the gut microbiome.

The initiating nucleotide found at the 5′ end of primary transcripts has a distinctive triphosphorylated end that distinguishes these transcripts from all other RNA species. Recognizing this distinction is key to deconvoluting the primary transcriptome from the plethora of processed transcripts that confound analysis of the transcriptome. The currently available methods do not use targeted enrichment for the 5’end of primary transcripts, but rather attempt to deplete non-targeted RNA.We developed a method, Cappable-seq, for directly enriching for the 5′ end of primary transcripts and enabling determination of transcription start sites at single base resolution. This is achieved by enzymatically modifying the 5′ triphosphorylated end of RNA with a selectable tag. We first applied Cappable-seq to E. coli, achieving up to 50 fold enrichment of primary transcripts and identifying an unprecedented 16539 transcription start sites (TSS) genome-wide at single base resolution. We also applied Cappable-seq to a mouse cecum sample and identified TSS in a microbiome.Cappable-seq allows for the first time the capture of the 5′ end of primary transcripts. This enables a unique robust TSS determination in bacteria and microbiomes.  In addition to and beyond TSS determination, Cappable-seq depletes ribosomal RNA and reduces the complexity of the transcriptome to a single quantifiable tag per transcript enabling digital profiling of gene expression in any microbiome.

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September 22, 2019

The new world of isoform sequencing

Not too long ago, the life sciences community was still debating whether sequencers would ever overtake microarrays as the preferred means of measuring gene expression. Today, not only have sequencers become the standard workhorse for gene expression studies, but newer sequencing technology has delivered the ability to generate novel expression data even in the most well-characterized cells or organisms. Truly, it is a remarkable time for comprehensive studies of which genes are being transcribed, with the goal of providing functional insight into various biological processes. The key advantage sequencing holds over microarrays is its ability to deeply survey an entire transcriptome, while microarrays are limited to interrogating known genes using probes designed from a reference genome assembly. As next-generation sequencing became more affordable, scientists were eager to switch to this approach, which became known as RNA sequencing or simply RNA-seq. © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

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September 22, 2019

MHC class I diversity of olive baboons (Papio anubis) unravelled by next-generation sequencing.

The olive baboon represents an important model system to study various aspects of human biology and health, including the origin and diversity of the major histocompatibility complex. After screening of a group of related animals for polymorphisms associated with a well-defined microsatellite marker, subsequent MHC class I typing of a selected population of 24 animals was performed on two distinct next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms. A substantial number of 21 A and 80 B transcripts were discovered, about half of which had not been previously reported. Per animal, from one to four highly transcribed A alleles (majors) were observed, in addition to ones characterised by low transcripion levels (minors), such as members of the A*14 lineage. Furthermore, in one animal, up to 13 B alleles with differential transcription level profiles may be present. Based on segregation profiles, 16 Paan-AB haplotypes were defined. A haplotype encodes in general one or two major A and three to seven B transcripts, respectively. A further peculiarity is the presence of at least one copy of a B*02 lineage on nearly every haplotype, which indicates that B*02 represents a separate locus with probably a specialistic function. Haplotypes appear to be generated by recombination-like events, and the breakpoints map not only between the A and B regions but also within the B region itself. Therefore, the genetic makeup of the olive baboon MHC class I region appears to have been subject to a similar or even more complex expansion process than the one documented for macaque species.

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September 22, 2019

Single molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing comes of age: applications and utilities for medical diagnostics.

Short read massive parallel sequencing has emerged as a standard diagnostic tool in the medical setting. However, short read technologies have inherent limitations such as GC bias, difficulties mapping to repetitive elements, trouble discriminating paralogous sequences, and difficulties in phasing alleles. Long read single molecule sequencers resolve these obstacles. Moreover, they offer higher consensus accuracies and can detect epigenetic modifications from native DNA. The first commercially available long read single molecule platform was the RS system based on PacBio’s single molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing technology, which has since evolved into their RSII and Sequel systems. Here we capsulize how SMRT sequencing is revolutionizing constitutional, reproductive, cancer, microbial and viral genetic testing.© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

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September 22, 2019

Dual platform long-read RNA-sequencing dataset of the human Cytomegalovirus Lytic transcriptome

RNA-sequencing has revolutionized transcriptomics and the way we measure gene expression (Wang et al., 2009). As of today, short-read RNA sequencing is more widely used, and due to its low price and high throughput, is the preferred tool for the quantitative analysis of gene expression. However, the annotation of transcript isoforms is rather difficult using only short-read sequencing data, because the reads are shorter than most transcripts (Steijger et al., 2013). Long-read sequencing, on the other hand, can provide full contig information about transcripts, including exon-connectivity, and its merits in transcriptome profiling are being increasingly acknowledged (Sharon et al., 2013; Abdel-Ghany et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2016; Kuo et al., 2017). Due to the relatively low throughput of current long-read sequencing technologies, they can only characterize smaller transcriptomes in high-depth (Weirather et al., 2017). The Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a ubiquitous betaherpesvirus, which can cause mononucleosis-like symptoms in adults (Cohen and Corey, 1985), and severe life-threatening infections in newborns (Wen et al., 2002). Latent HCMV infection has recently been implicated to affect cancer formation (Dziurzynski et al., 2012; Jin et al., 2014). Examining the transcriptome of the virus can go a long way in helping understand its molecular biology. Short-read RNA sequencing studies have discovered splice junctions and non-coding transcripts (Gatherer et al., 2011) and have shown that the most abundant HCMV transcripts are similarly expressed in different cell types (Cheng et al., 2017). Our long-read RNA sequencing experiments using the Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) RSII platform revealed a great number of transcript isoforms, polycistronic RNAs and transcriptional overlaps (Balázs et al., 2017a).

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September 22, 2019

Next-generation approaches to advancing eco-immunogenomic research in critically endangered primates.

High-throughput sequencing platforms are generating massive amounts of genomic data from nonmodel species, and these data sets are valuable resources that can be mined to advance a number of research areas. An example is the growing amount of transcriptome data that allow for examination of gene expression in nonmodel species. Here, we show how publicly available transcriptome data from nonmodel primates can be used to design novel research focused on immunogenomics. We mined transcriptome data from the world’s most endangered group of primates, the lemurs of Madagascar, for sequences corresponding to immunoglobulins. Our results confirmed homology between strepsirrhine and haplorrhine primate immunoglobulins and allowed for high-throughput sequencing of expressed antibodies (Ig-seq) in Coquerel’s sifaka (Propithecus coquereli). Using both Pacific Biosciences RS and Ion Torrent PGM sequencing, we performed Ig-seq on two individuals of Coquerel’s sifaka. We generated over 150 000 sequences of expressed antibodies, allowing for molecular characterization of the antigen-binding region. Our analyses suggest that similar VDJ expression patterns exist across all primates, with sequences closely related to the human VH 3 immunoglobulin family being heavily represented in sifaka antibodies. Moreover, the antigen-binding region of sifaka antibodies exhibited similar amino acid variation with respect to haplorrhine primates. Our study represents the first attempt to characterize sequence diversity of the expressed antibody repertoire in a species of lemur. We anticipate that methods similar to ours will provide the framework for investigating the adaptive immune response in wild populations of other nonmodel organisms and can be used to advance the burgeoning field of eco-immunology. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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September 22, 2019

Computational analysis of alternative splicing in plant genomes.

Computational analyses play crucial roles in characterizing splicing isoforms in plant genomes. In this review, we provide a survey of computational tools used in recently published, genome-scale splicing analyses in plants. We summarize the commonly used software and pipelines for read mapping, isoform reconstruction, isoform quantification, and differential expression analysis. We also discuss methods for analyzing long reads and the strategies to combine long and short reads in identifying splicing isoforms. We review several tools for characterizing local splicing events, splicing graphs, coding potential, and visualizing splicing isoforms. We further discuss the procedures for identifying conserved splicing isoforms across plant species. Finally, we discuss the outlook of integrating other genomic data with splicing analyses to identify regulatory mechanisms of AS on genome-wide scale. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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September 22, 2019

Revealing missing human protein isoforms based on Ab initio prediction, RNA-seq and proteomics.

Biological and biomedical research relies on comprehensive understanding of protein-coding transcripts. However, the total number of human proteins is still unknown due to the prevalence of alternative splicing. In this paper, we detected 31,566 novel transcripts with coding potential by filtering our ab initio predictions with 50 RNA-seq datasets from diverse tissues/cell lines. PCR followed by MiSeq sequencing showed that at least 84.1% of these predicted novel splice sites could be validated. In contrast to known transcripts, the expression of these novel transcripts were highly tissue-specific. Based on these novel transcripts, at least 36 novel proteins were detected from shotgun proteomics data of 41 breast samples. We also showed L1 retrotransposons have a more significant impact on the origin of new transcripts/genes than previously thought. Furthermore, we found that alternative splicing is extraordinarily widespread for genes involved in specific biological functions like protein binding, nucleoside binding, neuron projection, membrane organization and cell adhesion. In the end, the total number of human transcripts with protein-coding potential was estimated to be at least 204,950.

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September 22, 2019

Widespread polycistronic transcripts in fungi revealed by single-molecule mRNA sequencing.

Genes in prokaryotic genomes are often arranged into clusters and co-transcribed into polycistronic RNAs. Isolated examples of polycistronic RNAs were also reported in some higher eukaryotes but their presence was generally considered rare. Here we developed a long-read sequencing strategy to identify polycistronic transcripts in several mushroom forming fungal species including Plicaturopsis crispa, Phanerochaete chrysosporium, Trametes versicolor, and Gloeophyllum trabeum. We found genome-wide prevalence of polycistronic transcription in these Agaricomycetes, involving up to 8% of the transcribed genes. Unlike polycistronic mRNAs in prokaryotes, these co-transcribed genes are also independently transcribed. We show that polycistronic transcription may interfere with expression of the downstream tandem gene. Further comparative genomic analysis indicates that polycistronic transcription is conserved among a wide range of mushroom forming fungi. In summary, our study revealed, for the first time, the genome prevalence of polycistronic transcription in a phylogenetic range of higher fungi. Furthermore, we systematically show that our long-read sequencing approach and combined bioinformatics pipeline is a generic powerful tool for precise characterization of complex transcriptomes that enables identification of mRNA isoforms not recovered via short-read assembly.

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