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<title>bioRxiv Channel: Iowa State University</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org</link>
<description>
This feed contains articles for bioRxiv Channel "Iowa State University"
</description>

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<prism:publicationName>bioRxiv</prism:publicationName>
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<title>bioRxiv</title>
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<link>https://biorxiv.org</link>
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<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/005819v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Natural variation in teosinte at the domestication locus teosinte branched1 (tb1) 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/005819v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Premise of the studyThe teosinte branched1 (tb1) gene is a major QTL controlling branching differences between maize and its wild progenitor, teosinte. The insertion of a transposable element (Hopscotch) upstream of tb1 is known to enhance the genes expression, causing reduced tillering in maize. Observations of the maize tb1 allele in teosinte and estimates of an insertion age of the Hopscotch that predates domestication led us to investigate its prevalence and potential role in teosinte.nnMethodsPrevalence of the Hopscotch element was assessed across an Americas-wide sample of 837 maize and teosinte individuals using a co-dominant PCR assay. Population genetic summaries were calculated for a subset of individuals from four teosinte populations in central Mexico. Phenotypic data were also collected using seed from a single teosinte population where Hopscotch was found segregating at high frequency.nnKey resultsGenotyping results indicate the Hopscotch element is found in a number of teosinte populations and linkage disequilibrium near tb1 does not support recent introgression from maize. Population genetic signatures are consistent with selection on this locus revealing a potential ecological role for Hopscotch in teosinte, but a greenhouse experiment does not detect a strong association between tb1 and tillering in teosinte.nnConclusionsOur findings suggest the role of Hopscotch differs between maize and teosinte. Future work should assess tb1 expression levels in teosinte with and without the Hopscotch and more comprehensively phenotype teosinte to assess the ecological significance of the Hopscotch insertion and, more broadly, the tb1 locus in teosinte.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Laura Vann</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thomas Kono</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tanja Pyha ̈j ̈arvi</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matthew B Hufford</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2014-06-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/005819</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Natural variation in teosinte at the domestication locus teosinte branched1 (tb1)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2014-06-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/007906v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Gene regulatory network inference from perturbed time-series expression data via ordered dynamical expansion of non-steady state actors 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/007906v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The reconstruction of gene regulatory networks from gene expression data has been the subject of intense research activity over the past many decades. A variety of models and methods have been developed to address different aspects of this important problem. However, these techniques are often difficult to scale, are narrowly focused on particular biological and experimental platforms, and require experimental data that are typically unavailable and difficult to ascertain. The more recent availability of higher-throughput sequencing platforms, combined with more precise modes of genetic perturbation, presents an opportunity to formulate more robust and comprehensive approaches to gene network inference. Here, we propose a step-wise framework for identifying gene-gene regulatory interactions that expand from a known point of genetic or chemical perturbation using time series gene expression data. This novel approach sequentially identifies non-steady state genes post-perturbation and incorporates them into a growing series of low-complexity optimization problems. The governing ordinary differential equations of this model are rooted in the biophysics of stochastic molecular events that underlie gene regulation, delineating roles for both protein and RNA-mediated gene regulation. We show the successful application of our core algorithms for network inference using simulated and real datasets.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mahdi Zamanighomi</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mostafa Zamanian</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Michael J Kimber</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhengdao Wang</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2014-09-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/007906</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Gene regulatory network inference from perturbed time-series expression data via ordered dynamical expansion of non-steady state actors]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2014-09-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/013425v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
When Less is More: &quot;Slicing&quot; Sequencing Data Improves Read Decoding Accuracy and De Novo Assembly Quality 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/013425v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Since the invention of DNA sequencing in the seventies, computational biologists have had to deal with the problem de novo genome assembly with limited (or insufficient) depth of sequencing. In this work, for the first time we investigate the opposite problem, that is, the challenge of dealing with excessive depth of sequencing. Specifically, we explore the effect of ultra-deep sequencing data in two domains: (i) the problem of decoding reads to BAC clones (in the context of the combinatorial pooling design proposed in [1]), and (ii) the problem of de novo assembly of BAC clones. Using real ultra-deep sequencing data, we show that when the depth of sequencing increases over a certain threshold, sequencing errors make these two problems harder and harder (instead of easier, as one would expect with error-free data), and as a consequence the quality of the solution degrades with more and more data. For the first problem, we propose an effective solution based on "divide and conquer": we "slice" a large dataset into smaller samples of optimal size, decode each slice independently, then merge the results. Experimental results on over 15,000 barley BACs and over 4,000 cowpea BACs demonstrate a significant improvement in the quality of the decoding and the final assembly. For the second problem, we show for the first time that modern de novo assemblers cannot take advantage of ultra-deep sequencing data.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Stefano Lonardi</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamid Mirebrahim</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Steve Wanamaker</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matthew Alpert</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gianfranco Ciardo</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Denisa Duma</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Timothy J Close</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2015-01-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/013425</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[When Less is More: &quot;Slicing&quot; Sequencing Data Improves Read Decoding Accuracy and De Novo Assembly Quality]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2015-01-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/013540v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The origin and evolution of maize in the American Southwest 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/013540v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maize offers an ideal system through which to demonstrate the potential of ancient population genomic techniques for reconstructing the evolution and spread of domesticates. The diffusion of maize from Mexico into the North American Southwest (SW) remains contentious with the available evidence being restricted to morphological studies of ancient maize plant material. We captured 1 Mb of nuclear DNA from 32 archaeological maize samples spanning 6000 years and compared them with modern landraces including those from the Mexican West coast and highlands. We found that the initial diffusion of domesticated maize into the SW is likely to have occurred through a highland route. However, by 2000 years ago a Pacific coastal corridor was also being used. Furthermore, we could distinguish between genes that were selected for early during domestication (such as zagl1 involved in shattering) from genes that changed in the SW context (e.g. related to sugar content and adaptation to drought) likely as a response to the local arid environment and new cultural uses of maize.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rute R da Fonseca</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bruce D Smith</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nathan Wales</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Enrico Cappellini</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pontus Skoglund</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matteo Fumagalli</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>José Alfredo Samaniego</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Christian Carøe</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>María C Ávila-Arcos</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>David E Hufnagel</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thorfinn Sand Korneliussen</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Filipe Garrett Vieira</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mattias Jakobsson</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bernardo Arriaza</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eske Willerslev</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rasmus Nielsen</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matthew B Hufford</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anders Albrechtsen</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>M Thomas P Gilbert</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2015-01-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/013540</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The origin and evolution of maize in the American Southwest]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2015-01-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/013607v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Independent molecular basis of convergent highland adaptation in maize 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/013607v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar traits in different species or lineages of the same species; this often is a result of adaptation to similar environments, a process referred to as convergent adaptation. We investigate here the molecular basis of convergent adaptation in maize to highland climates in Mesoamerica and South America using genome-wide SNP data. Taking advantage of archaeological data on the arrival of maize to the highlands, we infer demographic models for both populations, identifying evidence of a strong bottleneck and rapid expansion in South America. We use these models to then identify loci showing an excess of differentiation as a means of identifying putative targets of natural selection, and compare our results to expectations from recently developed theory on convergent adaptation. Consistent with predictions across a wide parameter space, we see limited evidence for convergent evolution at the nucleotide level in spite of strong similarities in overall phenotypes. Instead, we show that selection appears to have predominantly acted on standing genetic variation, and that introgression from wild teosinte populations appears to have played a role in highland adaptation in Mexican maize.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shohei Takuno</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peter Ralph</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelly Swarts</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rob J Elshire</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeffrey C Glaubitz</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edward S. Buckler</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matthew B Hufford</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2015-01-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/013607</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Independent molecular basis of convergent highland adaptation in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2015-01-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/013979v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
RNA-seq: primary cells, cell lines and heat stress 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/013979v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Transcriptome analysis by RNA-seq has emerged as a high-throughput, cost-effective means to evaluate the expression pattern of genes in organisms. Unlike other methods, such as microarrays or quantitative PCR, RNA-seq is a target free method that permits analysis of essentially any RNA that can be amplified from a cell or tissue. At its most basic, RNA-seq can determine individual gene expression levels by counting the number of times a particular transcript was found in the sequence data. Transcript levels can be compared across multiple samples to identify differentially expressed genes and infer differences in biological states between the samples. We have used this approach to examine gene expression patterns in chicken and human cells, with particular interest in determining response to heat stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Carl J Schmdt</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elizabeth M Pritchett</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liang Sun</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Richard V.N. Davis</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allen Hubbard</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kalmia E Kniel</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarah M Markland</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qing Wang</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chris Ashwell</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Michael Persia</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Max F. Rothschild</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Susan J. Lamont</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2015-01-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/013979</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[RNA-seq: primary cells, cell lines and heat stress]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2015-01-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/018978v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Sequencing of 15,622 gene-bearing BACs reveals new features of the barley genome 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/018978v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) possesses a large and highly repetitive genome of 5.1 Gb that has hindered the development of a complete sequence. In 2012, the International Barley Sequencing Consortium released a resource integrating whole-genome shotgun sequences with a physical and genetic framework. However, since only 6,278 BACs in the physical map were sequenced, detailed fine structure was limited. To gain access to the gene-containing portion of the barley genome at high resolution, we identified and sequenced 15,622 BACs representing the minimal tiling path of 72,052 physical mapped gene-bearing BACs. This generated about 1.7 Gb of genomic sequence containing 17,386 annotated barley genes. Exploration of the sequenced BACs revealed that although distal ends of chromosomes contain most of the gene-enriched BACs and are characterized by high rates of recombination, there are also gene-dense regions with suppressed recombination. Knowledge of these deviant regions is relevant to trait introgression, genome-wide association studies, genomic selection model development and map-based cloning strategies. Sequences and their gene and SNP annotations can be accessed and exported via http://harvest-web.org/hweb/utilmenu.wc or through the software HarvEST:Barley (download from harvest.ucr.edu). In the latter, we have implemented a synteny viewer between barley and Aegilops tauschii to aid in comparative genome analysis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>María Muñoz-Amatriaín</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stefano Lonardi</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MingCheng Luo</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kavitha Madishetty</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jan Svensson</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matthew Moscou</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Steve Wanamaker</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tao Jiang</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andris Kleinhofs</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gary Muehlbauer</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roger Wise</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nils Stein</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yaqin Ma</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edmundo Rodriguez</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dave Kudrna</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Prasanna R Bhat</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shiaoman Chao</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pascal Condamine</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shane Heinen</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Josh Resnik</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rod Wing</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heather N Witt</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matthew Alpert</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marco Beccuti</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Serdar Bozdag</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Francesca Cordero</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamid Mirebrahim</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rachid Ounit</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yonghui Wu</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frank You</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jie Zheng</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hana Šimková</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jaroslav Doležel</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jane Grimwood</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeremy Schmutz</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Denisa Duma</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lothar Altschmied</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tom Blake</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phil Bregitzer</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Laurel Cooper</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muharrem Dilbirligi</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anders Falk</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lei</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2015-05-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/018978</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Sequencing of 15,622 gene-bearing BACs reveals new features of the barley genome]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2015-05-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/025189v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Pollen contaminated with field-relevant levels of cyhalothrin affects honey bee survival, nutritional physiology, and pollen consumption behavior 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/025189v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Honey bees are exposed to a variety of environmental stressors that impact their health, including nutritional stress, pathogens, and chemicals in the environment. In particular, there has been increasing evidence that sublethal exposure to pesticides can cause subtle, yet important effects on honey bee health and behavior. Here, we add to this body of knowledge by presenting data on bee-collected pollen containing sublethal levels of cyhalothrin, a pyrethroid insecticide, which, when fed to young honey bees, results in significant changes in lifespan, nutritional physiology, and behavior. For the first time, we show that when young, nest-aged bees are presented with pollen containing field-relevant levels of cyhalothrin, they reduce their consumption of contaminated pollen. This indicates that, at least for some chemicals, young bees are able to detect contamination in pollen and change their behavioral response, even if the contamination levels do not prevent foraging honey bees from collecting the contaminated pollen.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Adam G Dolezal</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jimena Carrillo-Tripp</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wyatt Allen Miller</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bryony B Bonning</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Amy L Toth</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2015-08-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/025189</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Pollen contaminated with field-relevant levels of cyhalothrin affects honey bee survival, nutritional physiology, and pollen consumption behavior]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2015-08-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/030528v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Crop diversity enhances disease suppressive potential in soils 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/030528v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Microbiomes can aid in the protection of hosts from infection and disease, but the mechanisms underpinning these functions in complex environmental systems remain unresolved. Soils contain microbiomes that influence plant performance, including their susceptibility to disease. For example, some soil microorganisms produce antimicrobial compounds that suppress the growth of plant pathogens, which can provide benefits for sustainable agricultural management. Evidence shows that crop rotations increase soil fertility and tend to promote microbial diversity, and it has been hypothesized that crop rotations can enhance disease suppressive capacity, either through the influence of plant diversity impacting soil bacterial composition or through the increased abundance of disease suppressive microorganisms. In this study, we used a long-term field experiment to test the effects of crop diversity through time (i.e., rotations) on soil microbial diversity and disease suppressive capacity. We sampled soil from seven treatments along a crop diversity gradient (from monoculture to five crop species rotation) and a spring fallow (non-crop) treatment to examine crop diversity influence on soil microbiomes including bacteria that are capable of producing antifungal compounds. Crop diversity significantly influenced bacterial community composition, where the most diverse cropping systems with cover crops and fallow differed from bacterial communities in the 1-3 crop species diversity treatments. While soil bacterial diversity was about 4% lower in the most diverse crop rotation (corn-soy-wheat + 2 cover crops) compared to monoculture corn, crop diversity increased disease suppressive functional group prnD gene abundance in the more diverse rotation by about 9% compared to monocultures. Identifying patterns in microbial diversity and ecosystem function relationships can provide insight into microbiome management, which will require manipulating soil nutrients and resources mediated through plant diversity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ariane L Peralta</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yanmei Sun</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marshall D McDaniel</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jay T Lennon</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2015-11-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/030528</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Crop diversity enhances disease suppressive potential in soils]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2015-11-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/031666v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Recent demography drives changes in linked selection across the maize genome 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/031666v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Genetic diversity is shaped by the interaction of drift and selection, but the details of this interaction are not well understood. The impact of genetic drift in a population is largely determined by its demographic history, typically summarized by its long-term effective population size (Ne). Rapidly changing population demographics complicate this relationship, however. To better understand how changing demography impacts selection, we used whole-genome sequencing data to investigate patterns of linked selection in domesticated and wild maize (teosinte). We produce the first whole-genome estimate of the demography of maize domestication, showing that maize was reduced to approximately 5% the population size of teosinte before it experienced rapid expansion post-domestication to population sizes much larger than its ancestor. Evaluation of patterns of nucleotide diversity in and near genes shows little evidence of selection on beneficial amino acid substitutions, and that the domestication bottleneck led to a decline in the efficiency of purifying selection in maize. Young alleles, however, show evidence of much stronger purifying selection in maize, reflecting the much larger effective size of present day populations. Our results demonstrate that recent demographic change -- a hallmark of many species including both humans and crops -- can have immediate and wide-ranging impacts on diversity that conflict with would-be expectations based on Ne alone.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Timothy Mathes Beissinger</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li Wang</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kate Crosby</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arun Durvasula</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matthew B Hufford</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeff Ross-Ibarra</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2015-11-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/031666</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Recent demography drives changes in linked selection across the maize genome]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2015-11-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/043802v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Strawberry: fast and accurate genome-guided transcript reconstruction and quantification from RNA-seq 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/043802v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We propose a novel method and computational tool, Strawberry, for transcript reconstruction and quantification from paired-end RNA-seq data under the guidance of genome alignment and independent of gene annotation. Strawberry achieves this through disentangling assembly and quantification in a sequential manner. The application of a fast flow network algorithm for assembly speeds up the construction of a parsimonious set of transcripts. The resulting reduced data representation improves the efficiency of expression-level quantification. Strawberry leverages the speed and accuracy of transcript assembly and quantification in such a way that processing 10 million simulated reads (after alignment) requires only 90 seconds using a single thread while achieving over 92% correlation with the ground truth, making it the state-of-the-art method. Strawberry outperforms Cufflinks and StringTie, the two other leading methods, in many aspects, including the number of corrected assembled transcripts and the correlation with the ground truth of simulated RNA-seq data. Availability: Strawberry is written in C++11, and is available as open source software at https://github.com/ruolin/Strawberry under the GPLv3 license.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ruolin Liu</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Julie Dickerson</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-03-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/043802</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Strawberry: fast and accurate genome-guided transcript reconstruction and quantification from RNA-seq]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-03-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/043844v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Hierarchical Association Coefficient Algorithm 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/043844v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Suppose that members in a universal set categorized based on observations, and that categories can be stratified based on the average of observations within each category. Two sorting extremes can be obtained from the perspective of arbitrariness of an order of observations. The first sorting extreme is an increasing order of observations on ascendingly stratified categories. The second sorting extreme is a decreasing order of observations on ascendingly stratified categories. Hierarchical association coefficient (HA-coefficient) algorithm is based on a principle that any order of observations in stratified categorization can be placed between the two sorting extremes. The algorithm produces a proportion of how much an order of observations in stratified categorization is close to the first sorting extreme, or how much an order of categorized observations is distant from the second sorting extreme. This paper introduces a theory about the HA-coefficient algorithm, and shows its applications with example data. In addition, proving a reliability of the algorithm is shown through a simulation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bongsong Kim</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-03-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/043844</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Hierarchical Association Coefficient Algorithm]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-03-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/044453v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evaluation of a Computational Diagnostic for Epistasis in Plant Breeding Populations 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/044453v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Previously we reported the inability of genomic prediction methods based on linear models to accurately predict trait values composed of an epistatic genetic architecture. We also reported non-parametric genomic prediction methods applied to the same data produced reasonably accurate predictions. The difference led us to propose analyses by paired parametric and non-parametric methods to the same data could be used as a diagnostic for epistatic genetic architectures in typical plant breeding populations. The suggested computational diagnostic was based on evaluation of 14 genomic prediction methods applied to eight sets of simulated conditions consisting of three factors, each with two levels. Because the potential set of factors that might affect accuracies of genomic predictions is unknown, there is a need for a systematic approach to identify combinations of factors that impact estimates of accuracy. Herein we propose the application of response surface methods to systematically identify conditions that maximize the difference between estimated accuracies of genomic prediction methods. The results indicate that genetic architecture and repeatability at their upper boundaries for complete epistasis and repeatability have the greatest influence on the differences between parametric and non-parametric estimated prediction accuracies. Further, the surface is very steep in the vicinity of the boundary conditions, indicating that the proposed diagnostic is of limited value for discovery of epistatic genetic architectures.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Reka Howard</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>William D Beavis</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alicia Carriquiry</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-03-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/044453</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evaluation of a Computational Diagnostic for Epistasis in Plant Breeding Populations]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-03-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/049643v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Inferring node dates from tip dates in fossil Canidae: the importance of tree priors 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/049643v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Tip-dating methods are becoming popular alternatives to traditional node calibration approaches for building time-scaled phylogenetic trees, but questions remain about their application to empirical datasets. We compared the performance of the most popular methods against a dated tree of fossil Canidae derived from previously published monographs. Using a canid morphology dataset, we performed tip-dating using Beast 2.1.3 and MrBayes 3.2.5. We find that for key nodes (Canis, ~3.2 Ma, Caninae ~11.7 Ma) a non-mechanistic model using a uniform tree prior produces estimates that are unrealistically old (27.5, 38.9 Ma). Mechanistic models (incorporating lineage birth, death, and sampling rates) estimate ages that are closely in line with prior research. We provide a discussion of these two families of models (mechanistic vs. non-mechanistic) and their applicability to fossil datasets.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nicholas Joseph Matzke</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>April Wright</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-04-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/049643</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Inferring node dates from tip dates in fossil Canidae: the importance of tree priors]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-04-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/052902v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The last common ancestor of most bilaterian animals possessed at least 9 opsins 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/052902v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The opsin gene family encodes key proteins animals use to sense light and has expanded dramatically since it originated early in animal evolution. Understanding the origins of opsin diversity can offer clues to how separate lineages of animals have repurposed different opsin paralogs for different light-detecting functions. However, the more we look for opsins outside of eyes and from additional animal phyla, the more opsins we uncover, suggesting we still do not know the true extent of opsin diversity, nor the ancestry of opsin diversity in animals. To estimate the number of opsin paralogs present in both the last common ancestor of the Nephrozoa (bilaterians excluding Xenoacoelomorpha), and the ancestor of Cnidaria + Bilateria, we reconstructed a reconciled opsin phylogeny using sequences from 14 animal phyla, especially the traditionally poorly-sampled echinoderms and molluscs. Our analysis strongly supports a repertoire of at least nine opsin paralogs in the bilaterian ancestor and at least four opsin paralogs in the last common ancestor of Cnidaria + Bilateria. Thus, the kernels of extant opsin diversity arose much earlier in animal history than previously known. Further, opsins likely duplicated and were lost many times, with different lineages of animals maintaining different repertoires of opsin paralogs. This phylogenetic information can inform hypotheses about the functions of different opsin paralogs and be used to understand how and when opsins were incorporated into complex traits like eyes and extraocular sensors.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>M Desmond Ramirez</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Autum N Pairett</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>M Sabrina Pankey</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeanne M Serb</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Daniel I Speiser</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andrew J Swafford</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Todd H. Oakley</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-05-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/052902</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The last common ancestor of most bilaterian animals possessed at least 9 opsins]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-05-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/053397v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
RefSoil: A reference database of soil microbial genomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/053397v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A database of curated genomes is needed to better assess soil microbial communities and their processes associated with differing land management and environmental impacts. Interpreting soil metagenomic datasets with existing sequence databases is challenging because these datasets are biased towards medical and biotechnology research and can result in misleading annotations. We have curated a database of 922 genomes of soil-associated organisms (888 bacteria and 34 archaea). Using this database, we evaluated phyla and functions that are enriched in soils as well as those that may be underrepresented in RefSoil. Our comparison of RefSoil to soil amplicon datasets allowed us to identify targets that if cultured or sequenced would significantly increase the biodiversity represented within RefSoil. To demonstrate the opportunities to access these underrepresented targets, we employed single cell genomics in a pilot experiment to sequence 14 genomes. This effort demonstrates the value of RefSoil in the guidance of future research efforts and the capability of single cell genomics as a practical means to fill the existing genomic data gaps.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jinlyung Choi</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fan Yang</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ramunas Stepanauskas</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Erick Cardenas</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aaron Garoutte</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ryan Williams</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jared Flater</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>James M Tiedje</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kirsten S. Hofmockel</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brian Gelder</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adina Howe</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-05-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/053397</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[RefSoil: A reference database of soil microbial genomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-05-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/054890v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Tissue-Driven Hypothesis of Transcriptome Evolution: An Update 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/054890v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In past decade, many reports have demonstrated that tissues in multi-cellular organisms may play important roles to shape the pattern of genome evolution. The tissue-driven hypothesis was then coined, claiming that tissue-specific factor as the common resource of functional constrain may underlie the positive correlations between tissue expression divergence, sequence divergence, or the expression tolerance of duplication divergence. However, the original version of tissue-driven hypothesis cannot rule out the tissue-specific effect of mutational variance. In this perspective, we solve this problem by modifying the evolutionary model that underlies the tissue expression evolution. Reanalysis of the microarray data reanalysis has revealed the relative importancebetween tissue-specific functional constraints and mutational variances in the tissue evolution. Finally, we outline how to utilize RNA-seq technology to further investigate the tissue expression evolution in the case of multiple tissues and species.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Howard T. Hallmark</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeffrey A. Haltom</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xun Gu</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-05-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/054890</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Tissue-Driven Hypothesis of Transcriptome Evolution: An Update]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-05-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/057174v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Fungal Induced Protein Hyperacetylation Identified by Acetylome Profiling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/057174v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lysine acetylation is a key post-translational modification that regulates diverse proteins involved in a range of biological processes. The role of histone acetylation in plant defense is well established and it is known that pathogen effector proteins encoding acetyltransferses can directly acetylate host proteins to alter immunity. However, it is unclear whether endogenous plant enzymes can modulate protein acetylation during an immune response. Here we investigate how the effector molecule HC-toxin, a histone deacetylase inhibitor, produced by Cochliobolus carbonum race 1 promotes pathogen virulence in maize through altering protein acetylation. Using mass spectrometry we globally quantified the abundance of 3,636 proteins and the levels of acetylation at 2,791 sites in maize plants treated with HC-toxin as well as HC-toxin deficient or producing strains of C. carbonum. Analyses of these data demonstrate that acetylation is a widespread post-translational modification impacting proteins encoded by many intensively studied maize genes. Furthermore, the application of exogenous HC-toxin enabled us to show that the activity of plant-encoded enzymes can be modulated to alter acetylation of non-histone proteins during an immune response. Collectively, these results provide a resource for further mechanistic studies examining the regulation of protein function and offer insight into the complex immune response triggered by virulent C. carbonum.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Justin W Walley</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhouxin Shen</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maxwell R McReynolds</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Steven P Briggs</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-06-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/057174</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Fungal Induced Protein Hyperacetylation Identified by Acetylome Profiling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-06-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/065078v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
S2 from Equine infectious anemia virus is an infectivity factor which counteracts the retroviral inhibitors SERINC5 and SERINC3 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/065078v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The lentivirus equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) encodes S2, a pathogenic determinant important for virus replication and disease progression in horses. No molecular function has yet been linked to this accessory protein. We now report that S2 can replace the activity of Nef on HIV-1 infectivity, being required to antagonize the inhibitory activity of SERINC proteins on Nef-defective HIV-1. Similar to Nef, S2 excludes SERINC5 from virus particles and requires an ExxxLL motif predicted to recruit the clathrin adaptor AP2. Accordingly, a functional endocytic machinery is essential for S2-mediated infectivity enhancement, which is impaired by inhibitors of clathrin-mediated endocytosis. In addition to retargeting SERINC5 to a late endosomal compartment, S2 promotes the host factor degradation. Emphasizing the similarity with Nef, we show that S2 is myristoylated and, compatible with a crucial role of the post-translational modification, its N-terminal glycine is required for the anti-SERINC5 activity.nnEIAV-derived vectors devoid of S2 are less susceptible than HIV-1 to the inhibitory effect of both human and equine SERINC5. We then identified the envelope glycoprotein of EIAV as a determinant which also modulates retrovirus susceptibility to SERINC5, indicating a bi-modular ability of the equine lentivirus to counteract the host factor.nnS2 shares no sequence homology with other retroviral factors known to counteract SERINC5. Adding to primate lentivirus Nef and gammaretrovirus glycoGag, the accessory protein from EIAV makes another example of a retroviral virulence determinant which independently evolved SERINC5-antagonizing activity. SERINC5 therefore plays a critical role for the interaction of the host with diverse retrovirus pathogens.nnSignificance StatementSERINC5 and SERINC3 are recently discovered cellular inhibitors of retroviruses, which are incorporated into virus particles and impair their ability to propagate the infection to target cells. Only two groups of viruses (represented by HIV-1 and MLV) have so far been identified to have evolved the ability of counteracting SERINC inhibition. We now discovered that Equine infectious anemia virus, which causes a debilitating disease in horses, also acquired the ability to protect the virus particle from inhibition by SERINC5 and SERINC3, using its small protein S2. The evidence that three different retroviruses have independently evolved the ability to elude inhibition bySERINC5 and SERINC3 indicates that these cellular factors play a fundamental role against various retrovirus pathogens.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ajit Chande</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Emilia Cuccurullo</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Annachiara Rosa</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Serena Ziglio</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Susan Carpenter</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Massimo Pizzato</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-07-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/065078</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[S2 from Equine infectious anemia virus is an infectivity factor which counteracts the retroviral inhibitors SERINC5 and SERINC3]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-07-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/075267v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Numericware i: Identical in state matrix calculator 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/075267v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Herein we introduce software, Numericware i to compute a matrix consisting of all pairwise identical in state (IIS) coefficients from genotypic data. Since the emergence of high throughput technology for genotyping, calculating an IIS matrix between many pairs of entities has required large computer memory and lengthy processing times. Numericware i addresses these limitations with two algorithmic methods: multithreading and forward chopping. The multithreading feature allows computational routines to concurrently run on multiple CPU processors. The forward chopping addresses memory limitations by dividing the genotypic data into appropriately sized subsets. Numericware i allows researchers who need to estimate an IIS matrix for big genotypes to use typical laptop/desktop computers. For comparison with different software, we calculated genetic relationship matrices using Numericware i, SPAGeDi and TASSEL with the same small-sized data set. Numericware i measured kinship coefficients between zero and two, while the matrices from SPAGeDi and TASSEL produced different ranges of values, including negative values. The Pearson correlation coefficient between the matrices from Numericware i and TASSEL was high at 0.993, while SPAGeDi rarely showed correlation with Numericware i (0.088) and TASSEL (0.087). To compare the capacity with high dimensional data, we applied the three software to a simulated data set consisted of 500 entities by 1,000,000 SNPs. Numericware i spent 71 minutes using seven CPU cores on a laptop (DELL LATITUDE E6540), while SPAGeDi and TASSEL failed to start. Numericware i is freely available for Windows and Linux under CC-BY license at https://figshare.com/s/f100f33a8857131eb2db.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bongsong Kim</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>William D Beavis</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-09-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/075267</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Numericware i: Identical in state matrix calculator]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-09-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/078063v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Case study: Paralog diverged features may help reduce off-target effects of drugs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/078063v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Side effects from targeted drugs is a serious concern. One reason is the nonselective binding of a drug to unintended proteins such as its paralogs, which are highly homologous in sequences and exhibit similar structures and drug-binding pockets. In this study, we analyzed amino acid residues with type-II functional divergence, i.e., sites that are conserved in sequence constraints but differ in physicochemical properties between paralogs, to identify targetable differences between two paralogs. We analyzed paralogous protein receptors in the glucagon-like subfamily, glucagon receptor (GCGR) and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R), which are clinically validated drug targets in patients with type 2 diabetes and exhibit divergence in ligands, showing opposing roles in regulating glucose homeostasis. We identified 8 residues related to type-II functional divergence, which are conserved in functional constraints but differ in physicochemical properties between GCGR and GLP-1R. We detected significant enrichment of predicted residues in binding sites of the antagonist MK-0893 to GCGR. We also identified a type-II functional divergence-related residue involved in ligand-specific effects that was critical for agonist-mediated activation of GLP-1R. We describe the important role of type-II functional divergence-related sites in paralog discrimination, enabling the identification of binding sites to reduce undesirable side effects and increase the target specificity of drugs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhining Sa</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jingqi Zou</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yangyun Zou</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xun Gu</dc:creator>
<dc:creator></dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-09-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/078063</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Case study: Paralog diverged features may help reduce off-target effects of drugs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-09-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/090274v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The accuracy and bias of single-step genomic prediction for populationsunder selection 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/090274v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In single-step analyses, missing genotypes are explicitly or implicitly imputed, and this requires centering the observed genotypes, ideally using the mean of the unselected founders. If genotypes are only available on selected individuals, centering on the unselected founder mean is impossible. Here, computer simulation is used to study an alternative analysis that does not require centering genotypes but fits the mean {micro}g of unselected individuals as a fixed effect. To improve numerical properties of the analysis, centering the entire matrix of observed and imputed genotypes, using their sample means can be done in addition to fitting {micro}g. Starting with observed diplotypes from 721 cattle, a 5 generation population was simulated with sire selection to produce 40,000 individuals with phenotypes of which the 1,000 sires had genotypes. The next generation of 8,000 genotyped individuals was used for validation. Evaluations were undertaken: with (J) or without (N) {micro}g when marker covariates were not centered; and with (JC) or without (C) {micro}g when all marker covariates were centered. A pedigree based evaluation was less accurate than genomic analyses. Centering did not influence accuracy of genomic prediction, but fitting {micro}g did. Accuracies were improved when the panel comprised only QTL, models JC and J had accuracies of 99.2%; and models C and N had accuracies of 85.6%. When only markers were in the panel, the 4 models had accuracies of 63.9%. In panels that included causal variants, fitting {micro}g in the model improved accuracy, but had little impact when the panel contained only markers.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hsu, W.-L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garrick, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernando, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2016-11-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/090274</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The accuracy and bias of single-step genomic prediction for populationsunder selection]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2016-11-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/100461v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Tunable Genotyping-By-Sequencing (tGBS(R)) Enables Reliable Genotyping of Heterozygous Loci 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/100461v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Most Genotyping-by-Sequencing (GBS) strategies suffer from high rates of missing data and high error rates, particularly at heterozygous sites. Tunable genotyping-by-sequencing (tGBS(R)), a novel genome reduction method, consists of the ligation of single-strand oligos to restriction enzyme fragments. DNA barcodes are added during PCR amplification; additional (selective) nucleotides included at the 3-end of the PCR primers result in more genome reduction as compared to conventional GBS methods. By adjusting the number of selective bases different numbers of genomic sites can be targeted for sequencing. Because this genome reduction strategy concentrates sequencing reads on fewer sites, SNP calls are based on more reads than conventional GBS, resulting in higher SNP calling accuracy (>97-99%) even for heterozygous sites and less missing data per marker. tGBS genotyping is expected to be particularly useful for genomic selection, which requires the ability to genotype populations of individuals that are heterozygous at many loci.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ott, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yeh, C.-T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-01-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/100461</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Tunable Genotyping-By-Sequencing (tGBS(R)) Enables Reliable Genotyping of Heterozygous Loci]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-01-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/100578v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transposons modulate transcriptomic and phenotypic variation via the formation of circular RNAs in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/100578v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are covalently closed, single-stranded RNA molecules. Recent studies in human showed that circRNAs can arise via transcription of reverse complementary pairs of transposons. Given the prevalence of transposons in the maize genome and dramatic genomic variation driven by transposons, we hypothesize that transposons in maize may be involved in the formation of circRNAs and further modulate phenotypic variation. To test our hypothesis, we performed circRNA-Seq on B73 seedling leaves and integrate these data with 977 publicly available mRNA-Seq datasets. We uncovered 1,551 high-confidence maize circRNAs, which show distinct genomic features as compared to linear transcripts. Comprehensive analyses demonstrated that LINE1-like elements (LLE) and their Reverse Complementary Pairs (LLERCPs) are significantly enriched in the flanking regions of circRNAs. Interestingly, the accumulation of circRNA transcripts increases, while the accumulation of linear transcripts decreases as the number of LLERCPs increases. Furthermore, genes with LLERCP-mediated circRNAs are enriched among loci that are associated with phenotypic variation. These results suggest that LLERCPs can modulate phenotypic variation by the formation of circRNAs. As a proof of concept, we showed that the presence/absence variation of LLERCPs could result in expression variation of one cicrRNA, circ352, and further related to plant height through the interaction between circRNA and functional linear transcript. Our first glimpse of circRNAs uncovers a new role for transposons in the modulation of transcriptomic and phenotypic variation via the formation of circRNAs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chen, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fan, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lu, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yan, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muehlbauer, G. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dai, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-01-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/100578</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transposons modulate transcriptomic and phenotypic variation via the formation of circular RNAs in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-01-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/102962v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Multiple-trait Bayesian Regression Methods with Mixture Priors for Genomic Prediction 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/102962v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bayesian multiple-regression methods incorporating different mixture priors for marker effects are widely used in genomic prediction. Improvement in prediction accuracies from using those methods, such as BayesB, BayesC and BayesC{pi}, have been shown in single-trait analyses with both simulated data and real data. These methods have been extended to multi-trait analyses, but only under a specific limited circumstance that assumes a locus affects all the traits or none of them. In this paper, we develop and implement the most general multi-trait BayesC{Pi} and BayesB methods allowing a broader range of mixture priors. Further, we compare them to single-trait methods and the "restricted" multi-trait formulation using real data. In those data analyses, significant higher prediction accuracies were sometimes observed from these new broad-based multi-trait Bayesian multiple-regression methods. The software tool JWAS offers routines to perform the analyses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>CHENG, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kizilkaya, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zeng, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garrick, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernando, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-01-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/102962</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Multiple-trait Bayesian Regression Methods with Mixture Priors for Genomic Prediction]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-01-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/105940v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Potential Role of Genetic Assimilation during Maize Domestication 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/105940v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Domestication research has largely focused on identification of morphological and genetic differences between extant populations of crops and their wild relatives. Little attention has been paid to the potential effects of environment despite substantial known changes in climate from the time of domestication to modern day. Recent research, in which maize and teosinte (i.e., wild maize) were exposed to environments similar to the time of domestication, resulted in a plastic induction of domesticated phenotypes in teosinte and little response to environment in maize. These results suggest that early agriculturalists may have selected for genetic mechanisms that cemented domestication phenotypes initially induced by a plastic response of teosinte to environment, a process known as genetic assimilation. To better understand this phenomenon and the potential role of environment in maize domestication, we examined differential gene expression in maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) and teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) between past and present conditions. We identified a gene set of over 2000 loci showing a change in expression across environmental conditions in teosinte and invariance in maize. In fact, overall we observed both greater plasticity in gene expression and more substantial re-wiring of expression networks in teosinte across environments when compared to maize. While these results suggest genetic assimilation played at least some role in domestication, genes showing expression patterns consistent with assimilation are not significantly enriched for previously identified domestication candidates, indicating assimilation did not have a genome-wide effect.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lorant, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perdersen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holst, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Winter, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Piperno, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-02-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/105940</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Potential Role of Genetic Assimilation during Maize Domestication]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-02-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/114579v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The interplay of demography and selection during maize domestication and expansion 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/114579v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The history of maize has been characterized by major demographic events including changes in population size associated with domestication and range expansion as well as gene flow with wild relatives. The interplay between demographic history and selection has shaped diversity across maize populations and genomes. Here, we investigate these processes based on high-depth resequencing data from 31 maize landraces spanning the pre-Columbian distribution of maize as well as four wild progenitor individuals (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) from the Balsas River Valley in Mexico. Genome-wide demographic analyses reveal that maize domestication and spread resulted in pronounced declines in effective population size due to both a protracted bottleneck and serial founder effects, while, concurrently, parviglumis experienced population growth. The cost of maize domestication and spread was an increase in deleterious alleles in the domesticate relative to its wild progenitor. This cost is particularly pronounced in Andean maize, which appears to have experienced a more dramatic founder event when compared to other maize populations. Introgression from the wild teosinte Zea mays ssp. mexicana into maize in the highlands of Mexico and Guatemala is found found to decrease the prevalence of deleterious alleles, likely due to the higher long-term effective population size of wild maize. These findings underscore the strong interaction between historical demography and the efficiency of selection species- and genome-wide and suggest domesticated species with well-characterized histories may be particularly useful for understanding this interplay.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beissinger, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lorant, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-03-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/114579</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The interplay of demography and selection during maize domestication and expansion]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-03-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/117424v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Colonization History Of The Western Corn Rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera) In North America: Insights From Random Forest ABC Using Microsatellite Data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/117424v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
First described from western Kansas, USA, the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera, is one of the worst pests of maize. The species is generally thought to be of Mexican origin and to have incidentally followed the expansion of maize cultivation into North America thousands of years ago. However, this hypothesis has never been investigated formally. In this study, the genetic variability of samples collected throughout North America was analysed at 13 microsatellite marker loci to explore precisely the population genetic structure and colonization history of D. v. virgifera. In particular, we used up-to-date Approximate Bayesian Computation methods based on random forest algorithms to test a Mexican versus a central-USA origin of the species, and to compare various possible timings of colonization. This analysis provided strong evidence that the origin of D. v. virgifera was southern (Mexico, or even further south). Surprisingly, we also found that the expansion of the species north of its origin was recent - probably not before 1100 years ago - thus indicating it was not directly associated with the early history of maize expansion out of Mexico, a far more ancient event.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lombaert, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ciosi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, N. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sappington, T. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Blin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guillemaud, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-03-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/117424</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Colonization History Of The Western Corn Rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera) In North America: Insights From Random Forest ABC Using Microsatellite Data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-03-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/126326v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transcriptome sequencing and delimitation of cryptic Oscarella species (O. carmela and O. pearsei sp. nov) from California, USA. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/126326v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The homoscleromorph sponge Oscarella carmela, first described from central California, USA is shown to represent two morphologically similar but phylogenetically distant species that are co-distributed. We here describe a new species as Oscarella pearsei, sp. nov. and redescribe Oscarella carmela; the original description was based upon material from both species. Further, we correct the identification of published genomic/transcriptomic resources that were originally attributed to O. carmela, and present new Illumina-sequenced transcriptome assemblies for each of these species, and the mitochondrial genome sequence for O. pearsei sp. nov. Using SSU and LSU ribosomal DNA and the mitochondrial genome, we report the phylogenetic relationships of these species relative to other Oscarella species, and find strong support for placement of O. pearsei sp. nov. in a clade defined by the presence of spherulous cells that contain paracrystalline inclusions; O. carmela lacks this cell type and is most closely related to the Western Pacific species, O. malakhovi. Oscarella pearsei sp. nov and O. carmela can be tentatively distinguished based upon gross morphological differences such as color, surface texture and extent of mucus production, but can be more reliably identified using mitochondrial and nuclear barcode sequencing, ultrastructural characteristics of cells in the mesohyl, and the morphology of the follicle epithelium which surrounds the developing embryo in reproductively active individuals. Usually, cryptic species are very closely related to each other, but in this case and in sponges generally, cryptic species may be very distantly related because sponges can be difficult to identify based upon gross morphological characteristics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ereskovsky, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Richter, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lavrov, D. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schippers, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nichols, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-04-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/126326</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transcriptome sequencing and delimitation of cryptic Oscarella species (O. carmela and O. pearsei sp. nov) from California, USA.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-04-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/131342v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genotype-by-Environment Interactions Affecting Heterosis in Maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/131342v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The environment can influence heterosis, the phenomena in which the offspring of two inbred parents exhibits phenotypic performance beyond the inbred parents for specific traits. In this study we measured 25 traits in a set of 47 maize hybrids and their inbred parents grown in 16 different environments, and each had varying levels of average productivity. By quantifying 25 vegetative and reproductive traits across the life cycle we were able to analyze interactions between the environment and multiple distinct instances of heterosis. The magnitude and rank among hybrids of better-parent heterosis (BPH) varied for the different traits and environments. Across the traits, a higher within plot variance was observed for inbred lines compared to hybrids. However, for most traits, variance across environments was not significantly different for inbred lines compared to hybrids. Further, for many traits the correlations of BPH to hybrid performance and BPH to better parent performance were of comparable magnitude. These results indicate that inbreds and hybrids are showing similar trends in environmental response and are both contribute to genotype-by-environment interactions for heterosis. This study highlights that degree of heterosis is not an inherent trait of a specific hybrid, but varies depending on the trait measured and the environment where that trait is measured. Studies that attempt to correlate molecular processes with heterosis are hindered by the fact that heterosis is not a consistent attribute of a specific hybrid.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coffey, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garfin, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, N. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>White, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Spalding, E. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leon, N. d.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaeppler, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Springer, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-04-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/131342</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genotype-by-Environment Interactions Affecting Heterosis in Maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-04-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/136143v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A Method To Assess Significance Of Differences In RNA Expression Levels Among Specific Groups Of Genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/136143v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Genome-wide molecular gene expression studies generally compare expression values for each gene across multiple conditions followed by cluster and gene set enrichment analysis to determine whether differentially expressed genes are enriched in specific biochemical pathways, cellular components, biological processes, and/or molecular functions, etc. This approach to analyzing differences in gene expression enables discovery of gene function, but is not useful to determine whether pre-defined groups of genes share or diverge in their expression patterns in response to treatments nor to assess the correctness of pre-defined gene set groupings. Here we present a simple method that changes the dimension of comparison by treating genes as variable traits to directly assess significance of differences in expression levels among pre-defined gene groups. Because expression distributions are typically skewed (thus unfit for direct assessment using Gaussian statistical methods) our method involves transforming expression data to approximate a normal distribution followed by dividing the genes into groups, then applying Gaussian parametric methods to assess significance of observed differences. This method enables the assessment of differences in gene expression distributions within and across samples, enabling hypothesis-based comparison among groups of genes. We demonstrate this method by assessing the significance of specific gene groups differential response to heat stress conditions in maize.nnAbbreviations
]]></description>
<dc:creator>He, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-05-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/136143</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Method To Assess Significance Of Differences In RNA Expression Levels Among Specific Groups Of Genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-05-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/139360v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Heart-Specific Activin Signaling Promotes Cardiomyopathy And Organismal Aging Through Autophagy Inhibition 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/139360v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Age-dependent loss of cardiac tissue homeostasis largely impacts heart performance and contributes significantly to cardiovascular diseases later in life. Cellular quality control machinery, such as autophagy/lysosome system, plays a crucial role in maintaining cardiac health and preventing age-induced cardiomyopathy and heart failure. However, how aging alters the autophagy/lysosome system to impact cardiac function remains largely unknown. Here using Drosophila heart as a model system, we show that activin signaling, a member of TGF-beta superfamily, negatively regulates cardiac autophagy and cardiac health during aging. We found that cardiac-specific knockdown of Daw, an activin-like protein in Drosophila, increased cardiac autophagy and prevented age-related cardiac dysfunction, including arrhythmia and bradycardia (slow heart rate). Inhibition of autophagy blocked Daw knockdown-mediated cardioprotection. Consistently, cardiac-specific expression of constitutively activated activin type I receptor Babo disrupted cardiac function at young ages. Intriguingly, the key autophagy regulator, mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1), was not involved in activin-mediated autophagy. Instead, activin signaling genetically interacted with Rictor, the key subunit of mTORC2, to regulate autophagy and cardiac aging. Knockdown of Daw increased the mRNA expression of Rictor and the phosphorylation of AKT in fly hearts. Finally, cardiac-specific silencing of Daw not only improved cardiac health, but also prolonged lifespan. Thus, our findings highlight an emerging role of activin signaling and mTORC2 in the regulation of autophagy and cardiac aging.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bodmer, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ocorr, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-05-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/139360</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Heart-Specific Activin Signaling Promotes Cardiomyopathy And Organismal Aging Through Autophagy Inhibition]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-05-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/148965v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Parallel Computing to Speed up Whole-Genome Bayesian Regression Analyses Using Orthogonal Data Augmentation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/148965v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1 AbstractBayesian multiple regression methods are widely used in whole-genome analyses to solve the problem that the number p of marker covariates is usually larger than the number n of observations. Inferences from most Bayesian methods are based on Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, where statistics are computed from a Markov chain constructed to have a stationary distribution equal to the posterior distribution of the unknown parameters. In practice, chains of about fifty thousand steps are typically used in whole-genome Bayesian regression analyses, which is computationally intensive. In this paper, we have shown how the sampling of marker effects can be made independent within each step of the chain. This is done by augmenting the marker covariate matrix by adding p new rows to it such that columns of the augmented marker covariate matrix are orthogonal. The phenotypes corresponding to the augmented rows of marker covariate matrix are considered missing. Ideally, the computations at each step of the MCMC chain, can be speeded up by the number k of computer processors up to the number p of markers. Addressing the heavy computational burden associated with Bayesian methods by parallel computing will lead to greater use of these methods.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cheng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernando, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garrick, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-06-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/148965</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Parallel Computing to Speed up Whole-Genome Bayesian Regression Analyses Using Orthogonal Data Augmentation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-06-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/151712v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Persistent homology demarcates a leaf morphospace 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/151712v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Current morphometric methods that comprehensively measure shape cannot compare the disparate leaf shapes found in seed plants and are sensitive to processing artifacts. We explore the use of persistent homology, a topological method applied across the scales of a function, to overcome these limitations. The described method isolates subsets of shape features and measures the spatial relationship of neighboring pixel densities in a shape. We apply the method to the analysis of 182,707 leaves, both published and unpublished, representing 141 plant families collected from 75 sites throughout the world. By measuring leaves from throughout the seed plants using persistent homology, a defined morphospace comparing all leaves is demarcated. Clear differences in shape between major phylogenetic groups are detected and estimates of leaf shape diversity within plant families are made. This approach does not only predict plant family, but also the collection site, confirming phylogenetically invariant morphological features that characterize leaves from specific locations. The application of a persistent homology method to measure leaf shape allows for a unified morphometric framework to measure plant form, including shape and branching architectures.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>An, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Angelovici, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bagaza, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Batushansky, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coneva, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Donoghue, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edwards, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fajardo, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frank, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gallaher, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gebken, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hill, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jansky, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaur, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Klahs, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Klein, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuraparthy, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Londo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Migicovsky, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mohn, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Myles, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Otoni, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pires, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riffer, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmerler, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Spriggs, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Topp, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Van Deynze, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhu, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zink, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chitwood, D. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-06-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/151712</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Persistent homology demarcates a leaf morphospace]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-06-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/159954v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Toward A Scalable Exploratory Framework for Complex High-Dimensional Phenomics Data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/159954v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Phenomics is an emerging branch of modern biology that uses high throughput phenotyping tools to capture multiple environmental and phenotypic traits, often at massive spatial and temporal scales. The resulting high dimensional data represent a treasure trove of information for providing an in-depth understanding of how multiple factors interact and contribute to the overall growth and behavior of different genotypes. However, computational tools that can parse through such complex data and aid in extracting plausible hypotheses are currently lacking. In this paper, we present Hyppo-X, a new algorithmic approach to visually explore complex phenomics data and in the process characterize the role of environment on phenotypic traits. We model the problem as one of unsupervised structure discovery, and use emerging principles from algebraic topology and graph theory for discovering higher-order structures of complex phenomics data. We present an open source software which has interactive visualization capabilities to facilitate data navigation and hypothesis formulation. We test and evaluate Hyppo-X on two real-world plant (maize) data sets. Our results demonstrate the ability of our approach to delineate divergent subpopulation-level behavior. Notably, our approach shows how environmental factors could influence phenotypic behavior, and how that effect varies across different genotypes and different time scales. To the best of our knowledge, this effort provides one of the first approaches to systematically formalize the problem of hypothesis extraction for phenomics data. Considering the infancy of the phenomics field, tools that help users explore complex data and extract plausible hypotheses in a data-guided manner will be critical to future advancements in the use of such data.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kamruzzaman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kalyanaraman, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krishnamoorthy, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-07-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/159954</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Toward A Scalable Exploratory Framework for Complex High-Dimensional Phenomics Data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-07-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/165456v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Drosophila Kruppel homolog 1 represses lipolysis through interaction with dFOXO 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/165456v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Transcriptional coordination is a vital process contributing to metabolic homeostasis. As one of the key nodes in the metabolic network, the forkhead transcription factor FOXO has been shown to interact with diverse transcription co-factors and integrate signals from multiple pathways to control metabolism, oxidative stress response, and cell cycle. Recently, insulin/FOXO signaling has been implicated in the regulation of insect development via the interaction with insect hormones, such as ecdysone and juvenile hormone. In this study, we identified an interaction between dFOXO and the zinc finger transcription factor Kruppel homolog 1 (Kr-h1), one of the key players in juvenile hormone signaling in Drosophila. We found that Kr-h1 mutants have reduced triglyceride storage, decreased insulin signaling and delayed larval development. Notably, Kr-h1 physically and genetically interacts with dFOXO in vitro and in vivo to regulate the transcriptional activation of adipose lipase brummer (bmm). The transcriptional co-regulation by Kr-h1 and dFOXO may represent a broad mechanism by which Kruppel-like factors integrate with insulin signaling to maintain metabolic homeostasis and coordinate organism growth.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bousk, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karashchuk, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thakore, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zheng, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Post, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brent, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tatar, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-07-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/165456</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Drosophila Kruppel homolog 1 represses lipolysis through interaction with dFOXO]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-07-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/169433v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Mammalian Orthoreovirus Factories Modulate Stress Granule Protein Localization by Interaction with G3BP1 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/169433v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mammalian orthoreovirus (MRV) infection induces phosphorylation of translation initiation factor eIF2 which promotes formation of discrete cytoplasmic inclusions, termed stress granules (SGs). SGs are emerging as a component of the innate immune response to virus infection, and modulation of SG assembly is a common mechanism employed by viruses to counter this antiviral response. We previously showed that MRV infection induces SGs early, then interferes with SG formation as infection proceeds. In this work, we found that SG associated proteins localized to the periphery of virus-encoded cytoplasmic structures, termed virus factories (VFs), where viral transcription, translation, and replication occur. The localization of SG proteins to VFs was dependent on polysome dissociation and occurred via association of SG effector protein, G3BP1, with MRV non-structural protein {sigma}NS, which localizes to VFs via association with VF nucleating protein, NS. Deletion analysis of the {sigma}NS RNA binding domain and G3BP1 RNA (RRM) and ribosomal (RGG) binding domains showed that the association and VF localization of G3BP1 is not occurring solely through RNA or ribosomal binding, but requires both RNA and ribosomal binding domains of G3BP1 for maximal VFL localization and {sigma}NS association. Co-expression of {sigma}NS and NS resulted in disruption of normal SG puncta, and in cells lacking G3BP1, MRV replication was enhanced in a manner correlating with strain-dependent induction of host translation shutoff. These results suggest that {sigma}NS association with and relocalization of G3BP1 to the VF periphery plays a role in SG disruption to facilitate MRV replication in the host translational shutoff environment.nnIMPORTANCESGs and SG effector proteins have emerged as important, yet poorly understood, players in the hosts innate immune response to virus infection. MRV infection induces SGs early during infection that are dispersed and/or prevented from forming during late stages of infection despite continued activation of the eIF2 signaling pathway. Cellular and viral components involved in disruption of SGs during late stages of MRV infection remain to be elucidated. This work provides evidence that MRV disruption of SGs may be facilitated by association of MRV non-structural protein {sigma}NS with major SG effector protein G3BP1 and subsequent localization of G3BP1 and other SG associated proteins around the periphery of virus encoded factories, interrupting the normal formation of SGs. Our findings also reveal the importance of G3BP1 as an inhibitor of MRV replication during infection for the first time.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Choudhury, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bussiere, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-07-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/169433</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Mammalian Orthoreovirus Factories Modulate Stress Granule Protein Localization by Interaction with G3BP1]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-07-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/174235v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Characterization of a replicating mammalian orthoreovirus with tetracysteine tagged μNS for live cell visualization of viral factories 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/174235v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Within infected host cells, mammalian orthoreovirus (MRV) forms viral factories (VFs) which are sites of viral transcription, translation, assembly, and replication. MRV non-structural protein, NS, comprises the structural matrix of VFs and is involved in recruiting other viral proteins to VF structures. Previous attempts have been made to visualize VF dynamics in live cells but due to current limitations in recovery of replicating reoviruses carrying large fluorescent protein tags, researchers have been unable to directly assess VF dynamics from virus-produced NS. We set out to develop a method to overcome this obstacle by utilizing the 6 amino-acid (CCPGCC) tetracysteine (TC)-tag and FlAsH-EDT2 reagent. The TC-tag was introduced into eight sites throughout NS, and the capacity of the TC-NS fusion proteins to form virus factory-like (VFL) structures and colocalize with virus proteins was characterized. Insertion of the TC-tag interfered with recombinant virus rescue in six of the eight mutants, likely as a result of loss of VF formation or important virus protein interactions. However, two recombinant (r)TC-NS viruses were rescued and VF formation, colocalization with associating virus proteins, and characterization of virus replication were subsequently examined. Furthermore the rTC-NS viruses were utilized to infect cells and examine VF dynamics using live cell microscopy. These experiments demonstrate active VF movement with fusion events as well as transient interactions between individual VFs, and demonstrate the importance of microtubule stability for VF fusion during MRV infection. This work provides important groundwork for future in depth studies of VF dynamics and host cell interactions.nnImportanceMRV has historically been used as a model to study the double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) Reoviridae family, which infect and cause disease in humans, animals, and plants. During infection, MRV forms VFs that play a critical role in virus infection, but remain to be fully characterized. To study VFs, researchers have focused on visualizing the non-structural protein NS which forms the VF matrix. This work provides the first evidence of recovery of replicating reoviruses in which VFs can be labeled in live cells via introduction of a TC-tag into the NS open reading frame. Characterization of each recombinant reovirus sheds light on NS interactions with viral proteins. Moreover, utilizing the TC labeling FlAsH-EDT2 biarsenical reagent to visualize VFs, evidence is provided of dynamic VF movement and interactions at least partially dependent on intact microtubules.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bussiere, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Choudhury, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bellaire, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-08-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/174235</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Characterization of a replicating mammalian orthoreovirus with tetracysteine tagged μNS for live cell visualization of viral factories]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-08-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/178038v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A gut pathobiont synergizes with the microbiota to instigate inflammatory disease marked by immunoreactivity against other symbionts but not itself 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/178038v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are likely driven by aberrant immune responses directed against the resident microbiota. Although IBD is commonly associated with a dysbiotic microbiota enriched in putative pathobionts, the etiological agents of IBD remain unknown. Using a pathobiont-induced intestinal inflammation model and a defined bacterial community, we provide new insights into the immune-microbiota interactions during disease. In our model system, the pathobiont Helicobacter bilis instigates disease following sub-pathological dextran sulfate sodium treatment. We show that H. bilis causes mild inflammation in mono-associated mice, but severe disease in the presence of a microbiota, demonstrating synergy between the pathobiont and microbiota in exacerbating pathology. Remarkably, inflammation depends on the presence of H. bilis, but is marked by a predominant Th17 response against specific members of the microbiota and not the pathobiont, even upon the removal of the most immune-dominant taxa. Neither increases in pathobiont burden nor unique changes in immune-targeted microbiota member abundances are observed during disease. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that a pathobiont instigates inflammation without being the primary target of a Th17 response or by altering the microbiota community structure. Moreover, our findings point toward monitoring pathobiont-induced changes in microbiota immune targeting as a new concept in IBD diagnotics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gomes-Neto, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kittana, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mantz, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Segura Munoz, R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmaltz, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bindels, L. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clarke, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hostetter, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Benson, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walter, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ramer-Tait, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-08-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/178038</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A gut pathobiont synergizes with the microbiota to instigate inflammatory disease marked by immunoreactivity against other symbionts but not itself]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-08-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/197921v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Impaired phloem loading in genome-edited triple knock-out mutants of SWEET13 sucrose transporters 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/197921v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Crop yield depends on efficient allocation of sucrose from leaves to seeds. In Arabidopsis, phloem loading is mediated by a combination of SWEET sucrose effluxers and subsequent uptake by SUT1/SUC2 sucrose/H+ symporters. ZmSUT1 is essential for carbon allocation in maize, but the relative contribution to apoplasmic phloem loading and retrieval of sucrose leaking from the translocation path is not known. We therefor tested whether SWEETs are important for phloem loading in maize.nnHere we identified three leaf-expressed SWEET sucrose transporters as key components of apoplasmic phloem loading in Zea mays L. Notably, ZmSWEET13 paralogs (a, b, c) are among the highest expressed genes in the leaf vasculature. Genome-edited triple knock-out mutants are severely stunted. Photosynthesis of mutants was impaired and leaves accumulated starch and soluble sugars. RNA-seq revealed profound transcriptional deregulation of genes associated with the photosynthetic apparatus and carbohydrate metabolism. GWAS analyses may indicate that variability in ZmSWEET13s is correlated with agronomical traits, specifically flowering time and leaf angle.nnThis work provides support for cooperation of three ZmSWEET13s with ZmSUT1 in phloem loading in Zea mays L. Our study highlights these three ZmSWEET13 sucrose transporters as possible candidates for the engineering of crop yield.nnOne Sentence Summary: Three SWEET sucrose transporter paralogs are necessary for phloem loading in maize.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Frommer, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bezrutczyk, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hartwig, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Horschman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Char, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sosso, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-10-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/197921</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Impaired phloem loading in genome-edited triple knock-out mutants of SWEET13 sucrose transporters]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-10-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/198325v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SWEET11 and 15 as key players in seed filling in rice 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/198325v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
SummaryO_LIDespite the relevance of seed filling mechanisms for crop yield, we still have only a rudimentary understanding of the pathways and transport processes for supplying the caryopsis with sugars. We hypothesized that the recently identified SWEET sucrose transporters may play important roles in nutrient import pathways in the rice caryopsis.nC_LIO_LIWe used a combination of mRNA quantification, histochemical analyses, translational promoter-reporter fusions and analysis of knock out mutants created by genomic editing to evaluate the contribution of SWEET transporters to seed filling.nC_LIO_LIIn rice caryopses, SWEET11 and 15 had the highest mRNA levels and proteins localized to four key sites: the nucellus proper at early stages, the nucellar projection close to the dorsal vein, the nucellar epidermis that surrounds the endosperm, and the aleurone. ossweet11;15 double knock-out lines accumulated starch in the pericarp while caryopses did not contain a functional endosperm.nC_LIO_LIJointly, SWEET11 and 15 show all hallmarks of being responsible for seed filling with sucrose efflux function at the nucellar projection and transfer across the nucellar epidermis/aleurone interface, delineating two major steps for apoplasmic seed filling, observations that are discussed in relation to observations made in rice and barely on the relative prevalence of these two potential import routes.nC_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frommer, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eom, J.-S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-10-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/198325</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SWEET11 and 15 as key players in seed filling in rice]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-10-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/200238v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Continuous interdomain orientation distributions reveal components of binding thermodynamics 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/200238v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1The flexibility of biological macromolecules is an important structural determinant of function. Unfortunately, the correlations between different motional modes are poorly captured by discrete ensemble representations. Here, we present new ways to both represent and visualize correlated interdomain motions. Interdomain motions are determined directly from residual dipolar couplings (RDCs), represented as a continuous conformational distribution, and visualized using the disk-on-sphere (DoS) representation. Using the DoS representation, features of interdomain motions, including correlations, are intuitively visualized. The representation works especially well for multidomain systems with broad conformational distributions. This analysis also can be extended to multiple probability density modes, using a Bingham mixture model. We use this new paradigm to study the interdomain motions of staphylococcal protein A, which is a key virulence factor contributing to the pathogenicity of S. aureus. We capture the smooth transitions between important states and demonstrate the utility of continuous distribution functions for computing components of binding thermodynamics. Such insights allow the dissection the dynamic structural components of functionally important intermolecular interactions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Qi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barb, A. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thelot, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Donald, B. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Oas, T. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-10-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/200238</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Continuous interdomain orientation distributions reveal components of binding thermodynamics]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-10-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.12.874644v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic characterization of Streptococcus equi subspecies zooepidemicus associated with high swine mortality in United States 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.12.874644v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
High mortality events due to Streptococcus equi subspecies zooepidemicus (S. zooepidemicus) in swine have not previously been reported in the United States. In September and October 2019, outbreaks with swine mortality up to 50% due to S. zooepidemicus septicemia were reported in Ohio and Tennessee. Genomic epidemiological analysis revealed that the eight outbreak isolates were clustered together with ATCC 36246, a Chinese strain caused outbreaks with high mortality, also closely related to three isolates from human cases from Virginia, but significantly different from an outbreak-unrelated swine isolate from Arizona and most isolates from other animal species. Comparative genomic analysis on two outbreak isolates and another outbreak-unrelated isolate identified several genomic islands and virulence genes specifically in the outbreak isolates only, which are likely associated with the high mortality observed in the swine population. These findings have implications for understanding, tracking, and possibly preventing diseases caused by S. zooepidemicus in swine.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chen, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Resende-De-Macedo, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sitthicharoenchai, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahin, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burrough, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clavijo, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Derscheid, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schwartz, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lantz, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robbe-Austerman, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Main, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2019.12.12.874644</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic characterization of Streptococcus equi subspecies zooepidemicus associated with high swine mortality in United States]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.16.878371v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Hierarchical Markov Random Field model captures spatial dependency in gene expression, demonstrating regulation via the 3D genome 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.16.878371v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWHiC technology has revealed many details about the eukaryotic genomes complex 3D architecture. It has been shown that the genome is separated into organizational structures which are associated with gene expression. However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have quantitatively measured the level of gene expression in the context of the 3D genome.

Here we present a novel model that integrates data from RNA-seq and HiC experiments, and determines how much of the variation in gene expression can be accounted for by the genes spatial locations. We used Poisson hierarchical Markov Random Field (PhiMRF), to estimate the level of spatial dependency among protein-coding genes in two different human cell lines. The inference of PhiMRF follows a Bayesian framework, and we introduce the Spatial Interaction Estimate (SIE) to measure the strength of spatial dependency in gene expression.

We find that the quantitative expression of genes in some chromosomes show meaningful positive intra-chromosomal spatial dependency. Interestingly, the spatial dependency is much stronger than the dependency based on linear gene neighborhoods, suggesting that 3D chromosome structures such as chromatin loops and Topologically Associating Domains (TADs) are strongly associated with gene expression levels. In some chromosomes the spatial dependency in gene expression is only detectable when the spatial neighborhoods are confined within TADs, suggesting TAD boundaries serve as insulating barriers for spatial gene regulation in the genome. We also report high inter-chromosomal spatial correlations in the majority of chromosome pairs, as well as the whole genome. Some functional groups of genes show strong spatial dependency in gene expression as well, providing new insights into the regulation mechanisms of these molecular functions. This study both confirms and quantifies widespread spatial correlation in gene expression. We propose that, with the growing influx of HiC data complementing gene expression data, the use of spatial dependence should be an integral part of the toolkit in the computational analysis of the relationship between chromosome structure and gene expression.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhou, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaiser, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2019.12.16.878371</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Hierarchical Markov Random Field model captures spatial dependency in gene expression, demonstrating regulation via the 3D genome]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.16.878900v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Homoeologous gene expression and co-expression network analyses and evolutionary inference in allopolyploids 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.16.878900v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Polyploidy is a widespread phenomenon throughout eukaryotes. Due to the coexistence of duplicated genomes, polyploids offer unique challenges for estimating gene expression levels, which is essential for understanding the massive and various forms of transcriptomic responses accompanying polyploidy. Although previous studies have explored the bioinformatics of polyploid transcriptomic profiling, the causes and consequences of inaccurate quantification of transcripts from duplicated gene copies have not been addressed. Using transcriptomic data from the cotton genus (Gossypium) as an example, we present an analytical workflow to evaluate a variety of bioinformatic method choices at different stages of RNA-seq analysis, from homoeolog expression quantification to downstream analysis used to infer key phenomena of polyploid expression evolution. In general, GSNAP-PolyCat outperforms other quantification pipelines tested, and its derived expression dataset best represents the expected homoeolog expression and co-expression divergence. The performance of co-expression network analysis was less affected by homoeolog quantification than by network construction methods, where weighted networks outperformed binary networks. By examining the extent and consequences of homoeolog read ambiguity, we illuminate the potential artifacts that may affect our understanding of duplicate gene expression, including an over-estimation of homoeolog co-regulation and the incorrect inference of subgenome asymmetry in network topology. Taken together, our work points to a set of reasonable practices that we hope are broadly applicable to the evolutionary exploration of polyploids.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2019.12.16.878900</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Homoeologous gene expression and co-expression network analyses and evolutionary inference in allopolyploids]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.17.880294v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Maximizing prediction of orphan genes in assembled genomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.17.880294v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Proteins encoded by newly-emerged genes ("orphan genes") share no sequence similarity with proteins in any other species. They provide organisms with a reservoir of genetic elements to quickly respond to changing selection pressures. Here, we systematically assess the ability of five gene annotation pipelines to accurately predict genes in genomes according to phylostratal origin. BRAKER and MAKER are existing, popular ab initio tools that infer gene structures by machine learning. Direct Inference is an evidence-based pipeline we developed to predict gene structures from alignments of RNA-Seq data. The BIND pipeline integrates ab initio predictions of BRAKER and Direct inference; MIND combines Direct Inference and MAKER predictions. We use highly-curated Arabidopsis and yeast annotations as gold-standard benchmarks, and cross-validate in rice. Each pipeline under-predicts orphan genes (as few as 11 percent, under one prediction scenario). Increasing RNA-Seq diversity greatly improves prediction efficacy. The combined methods (BIND and MIND) yield best predictions overall, BIND identifying 68% of annotated orphan genes and 99% of ancient genes in Arabidopsis. We provide a light weight, flexible, reproducible solution to improve gene prediction.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhandary, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arendsee, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2019.12.17.880294</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Maximizing prediction of orphan genes in assembled genomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.19.883413v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
One-Pot E. coli Cell-Free Extract for in vitro Expression of Disulfide Bonded Proteins 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.19.883413v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In vitro expression of proteins from E. coli extract is a useful method for prototyping and production of cytotoxic or unnatural products. However, proteins that have multiple disulfide bonds require custom extract that, to date, requires careful addition of exogenous isomerase enzymes or the use of expensive commercial kits. This cost and complexity currently limit access to some groups who wish to rapidly prototype proteins with disulfide bonds. Herein, we present a simple solution that does not require addition of supplemental enzymes. We use a commercially available SHuffle T7 Express lysY strain of E. coli that expresses both T7 RNAP and DsbC isomerase enzymes. We experimentally determine optimal growth conditions (IPTG induction and harvest times) to balance overall productivity and efficiency of disulfide bond formation using a luciferase (from Gaussia princeps) that contains five disulfide bonds as our reporter protein. We also demonstrate the ability for rapid prototyping by screening the activity of four luciferase candidates against ten luciferin analogues. To display the broad applicability of the extract, three other enzymes containing [&ge;]3 disulfide bonds (hevamine, endochitinase A, and periplasmic AppA) were also expressed from minimal genetic templates that had undergone rolling circle amplification and confirmed via activity assays.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dopp, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reuel, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2019.12.19.883413</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[One-Pot E. coli Cell-Free Extract for in vitro Expression of Disulfide Bonded Proteins]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.20.884957v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
rMSIcleanup: An open-source tool for matrix-related peak annotation in mass spectrometry imaging and its application to silver-assisted laser desorption/ionization 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.20.884957v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has become a mature, widespread analytical technique to perform non-targeted spatial metabolomics. However, the compounds used to promote desorption and ionization of the analyte during acquisition cause spectral interferences in the low mass range that hinder downstream data processing in metabolomics applications. Thus, it is advisable to annotate and remove matrix-related peaks to reduce the number of redundant and non-biologically-relevant variables in the dataset. We have developed rMSIcleanup, an open-source R package to annotate and remove matrix-related signals based on its chemical formula and the spatial distribution of its ions. To validate the annotation method, rMSIcleanup was challenged with several images acquired using silver-assisted laser desorption ionization MSI (AgLDI MSI). The algorithm was able to correctly classify m/z signals related to silver clusters. Visual exploration of the data using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) demonstrated that annotation and removal of matrix-related signals improved spectral data post-processing. The results highlight the need for including matrix-related peak annotation tools such as rMSIcleanup in MSI workflows.

Resources availabilityThe R package presented in this publication is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0 at https://github.com/gbaquer/rMSIcleanup. The datasets used in the experiments can be accessed upon request to the corresponding author.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Baquer, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Semente, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garcia-Altares, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, Y. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chaurand, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Correig, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rafols, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2019.12.20.884957</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[rMSIcleanup: An open-source tool for matrix-related peak annotation in mass spectrometry imaging and its application to silver-assisted laser desorption/ionization]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.20.885269v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identifying Core Operons in Metagenomic Data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2019.12.20.885269v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
An operon is a functional unit of DNA whose genes are co-transcribed on polycistronic mRNA, in a co-regulated fashion. Operons are a powerful mechanism of introducing functional complexity in bacteria, and are therefore of interest in microbial genetics, physiology, biochemistry, and evolution. Here we present a Pipeline for Operon Exploration in Metagenomes or POEM. At the heart of POEM lies the concept of a core operon, a functional unit enabled by a predicted operon in a metagenome. Using a series of benchmarks, we show the high accuracy of POEM, and demonstrate its use on a human gut metagenome sample. We conclude that POEM is a useful tool for analyzing metagenomes beyond the genomic level, and for identifying multi-gene functionalities and possible neofunctionalization in metagenomes. Availability: https://github.com/Rinoahu/POEM_py3k
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2019.12.20.885269</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identifying Core Operons in Metagenomic Data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.02.893479v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Small non-coding RNA CjNC110 influences motility, autoagglutination, AI-2 localization, and chicken colonization in Campylobacter jejuni 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.02.893479v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Small non-coding RNAs are involved in many important physiological functions in pathogenic microorganisms. Previous studies have identified the presence of non-coding RNAs in the major zoonotic pathogen Campylobacter jejuni, however, few have been functionally characterized to date. CjNC110 is a conserved ncRNA in C. jejuni, located downstream of the luxS gene which is responsible for the production of the quorum-sensing molecule autoinducer-2 (AI-2). In this study, we utilized strand specific high-throughput RNAseq to identify potential targets or interactive partners of CjNC110 in a sheep abortion clone of C. jejuni. This data was then utilized to focus further phenotypic evaluation of the role of CjNC110 in motility, autoagglutination, quorum sensing, hydrogen peroxide sensitivity and chicken colonization in C. jejuni. Inactivation of the CjNC110 ncRNA led to a statistically significant decrease in autoagglutination ability as well as increased motility and hydrogen peroxide sensitivity when compared to wild-type. Extracellular AI-2 detection was decreased in {Delta}CjNC110, however, intracellular AI-2 accumulation was significantly increased, suggesting a key role of CjNC110 in modulating the transport of AI-2. Notably, {Delta}CjNC110 also showed a decreased ability to colonize chickens. Complementation of CjNC110 restored all phenotypic changes back to wild-type levels. The collective results of the phenotypic and transcriptomic changes observed in our data provide valuable insights into the pathobiology of C. jejuni sheep abortion clone and strongly suggest that CjNC110 plays an important role in regulation of energy taxis, flagellar glycosylation, cellular communication via quorum sensing, oxidative stress tolerance and chicken colonization in this important zoonotic pathogen.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kreuder, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ruddell, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mou, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hassall, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Plummer, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.02.893479</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Small non-coding RNA CjNC110 influences motility, autoagglutination, AI-2 localization, and chicken colonization in Campylobacter jejuni]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.03.894386v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dual-localized enzymatic components that constitute the mitochondrial and plastidial fatty acid synthase systems 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.03.894386v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We report the identification and characterization of genes encoding three enzymes that are shared between the mitochondrial and plastidial-localized Type II fatty acid synthase systems (mtFAS and ptFAS, respectively). Two of these enzymes, {beta}-ketoacyl-ACP reductase (pt/mtKR) and enoyl-ACP reductase (pt/mtER) catalyze two of the reactions that constitute the core, 4-reaction cycle of the FAS system, which iteratively elongate the acyl-chain by 2-carbon atoms per cycle. The third enzyme, malonyl-CoA:ACP transacylase (pt/mtMCAT) catalyzes the reaction that loads the mtFAS system with substrate, by malonylating the phosphopantetheinyl cofactor of acyl carrier protein (ACP). GFP-transgenic experiments determined the dual localization of these enzymes, which were validated by the characterization of mutant alleles, which were transgenically rescued by transgenes that were singularly retargeted to either plastids or mitochondria. The singular retargeting of these proteins to plastids rescued the embryo-lethality associated with disruption of the essential ptFAS system, but these rescued plants display phenotypes typical of the lack of mtFAS function. Specifically, these phenotypes include reduced lipoylation of the H subunit of the glycine decarboxylase complex, the hyperaccumulation of glycine, and reduced growth; all these traits are reversible by growing these plants in an elevated CO2 atmosphere, which suppresses mtFAS-associated, photorespiration-dependent chemotypes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Guan, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Okazaki, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saito, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.03.894386</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dual-localized enzymatic components that constitute the mitochondrial and plastidial fatty acid synthase systems]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.07.897926v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
siRNA-mediated de novo silencing of Ac/Ds transposons is initiated by alternative transposition in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.07.897926v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Although Transposable Elements (TEs) comprise a major fraction of many higher eukaryotic genomes, most TEs are silenced by host defense mechanisms. The means by which otherwise active TEs are recognized and silenced remains poorly understood. Here we analyzed two independent cases of spontaneous silencing of the active maize Ac/Ds transposon system. This silencing was initiated by Alternative Transposition (AT), a type of aberrant transposition event that engages the termini of two nearby separate TEs. AT during DNA replication can generate Composite Insertions (CIs) that contain inverted duplications of the transposon sequences. We show that the inverted duplications of two CIs are transcribed to produce dsRNAs that trigger the production of two distinct classes of siRNAs: a 24-nt class complementary to the TE terminal inverted repeats (TIRs) and non-coding sub-terminal regions, and a 21-22 nt class corresponding to the TE transcribed regions. Plants containing these siRNA-generating CIs exhibit decreased levels of Ac transcript and heritable repression of Ac/Ds transposition. This study documents the first case of TE silencing attributable to transposon self-initiated AT and may represent a general initiating mechanism for silencing of DNA transposons.

Article summaryTransposable Elements (TEs) are often silenced by their hosts, but how TEs are initially recognized for silencing remains unclear. Here we describe two independent loci that induce de novo heritable silencing of maize Ac/Ds transposons. Plants containing these loci produce dsRNA and Ac-homologous small interfering RNAs, and exhibit decreased levels of Ac transcript and heritable repression of Ac/Ds transposition. We show that these loci comprise inverted duplications of TE sequences generated by Alternative Transposition coupled with DNA re-replication. This study documents the first case of transposon silencing induced by AT and may represent a general initiating mechanism for TE silencing.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wang, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zuo, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lisch, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.07.897926</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[siRNA-mediated de novo silencing of Ac/Ds transposons is initiated by alternative transposition in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.08.896647v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Multi-scalar Approaches to the stable isotope ecology of late Quaternary Proboscideans in the Midcontinent 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.08.896647v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Stable isotopes of mammoths and mastodons have the potential to illuminate ecological changes in late Pleistocene landscapes and megafaunal populations as these species approached extinction. The ecological factors at play in this extinction remain unresolved, but isotopes of bone collagen ({delta}13C, {delta}15N) and tooth enamel ({delta}13C, {delta}18O, 87Sr/86Sr) from the Midwest, USA are leveraged to examine ecological and behavioral changes that occurred during the last interglacial-glacial cycle. Both species had significant C3 contributions to their diets and experienced increasing levels of niche overlap as they approached extinction. A subset of mastodons after the last glacial maximum (LGM) exhibit low {delta}15N values that may represent expansion into a novel ecological niche, perhaps densely occupied by other herbivores. Stable isotopes from serial and micro-sampled enamel show increasing seasonality and decreasing temperatures as mammoths transitioned from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e to glacial conditions (MIS 4, MIS 3, MIS 2). Isotopic variability in enamel suggests mobility patterns and life histories have potentially large impacts on the interpretation of their stable isotope ecology. This study further refines the ecology of midwestern mammoths and mastodons demonstrating increasing seasonality and niche overlap as they responded to landscape changes in the final millennia before extinction.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Widga, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hodgins, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kolis, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lengyel, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saunders, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walker, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wanamaker, A. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.08.896647</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Multi-scalar Approaches to the stable isotope ecology of late Quaternary Proboscideans in the Midcontinent]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.08.898825v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The RNA of maize chlorotic mottle virus - the essential virus in maize lethal necrosis disease - is translated via a panicum mosaic virus-like cap-independent translation element 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.08.898825v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maize chlorotic mottle virus (MCMV) combines with a potyvirus in maize lethal necrosis disease (MLND), an emerging disease worldwide that often causes catastrophic yield loss. To inform resistance strategies, we characterized the translation initiation mechanism of MCMV. We report that, like other tombusvirids, MCMV RNA contains a cap-independent translation element (CITE) in its 3 untranslated region (UTR). The MCMV 3 CITE (MTE) was mapped to nucleotides 4164-4333 in the genomic RNA. SHAPE probing revealed that the MTE is a variant of the panicum mosaic virus-like 3 CITE (PTE). Like the PTE, electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSAs) indicated that eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) binds the MTE despite the absence of a m7GpppN cap structure, which is normally required for eIF4E to bind RNA. The MTE interaction with eIF4E suggests eIF4E may be a soft target for engineered resistance to MCMV. Using a luciferase reporter system, mutagenesis to disrupt and restore base pairing revealed that the MTE interacts with the 5 UTRs of both genomic RNA and the 3-coterminal subgenomic RNA1 via long-distance kissing stem-loop base pairing to facilitate translation in wheat germ extract and in protoplasts. However, the MTE is a relatively weak stimulator of translation and has a weak, if any, pseudoknot, which is present in the most active PTEs. Most mutations designed to form a pseudoknot decreased translation activity. Mutations in the viral genome that reduced or restored translation prevented and restored virus replication, respectively, in maize protoplasts and in plants. We propose that MCMV, and some other positive strand RNA viruses, favors a weak translation element to allow highly efficient viral RNA synthesis.

Author SummaryIn recent years, maize lethal necrosis disease has caused massive crop losses in East Africa and Ecuador. It has also emerged in East Asia. Maize chlorotic mottle virus (MCMV) infection is required for this disease. While some tolerant maize lines have been identified, there are no known resistance genes that confer full immunity to MCMV. In order to design better resistance strategies against MCMV, we focused on how the MCMV genome is translated, the first step of gene expression required for infection by all positive strand RNA viruses. We identified a structure (cap-independent translation element) in the 3 untranslated region of the viral RNA genome that allows the virus to usurp a host translation initiation factor in a way that differs from host mRNA interactions with the translational machinery. This difference may guide engineering of - or breeding for - resistance to MCMV. Moreover, this work adds to the diversity of known eukaryotic translation initiation mechanisms, as it provides more information on mRNA structural features that permit noncanonical interaction with a translation factor. Finally, owing to the conflict between ribosomes translating and viral replicase copying viral RNA, we propose that MCMV has evolved a relatively weak translation element in order to permit highly efficient RNA synthesis, and that this replication-translation trade-off may apply to other positive strand RNA viruses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Carino, E. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Scheets, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.08.898825</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The RNA of maize chlorotic mottle virus - the essential virus in maize lethal necrosis disease - is translated via a panicum mosaic virus-like cap-independent translation element]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.08.898908v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Gossypium longicalyx genome as a resource for cotton breeding and evolution 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.08.898908v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cotton is an important crop that has made significant gains in production over the last century. Emerging pests such as the reniform nematode have threatened cotton production. The rare African diploid species Gossypium longicalyx is a wild species that has been used as an important source of reniform nematode immunity. While mapping and breeding efforts have made some strides in transferring this immunity to the cultivated polyploid species, the complexities of interploidal transfer combined with substantial linkage drag have inhibited progress in this area. Moreover, this species shares its most recent common ancestor with the cultivated A-genome diploid cottons, thereby providing insight into the evolution of long, spinnable fiber. Here we report a newly generated de novo genome assembly of G. longicalyx. This high-quality genome leveraged a combination of PacBio long-read technology, Hi-C chromatin conformation capture, and BioNano optical mapping to achieve a chromosome level assembly. The utility of the G. longicalyx genome for understanding reniform immunity and fiber evolution is discussed.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pan, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brase, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stelly, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Udall, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.08.898908</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Gossypium longicalyx genome as a resource for cotton breeding and evolution]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.10.902353v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phase Transition of RNA-protein Complexes into Ordered Hollow Condensates 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.10.902353v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Liquid-liquid phase separation of multivalent intrinsically disordered protein-RNA complexes is ubiquitous in both natural and biomimetic systems. So far, isotropic liquid droplets are the most commonly observed topology of RNA-protein condensates in experiments and simulations. Here, by systematically studying the phase behavior of RNA-protein complexes across varied mixture compositions, we report a hollow vesicle-like condensate phase of nucleoprotein assemblies that is distinct from RNA-protein droplets. We show that these vesicular condensates are stable at specific mixture compositions and concentration regimes within the phase diagram and are formed through the phase separation of anisotropic protein-RNA complexes. Similar to membranes composed of amphiphilic lipids, these nucleoprotein-RNA vesicular membranes exhibit local ordering, size-dependent permeability, and selective encapsulation capacity without sacrificing their dynamic formation and dissolution in response to physicochemical stimuli. Our findings suggest that protein-RNA complexes can robustly create lipid-free vesicle-like enclosures by phase separation.

Significance statementVesicular assemblies play crucial roles in subcellular organization as well as in biotechnological applications. Classically, the ability to form such assemblies were primarily assigned to lipids and lipid-like amphiphilic molecules. Here, we show that disordered RNA-protein complexes can form vesicle-like ordered assemblies at disproportionate mixture compositions. We also show that the ability to form vesicular assemblies is generic to multi-component systems where phase separation is driven by heterotypic interactions. We speculate that such vesicular assemblies play crucial roles in the formation of dynamic multi-layered subcellular membrane-less organelles and can be utilized to fabricate novel stimuli-responsive microscale systems.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Alshareedah, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moosa, M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Raju, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, P. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.10.902353</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phase Transition of RNA-protein Complexes into Ordered Hollow Condensates]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.11.901066v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A New Model of Genetic Variation and Evolution Evaluates Relative Impacts of Background Selections and Selective Sweeps 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.11.901066v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Intra-population genetic variation and interspecies divergence in chromosome regions can be considerably affected by different local recombination rates. There are two models: (i) the selective sweeps that reduces the genetic diversity at linked sites and elevates the divergence rate; and (ii) the background selection that reduces the genetic diversity at linked sites and divergence rate. An intriguing question, yet highly controversial, is which one is dominant. In this paper, I develop a framework of generalize background selection, formulated by a diffusion model with two killing functions: the one associated with (negative) background selection is the rate to stop a fixation process of a mutation randomly, and the other associated with positive background selection (selective sweep) is the rate to stop a loss process of a mutation randomly. A simple relationship between the level of reduced diversity and the rate of divergence is derived, depending on the strength of generalized background selection (G) and the proportion of positive background selection ({beta}). We analyzed the interspecies divergence and intra-population diversity in low-recombination regions of three organisms (fruitfly, soybean and human). Strikingly, all datasets demonstrated the dominance of (negative) background selection, and the positive background selection (selective sweeps) only has a small contribution ({beta}[~]10%). However, our analysis rejects the notion of {beta}=0, namely, a complete negative background selection is unlikely. These findings may shed some lights on the long-term debates around Neutral Theory.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.11.901066</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A New Model of Genetic Variation and Evolution Evaluates Relative Impacts of Background Selections and Selective Sweeps]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.14.906107v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Ignoring fossil age uncertainty leads to inaccurate topology and divergence times in time calibrated tree inference 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.14.906107v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Time calibrated trees are challenging to estimate for many extinct groups of species due to the incompleteness of the rock and fossil records. Additionally, the precise age of a sample is typically not known as it may have occurred at any time during the time interval spanned by the rock layer.

Bayesian phylogenetic approaches provide a coherent framework for incorporating multiple sources of evidence and uncertainty. In this study, we simulate datasets with characteristics typical of Palaeozoic marine invertebrates, in terms of character and taxon sampling. We use these datasets to examine the impact of different age handling methods on estimated topologies and divergence times obtained using the fossilized birth-death process. Our results reiterate the importance of modeling fossil age uncertainty, although we find that the overall impact of fossil age uncertainty depends on both fossil taxon sampling and character sampling. When character sampling is low, different approaches to handling fossil age uncertainty make little to no difference in the accuracy and precision of the results. However, when character sampling is high, sampling the fossil ages as part of the inference gives topology and divergence times estimates that are as good as those obtained by fixing ages to the truth, whereas fixing fossil ages to incorrect values results in higher error and lower coverage. Modeling fossil age uncertainty is thus critical, as fixing incorrect fossil ages will negate the benefits of improved fossil and character sampling.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Barido-Sottani, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>van Tiel, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hopkins, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wright, D. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stadler, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warnock, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.14.906107</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Ignoring fossil age uncertainty leads to inaccurate topology and divergence times in time calibrated tree inference]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.14.906230v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Gapless assembly of maize chromosomes using long read technologies 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.14.906230v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Creating gapless telomere-to-telomere assemblies of complex genomes is one of the ultimate challenges in genomics. We used long read technologies and an optical map based approach to produce a maize genome assembly composed of only 63 contigs. The B73-Ab10 genome includes gapless assemblies of chromosome 3 (236 Mb) and chromosome 9 (162 Mb), multiple highly repetitive centromeres and heterochromatic knobs, and 53 Mb of the Ab10 meiotic drive haplotype.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dawe, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chougule, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swentowsky, K. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gent, J. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Llaca, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Manchanda, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Presting, G. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kudrna, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alabady, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fengler, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ware, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Michael, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.14.906230</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Gapless assembly of maize chromosomes using long read technologies]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.916973v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A metabolomics study of ascorbic acid-induced in situ freezing tolerance in spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.916973v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Freeze-thaw stress is one of the major environmental constraints that limit plant growth and reduces productivity and quality. Plants exhibit a variety of cellular dysfunction following freeze-thaw stress, including accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). This means that enhancement of antioxidant capacity by exogenous application of antioxidants could potentially be one of major strategies for improving freezing tolerance (FT) of plants. Exogenous application of ascorbic acid (AsA), as an antioxidant, has been shown to improve plant tolerance against abiotic stresses but its effect on FT has not been investigated. We evaluated the effect of AsA-feeding on FT of spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) at whole-plant and excised leaf level, and conducted metabolite profiling of leaves before and after AsA-treatment to explore metabolic explanation for change in FT. AsA-application did not impede leaf-growth; instead slightly promoted it. Temperature-controlled freeze-thaw tests revealed AsA-fed plants were more freezing tolerant as indicated by: 1) less visual damage/mortality; 2) lower ion-leakage; and 3) less oxidative-injury, lower abundance of free radicals (O2 *- and H2O2). Comparative leaf metabolic profiling revealed clear separation of metabolic phenotypes for control vs. AsA-fed leaves. Specifically, AsA-fed leaves had greater abundance of antioxidants (AsA, glutathione, alpha-& gamma-tocopherol) and compatible solutes (proline, galactinol, myo-inositol). AsA-fed leaves also had higher activity of antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase, ascorbate peroxidase, catalase). These changes, together, may improve FT via alleviating freeze-induced oxidative stress as well as protecting membranes from freeze-desiccation. Additionally, improved FT by AsA-feeding may potentially include enhanced cell wall/lignin augmentation and bolstered secondary metabolism as indicated by diminished level of phenylalanine and increased abundance of branched amino acids, respectively.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Arora, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Min, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.23.916973</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A metabolomics study of ascorbic acid-induced in situ freezing tolerance in spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.24.917823v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Low ribosomal RNA genes copy number provoke genomic instability and chromosomal segment duplication events that modify global gene expression and plant-pathogen response 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.24.917823v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Among the hundreds of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene copies organized as tandem repeats in the nucleolus organizer regions (NORs), only a portion is usually actively expressed in the nucleolus and participate in the ribosome biogenesis process. The role of these extra-copies remains elusive, but previous studies suggested their importance in genome stability and global gene expression. Because the nucleolus is also a platform for nuclear organization, we tested the impact of a decreased amount of rRNA gene copies on the Arabidopsis thaliana 3D genome organization and stability, using an A. thaliana line only containing 20% of rRNA gene copies (20rDNA line). Compared to the wild-type Col-0, the 20rDNA line shows several signs of genomic instability, such as variations in 3D genome organization, spontaneous double-strand breaks accumulation, transcriptomic changes, and higher DNA methylation level. Strikingly, using genomic and microscopic approaches, we identified seven large tandem duplications in direct orientation (TDDOs) ranging from 60 kb to 1.44 Mb. As a consequence, more than 600 genes were duplicated, often associated with an increase in their expression level. Among them, we found several upregulated genes involved in plant-pathogen response, which could explain why the 20rDNA line is hyper-resistant to both bacterial and nematode infections. Finally, we show that the TDDOs create gene fusions and/or truncations and we discuss their potential implications on plant genome evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Picart-Picolo, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grob, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Picault, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Franek, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Halter, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Llauro, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jobet, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vijayapalani, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Navarro, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dvorackova, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mirouze, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pontvianne, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.24.917823</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Low ribosomal RNA genes copy number provoke genomic instability and chromosomal segment duplication events that modify global gene expression and plant-pathogen response]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.24.918946v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Tandem tension sensor reveals substrate rigidity-dependence of integrin molecular tensions in live cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.24.918946v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Response of integrin tensions to substrate rigidity is important in cell rigidity sensing but has not been confirmed. Current fluorescent tension sensors produce cellular force signals collectively resulted from integrin tension magnitude, tension dwell time, integrin density and activity, ligand density and accessibility, etc., making it challenging to monitor the absolute molecular force level of integrin tensions in live cells. Here we developed a tandem tension sensor (TTS) consisting of two coupled tension sensing units which are subject to the same tension and respond with different activation probabilities to the tension. Reported by fluorescence, the activation probability ratio of these two units solely responds to the force level of local integrin tensions, excluding the bias from other non-force factors. We verified the feasibility of TTS in detecting integrin tensions and applied it to study cells on elastic substrates. TTS unambiguously reported that integrin tensions in platelets decrease monotonically with the substrate rigidity, verifying the rigidity-dependence of integrin tensions in live cells.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>LeVine, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mollaeian, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ren, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-01-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.24.918946</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Tandem tension sensor reveals substrate rigidity-dependence of integrin molecular tensions in live cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-01-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.31.928937v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Modulation of plant Acetyl CoA Synthetase activity by acetylation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.31.928937v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Acetyl-CoA synthetase (ACS) is one of several enzymes that generate the key metabolic intermediate, acetyl-CoA. ACS in plant cells is part of a two-enzyme system that maintains acetate homeostasis, but its post-translational regulation is unknown. In microbes and mammals ACS activity is regulated by the post-translational acetylation of a key lysine residue that is positioned in a conserved domain near the carboxyl-end of the protein sequence. This study demonstrates that the plant ACS activity can be regulated by the acetylation of a specific lysine residue that is homologous to the regulatory lysine residue of microbial and mammalian ACS. The inhibitory effect of the acetylation of residue Lys-622 of the Arabidopsis ACS was demonstrated by site-directed mutagenesis, including the genetic substitution of this residue with the non-canonical N-{varepsilon}-acetyl-lysine residue. This latter modification lowered the catalytic efficiency of the enzyme by a factor of more than 500-fold. Michaelis-Menten kinetic analysis of the mutant enzyme indicates that this acetylation affects the first half-reaction of the ACS catalyzed reaction, namely the formation of the acetyl adenylate enzyme intermediate. The post-translational acetylation of the plant ACS would thus affect acetate flux in the plastids and overall acetate homeostasis.

HighlightThe study demonstrates that acetylation of a specific lysine residue can regulate the activity of acetyl-CoA synthetase, a new regulatory mechanism for maintaining acetate homeostasis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sofeo, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leung, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.01.31.928937</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Modulation of plant Acetyl CoA Synthetase activity by acetylation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.03.932939v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Beef cattle that respond differently to fescue toxicosis have distinct gastrointestinal tract microbiota 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.03.932939v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Tall fescue (Lolium arundinaceum) is a widely used forage grass which shares a symbiosis with the endophytic fungus Epichloe coenophiala. The endophyte produces an alkaloid toxin that provides herbivory, heat and drought resistance to the grass, but can cause fescue toxicosis in grazing livestock. Fescue toxicosis can lead to reduced weight gain and milk yields resulting in significant losses to the livestock industry. In this trial, 149 Angus cows across two farms were continuously exposed to toxic, endophyte-infected, fescue for a total of 13 weeks. Of those 149 cows, 40 were classified into either high (HT) or low (LT) tolerance groups according to their growth performance (weight gain). 20 HT and 20 LT cattle balanced by farm were selected for 16S rRNA gene and ITS1 region Illumina MiSeq amplicon sequencing to compare the fecal microbiota of the two tolerance groups. This study reveals significantly (P<0.05) different bacterial and fungal microbiota between HT and LT cattle, and indicates that fungal phylotypes may be important for an animals response to fescue toxicosis: We found that fungal phylotypes affiliating to the Neocallimastigaceae, which are known to be important fiber-degrading fungi, were consistently more abundant in the HT cattle. Whereas fungal phylotypes related to the genus Thelebolus were more abundant in the LT cattle. This study also found more pronounced shifts in the microbiota in animals receiving higher amounts of the toxin. We identified fungal phylotypes which were consistently more abundant either in HT or LT cattle and may thus be associated with the respective animals response to fescue toxicosis. Our results thus suggest that some fungal phylotypes might be involved in mitigating fescue toxicosis. The results of our study provide a basis for investigating the functional role of the gastrointestinal microbiota in fescue toxicosis in more detail in the future.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Koester, L. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Poole, D. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Serao, N. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz-Esser, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.03.932939</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Beef cattle that respond differently to fescue toxicosis have distinct gastrointestinal tract microbiota]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.09.940528v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Tracing Evolutionary Ages of Cancer-Driving Sites by Cancer Somatic Mutations 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.09.940528v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Evolutionary understanding of cancer genes may provide insights on the nature and evolution of complex life and the origin of multicellularity. In this study, we focus on the evolutionary ages of cancer-driving sites, and try to explore to what extent the amino acids of cancer-driving sites can be traced back to the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of the gene. According to gene phylostraigraphy analysis, we use the definition of gene age (tg) by the most ancient phylogenetic position that can be traced back, in most cases based on the large-scale homology search of protein sequences. Our results are shown that the site-age profile of cancer-driving sites of TP53 is correlated with the number of cancer types the somatic mutations may affect. In general, those amino acid sites mutated in most cancer types are much ancient. These sites frequently mutated in cancerous cells are possibly responsible for carcinogenesis; some may be very important for basic growth of single-cell organisms, and others may contribute to complex cell regulation of multicellular organisms. The further cancer genomics analysis also indicates that ages of cancer-driving sites are ancient but may have a broad range in early stages of metazoans.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.09.940528</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Tracing Evolutionary Ages of Cancer-Driving Sites by Cancer Somatic Mutations]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.14.949008v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Factors affecting Response to Recurrent Genomic Selection in Soybeans 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.14.949008v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Herein we report the impacts of applying five selection methods across 40 cycles of recurrent selection and identify interactions among factors that affect genetic responses in sets of simulated families of recombinant inbred lines derived from 21 homozygous soybean lines. Our use of recurrence equation to model response from recurrent selection allowed us to estimate the half-lives, asymptotic limits to recurrent selection for purposes of assessing the rates of response and future genetic potential of populations under selection. The simulated factors include selection methods, training sets, and selection intensity that are under the control of the plant breeder as well as genetic architecture and heritability. A factorial design to examine and analyze the main and interaction effects of these factors showed that both the rates of genetic improvement in the early cycles and limits to genetic improvement in the later cycles are significantly affected by interactions among all factors. Some consistent trends are that genomic selection methods provide greater initial rates of genetic improvement (per cycle) than phenotypic selection, but phenotypic selection provides the greatest long term responses in these closed genotypic systems. Model updating with training sets consisting of data from prior cycles of selection significantly improved prediction accuracy and genetic response with three parametric genomic prediction models. Ridge Regression, if updated with training sets consisting of data from prior cycles, achieved better rates of response than BayesB and Bayes LASSO models. A Support Vector Machine method, with a radial basis kernel, had the worst estimated prediction accuracies and the least long term genetic response. Application of genomic selection in a closed breeding population of a self-pollinated crop such as soybean will need to consider the impact of these factors on trade-offs between short term gains and conserving useful genetic diversity in the context of the goals for the breeding program.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramasubramanian, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beavis, W. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.14.949008</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Factors affecting Response to Recurrent Genomic Selection in Soybeans]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.16.951467v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Functional principal component based time-series genome-wide association in sorghum 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.16.951467v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The phenotypes of plants develop over time and change in response to the environment. New engineering and computer vision technologies track phenotypic change over time. Identifying genetic loci regulating differences in the pattern of phenotypic change remains challenging. In this study we used functional principal component analysis (FPCA) to achieve this aim. Time-series phenotype data was collected from a sorghum diversity panel using a number of technologies including RGB and hyperspectral imaging. Imaging lasted for thirty-seven days centered on reproductive transition. A new higher density SNP set was generated for the same population. Several genes known to controlling trait variation in sorghum have been cloned and characterized. These genes were not confidently identified in genome-wide association analyses at single time points. However, FPCA successfully identified the same known and characterized genes. FPCA analyses partitioned the role these genes play in controlling phenotype. Partitioning was consistent with the known molecular function of the individual cloned genes. FPCA-based genome-wide association studies can enable robust time-series mapping analyses in a wide range of contexts. Time-series analysis can increase the accuracy and power of quantitative genetic analyses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Miao, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.16.951467</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Functional principal component based time-series genome-wide association in sorghum]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.18.955195v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Structure and immune recognition of the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus spike protein 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.18.955195v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus is an alphacoronavirus responsible for significant morbidity and mortality in pigs. A key determinant of viral tropism and entry, the PEDV spike protein is a key target for the host antibody response and a good candidate for a protein-based vaccine immunogen. We used electron microscopy to evaluate the PEDV spike structure, as well as pig polyclonal antibody responses to viral infection. The structure of the PEDV spike reveals a configuration similar to that of HuCoV-NL63. Several PEDV protein-protein interfaces are mediated by non-protein components including a glycan at Asn264 and two bound palmitoleic acid molecules. The polyclonal antibody response to PEDV infection shows a dominance of epitopes in the S1 region. This structural and immune characterization provides new insights into coronavirus spike stability determinants and explores the immune landscape of viral spike proteins.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kirchdoerfer, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhandari, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martini, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sewell, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bangaru, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yoon, K.-J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ward, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.18.955195</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Structure and immune recognition of the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus spike protein]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.21.960450v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Δ-dN/dS: New Criteria to Distinguish among Different Selection Modes in Gene Evolution 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.21.960450v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
One of the most widely-used measures for protein evolution is the ratio of nonsynonymous distance (dN) to synonymous distance (dS). Under the assumption that synonymous substitutions in the coding region are selectively neutral, the dN/dS ratio can be used to test the adaptive evolution if dN/dS>1 statistically significantly. However, due to selective constraints imposed on amino acid sites, most encoding genes demonstrate dN/dS<1. As a result, dN/dS of a gene is less than 1, even some sites may have experienced positive selections. In this paper, we develop a new criterion, called{Delta} -dN/dS, for positive selection testing by introducing an index H, which is a relative measure of rate variation among sites. Under the context of strong purifying selection at some amino acid sites, our model predicts dN/dS=1-H for the neutral evolution, dN/dS<1-H for the nearly-neutral selection, and dN/dS>1-H for the adaptive evolution. The potential of this new method for resolving the neutral-adaptive debates has been illustrated by case studies. For over 4000 vertebrate genes, virtually all of them showed dN/dS<1-H, indicating the dominant role of the nearly-neutral selection in molecular evolution. Moreover, we calculated the dN/dS ratio for cancer somatic mutations of a human gene, specifically denoted by CN/CS. For over 4000 human genes in cancer genomics, about 55% of genes showed 1-H<CN/CS<1, about 45% of genes showed CN/CS<1, whereas less than 1% of genes showed CN/CS<1-H. Together our analysis suggested driver mutations, i.e., those initiate and facilitate carcinogenesis, confer a selective advantage on cancer cells, leading to CN/CS>1 (strong positive selection) or 1-H<CN/CS<1 (weak positive selection, combined with strong purifying selection), whereas nearly neutral selection due to reduced effective clonal size is highly unlikely in cancer evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>gu, x.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.21.960450</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Δ-dN/dS: New Criteria to Distinguish among Different Selection Modes in Gene Evolution]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.942557v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A Sequence-Pair-Classification-Based Method For Detecting And Correcting Under-Clustered Gene Families 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.942557v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Gene families are groups of genes that have descended from a common ancestral gene present in the species under study. Current, widely used gene family building algorithms can produce family clusters that may be fragmented or missing true family sequences (under-clustering). Here we present a classification method based on sequence pairs that, first, inspects given families for under-clustering and then predicts the missing sequences for the families using family-specific alignment score cutoffs. We have tested this method on a set of curated, gold-standard ("true") families from the Yeast Gene Order Browser (YGOB) database, including 20 yeast species, as well as a test set of intentionally under-clustered ("deficient") families derived from the YGOB families. For 83% of the modified yeast families, our pair-classification method was able to reliably detect under-clustering in "deficient" families that were missing 20% of sequences relative to the full/" true" families. We also attempted to predict back the missing sequences using the family-specific alignment score cutoffs obtained during the detection phase. In the case of "pure" under-clustered families (under-clustered families with no "wrong"/unrelated sequences), for 78% of families the prediction precision and recall was [&ge;]0.75, with mean precision = 0.928 and mean recall = 0.859. For "impure" under-clustered families, (under-clustered families containing closest sequences from outside the family, in addition to missing true family sequences), the prediction precision and recall was [&ge;]0.75 for 63% of families with mean precision = 0.790 and mean recall = 0.869. To check if our method can detect and correct incomplete families obtained using existing family building methods, we attempted to correct 374 under-clustered yeast families produced using the OrthoFinder tool. We were able to predict missing sequences for at least 19 yeast families with mean precision of 0.9 and mean recall of 0.65. We also analyzed 14,663 legume families built using the OrthoFinder program, with 14 legume species. We were able to identify 1,665 OrthoFinder families that were missing one or more sequences - sequences which were previously un-clustered or clustered into unusually small families. Further, using a simple merging strategy, we were able to merge 2,216 small families into 933 under-clustered families using the predicted missing sequences. Out of the 933 merged families, we could confirm correct mergings in at least 534 families using the maximum-likelihood phylogenies of the merged families. We also provide recommendations on different types of family-specific alignment score cutoffs that can be used for predicting the missing sequences based on the "purity" of under-clustered families and the chosen precision and recall for prediction. Finally, we provide the containerized version of the pair-classification method that can be applied on any given set of gene families.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yadav, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernandez-Baca, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.22.942557</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Sequence-Pair-Classification-Based Method For Detecting And Correcting Under-Clustered Gene Families]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.23.961227v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
AmpliCI: A High-resolution Model-Based Approach for Denoising Illumina Amplicon Data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.23.961227v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationNext-generation amplicon sequencing is a powerful tool for investigating microbial communities. One main challenge is to distinguish true biological variants from errors caused by PCR and sequencing. In the traditional analysis pipeline, such errors are eliminated by clustering reads within a sequence similarity threshold, usually 97%, and constructing operational taxonomic units, but the arbitrary threshold leads to low resolution and high false positive rates. Recently developed "denoising" methods have proven able to resolve single-nucleotide amplicon variants, but they still miss low frequency sequences, especially those near abundant variants, because they ignore the sequencing quality information.

ResultsWe introduce AmpliCI, a reference-free, model-based method for rapidly resolving the number, abundance and identity of error-free sequences in massive Illumina amplicon datasets. AmpliCI takes into account quality information and allows the data, not an arbitrary threshold or an external database, to drive conclusions. AmpliCI estimates a finite mixture model, using a greedy strategy to gradually select error-free sequences and approximately maximize the likelihood. We show that AmpliCI is superior to three popular denoising methods, with acceptable computation time and memory usage.

AvailabilitySource code available at https://github.com/DormanLab/AmpliCI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Peng, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.23.961227</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[AmpliCI: A High-resolution Model-Based Approach for Denoising Illumina Amplicon Data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.24.963090v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genomic Prediction with Genotype by Environment Interaction Analysis for Kernel Zinc Concentration in Tropical Maize Germplasm 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.24.963090v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Zinc (Zn) deficiency is a major risk factor for human health, affecting about 30% of the worlds population. To study the potential of genomic selection (GS) for maize with increased Zn concentration, an association panel and two doubled haploid (DH) populations were evaluated in three environments. Three genomic prediction models, M (M1: Environment + Line, M2: Environment + Line + Genomic, and M3: Environment + Line + Genomic + Genomic x Environment) incorporating main effects (lines and genomic) and the interaction between genomic and environment (G x E) were assessed to estimate the prediction ability (rMP) for each model. Two distinct cross-validation (CV) schemes simulating two genomic prediction breeding scenarios were used. CV1 predicts the performance of newly developed lines, whereas CV2 predicts the performance of lines tested in sparse multi-location trials. Predictions for Zn in CV1 ranged from -0.01 to 0.56 for DH1, 0.04 to 0.50 for DH2 and -0.001 to 0.47 for the association panel. For CV2, rMP values ranged from 0.67 to 0.71 for DH1, 0.40 to 0.56 for DH2 and 0.64 to 0.72 for the association panel. The genomic prediction model which included G x E had the highest average rMP for both CV1 (0.39 and 0.44) and CV2 (0.71 and 0.51) for the association panel and DH2 population, respectively. These results suggest that GS has potential to accelerate breeding for enhanced kernel Zn concentration by facilitating selection of superior genotypes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lee, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mageto, E. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crossa, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perez-Rodriguez, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dhliwayo, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Palacios, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>San Vicente, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vemuri, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.24.963090</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genomic Prediction with Genotype by Environment Interaction Analysis for Kernel Zinc Concentration in Tropical Maize Germplasm]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.27.968321v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evaluation of the functional role of the maize Glossy2 and Glossy2-like genes in cuticular lipid deposition 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.27.968321v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plant epidermal cells express unique molecular machinery that juxtapose the assembly of intracellular lipid components and the unique extracellular cuticular lipids that are unidirectionally secreted to plant surfaces. In maize (Zea mays L.), mutations at the glossy2 (gl2) locus affect the deposition of extracellular cuticular lipids. Sequence-based genome scanning identified a novel gl2 homolog in the maize genome, Gl2-like. Sequence homology identifies that both the Gl2-like and Gl2 genes are members of the BAHD superfamily of acyltransferases, with close sequence homology to the Arabidopsis CER2 gene. Transgenic experiments demonstrate that Gl2-like and Gl2 functionally complement the Arabidopsis cer2 mutation, with differential impacts on the cuticular lipids and the lipidome of the plant, particularly affecting the longer alkyl chain acyl lipids, particularly at the 32-carbon chain length. Site-directed mutagenesis of the putative BAHD catalytic HXXXDX-motif indicates that Gl2-like requires this catalytic capability to fully complement the cer2 function, but Gl2 can accomplish this without the need for this catalytic motif. These findings demonstrate that both Gl2 and Gl2-like overlap in their cuticular lipid function, however the two genes have evolutionary diverged to acquire non-overlapping functions.

One-sentence summaryTransgenesis dissection of the functional roles of the maize Glossy2 and Glossy2-Like genes in cuticular lipid deposition.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Alexander, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Okazaki, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schelling, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Davis, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zheng, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rizhsky, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yandeau-Nelson, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saito, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-02-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.02.27.968321</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evaluation of the functional role of the maize Glossy2 and Glossy2-like genes in cuticular lipid deposition]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-02-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.04.925818v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
pyrpipe: a python package for RNA-Seq workflows 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.04.925818v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The availability of terabytes of RNA-Seq data and continuous emergence of new analysis tools, enable unprecedented biological insight. However, implementing RNA-Seq analysis pipelines in a reproducible, flexible manner is challenging as data gets bigger and more complex. Thus, there is a pressing requirement for frameworks that allows for fast, efficient, easy-to-manage, and reproducibile analysis. Simple scripting has many challenges and drawbacks. We have developed a python package, python RNA-Seq Pipeliner (pyrpipe) that enables straightforward development of flexible, reproducible and easy-to-debug computational pipelines purely in python, in an object-oriented manner. pyrpipe provides access to popular RNA-Seq tools, within python, via easy-to-use high level APIs. Pipelines can be customized by integrating new python code, third-party programs, or python libraries. Users can create checkpoints in the pipeline or integrate pyrpipe into a workflow management system, thus allowing execution on multiple computing environments. pyrpipe produces detailed analysis, and benchmark reports which can be shared or included in publications. pyrpipe is implemented in python and is compatible with python versions 3.6 and higher. To illustrate the rich functionality of pyrpipe, we provide case studies using RNA-Seq data from GTEx, SARS-CoV-2-infected human cells, and Zea mays. All source code is freely available at https://github.com/urmi-21/pyrpipe; the package can be installed from the source or from PyPI (https://pypi.org/project/pyrpipe). Documentation is available at (http://pyrpipe.rtfd.io).
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-03-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.03.04.925818</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[pyrpipe: a python package for RNA-Seq workflows]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-03-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.973248v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Intraepithelial T cells diverge by intestinal location as pigs age 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.973248v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
T cells resident within the intestinal epithelium play a central role in barrier integrity and provide a first line of immune defense. Intraepithelial T cells (IETs) are among the earliest immune cells to populate and protect intestinal tissues, thereby giving them an important role in shaping gut health early in life. In pigs, IETs are poorly defined, and their maturation in young pigs has not been well studied. Given the importance of IETs in contributing to early life and long-term intestinal health through interactions with epithelial cells, the microbiota, and additional environmental factors, a deeper characterization of IETs in pigs is warranted. The objective of this study was to analyze age- and intestinal location-dependent changes in IETs across multiple sites of the small and large intestine in pigs between 4 and 8 weeks of age. IETs increased in abundance over time and belonged to both {gamma}{delta} and {beta} T cell lineages. Similar compositions of IETs were identified across intestinal sites in 4-week-old pigs, but compositions diverged between intestinal sites as pigs aged. CD2+CD8+ {gamma}{delta} T cells and CD4-CD8+ {beta} T cells comprised >78% of total IETs at all intestinal locations and ages examined. Greater percentages of {gamma}{delta} IETs were present in large intestine compared to small intestine in older pigs. Small intestinal tissues had greater percentages of CD2+CD8- {gamma}{delta} IETs, while CD2+CD8+ {gamma}{delta} IET percentages were greater in the large intestine. Percentages of CD4-CD8+ {beta} IETs increased over time across all intestinal sites. Moreover, percentages of CD27+ cells decreased in ileum and large intestine over time, indicating increased IET activation as pigs aged. Percentages of CD27+ cells were also higher in small intestine compared to large intestine at later timepoints. Results herein emphasize 4 to 8 weeks of age as a critical window of IET maturation and suggest strong associations between intestinal location and age with IET heterogeneity in pigs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wiarda, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Trachsel, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bond, Z. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Byrne, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gabler, N. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loving, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-03-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.03.05.973248</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Intraepithelial T cells diverge by intestinal location as pigs age]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-03-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.08.982710v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evolutionary Distance of Gene-Gene Interactions: Estimation under Statistical Uncertainty 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.08.982710v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Consider the functional interaction of gene A to an interaction subject X; for instance, it is the gene-gene interaction if X represents for a gene, or gene-tissue interaction (expression status) if X for a tissue. In the simplest case, the status of this A-X interaction is r=1 if they are interacted, or r=0 otherwise. A fundamental problem in molecular evolution is, given two homologous (orthologous or paralogous) genes A and B, to what extent their functional overlapping could be by the means of interaction networks. Given a set of interaction subjects (X1, ... XN), it is straightforward to calculate the interaction distance (IAB) between genes A and B, by a Markov-chain model. However, since the high throughput interaction data always involve a high level of noises, reliable inference of r=1 or r=0 for each gene remains a big challenge. Consequently, the estimated interaction distance (IAB) is highly sensitive to the cutoff of interaction inference which is subject to some arbitrary. In this paper we will address this issue by developing a statistical method for estimating IAB based on the p-values (significant levels). Computer simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of different p-value transformations against the uncertainty of interaction networks.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-03-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.03.08.982710</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evolutionary Distance of Gene-Gene Interactions: Estimation under Statistical Uncertainty]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-03-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.986166v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dynamic Behaviors of Expression Compensation between Duplicate Genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.986166v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
While gene or genome duplications have provided raw genetic materials for evolutionary innovations, these events have also generated massive duplicate genes, resulting in a tremendous increase to the genetic robustness of organism. Duplicate compensation indicate functional redundancies generated by gene duplications, which are widespread in all known genomes. However, the fitness trade-offs of their mutational compensation (genetic robustness) and their role in evolutionary innovation remains largely obscure. In this paper, we discuss how we can utilize the mathematical modeling approach to predicting under which condition duplicate compensation may occur. After a critical review for the models about expression dosage, compensation, and long-term survival of duplicate genes, we highlight the importance to distinguish between Function (F)-triggered and Expression (E)-triggered mechanism of duplicate compensation. Moreover, we address three fundamental questions: (i) Why a backup duplicate can be effectively activated by any silence mutation of the dominant duplicate, but hardly by any coding mutation resulting in impaired protein function? (ii) Why a dispensable duplicate gene, i.e., knockout leads to virtually no phenotype, still remains a great deal of selective constraints in the coding region? And (iii) under which condition expression subfunctionalization between duplicates is reversible (dosage-sharing) or irreversible (long-term survival)?
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-03-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.03.10.986166</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dynamic Behaviors of Expression Compensation between Duplicate Genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-03-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.986257v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Distinguish between Duplication of Essential Genes and Duplication of Dispensable Genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.986257v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
When a dispensable gene is duplicated (ancestral dispensability), genetic buffering and duplicate compensation together maintain the gene dispensability, whereas duplicate compensation is the only mechanism when an essential gene is duplicated (ancestral essentiality). To explore the distinct pattern of genetic robustness between these evolutionary scenarios, we formulated a probabilistic model with some biologically reasonable assumptions for analyzing a set of duplicate pairs with three possible states: double-dispensable (DD), semi-dispensable (one dispensable one essential, DE) or double-essential (EE). A computational pipeline is then developed to predict the distribution of three states (DD, DE and EE) conditional of ancestral dispensability or essentiality, respectively. This model was applied to yeast duplicate pairs from a whole-genome duplication, revealing that the process of essentiality of those duplicated from essential genes could be significantly higher than that of those duplicated from dispensable genes. We thus proposed a hypothesis that the process of sub-functionalization may be faster than neo-functionalization. Our analysis may provide some new insights about the role of duplicate compensation on genetic robustness.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-03-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.03.10.986257</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Distinguish between Duplication of Essential Genes and Duplication of Dispensable Genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-03-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.21.001396v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Docking of peptides to GPCRs using a combination of CABS-dock with FlexPepDock refinement 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.21.001396v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The structural description of peptide ligands bound to G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is important for the discovery of new drugs and deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms of life. Here we describe a three-stage protocol for the molecular docking of peptides to GPCRs using a set of different programs: (1) CABS-dock for docking fully flexible peptides; (2) PD2 method for the reconstruction of atomistic structures from C-alpha traces provided by CABS-dock and (3) Rosetta FlexPepDock for the refinement of protein-peptide complex structures and model scoring. We evaluated the proposed protocol on the set of 7 different GPCR-peptide complexes (including one containing a cyclic peptide) for which crystallographic structures are available. We show that CABS-dock produces high resolution models in the sets of top-scored models. These sets of models, after reconstruction to all-atom representation, can be further improved by Rosetta high-resolution refinement and/or minimization, leading in most of the cases to sub-Angstrom accuracy in terms of interface RMSD measure.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Badaczewska-Dawid, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kmiecik, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kolinski, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-03-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.03.21.001396</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Docking of peptides to GPCRs using a combination of CABS-dock with FlexPepDock refinement]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-03-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.29.014746v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Renewable Fatty Acid Ester Production in Clostridium 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.29.014746v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Production of renewable chemicals through biological routes is considered as an urgent solution for fossil energy crisis. However, endproduct toxicity inhibits microbial performance and is a key bottleneck for biochemical production. To address this challenge, here we report an example of biosynthesis of high-value and easy-recoverable derivatives to alleviate endproduct toxicity and enhance bioproduction efficiency. By leveraging the natural pathways in solventogenic clostridia for co-producing acyl-CoAs, acids and alcohols as precursors, through rational screening for host strains and enzymes, systematic metabolic engineering-- including rational organization of ester-synthesizing enzymes inside of the cell, and elimination of putative prophages, we developed strains that can produce 20.3 g/L butyl acetate and 1.6 g/L butyl butyrate respectively, which were both the unprecedented levels in microbial hosts. Techno-economic analysis indicated a production cost of $986 per metric tonne for butyl acetate production from corn stover comparing to the market price of $1,200-1,400 per metric tonne of butyl acetate, suggesting the economic competitiveness of our developed bioprocess. Our principles of selecting the most appropriate host for specific bioproduction and engineering microbial chassis to produce high-value and easy-separable endproducts are highly applicable to other bioprocesses, and could lead to breakthroughs in biofuel/biochemical production and general bioeconomy.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Feng, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jimenez-Bonilla, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cao, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shao, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borovok, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-03-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.03.29.014746</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Renewable Fatty Acid Ester Production in Clostridium]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-03-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.31.018416v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The effects of soil depth on the structure of microbial communities in agricultural soils in Iowa, USA 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.31.018416v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The determination of how microbial community structure changes within the soil profile, will be beneficial to understanding the long-term health of agricultural soil ecosystems and will provide a first step towards elucidating how deep soil microbial communities contribute to carbon sequestration. This study aimed to investigate the differences in the microbial community abundance, composition and diversity throughout from the surface layers down to deep soils in corn and soybean fields in Iowa, USA. We used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of soil samples to characterize the change in microbial community structure. Our results revealed decreased richness and diversity in bacterial community structure with increasing soil depth. We also observed distinct distribution patterns of bacterial community composition along soil profiles. Soil and root data at different depths enabled us to demonstrate that the soil organic matter, soil bulk density and plant water availability were all significant factors in explaining the variation in soil microbial community composition. Our findings provide valuable insights in the changes in microbial community structure to depths of 180 cm in one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. This knowledge will be important for future management and productivity of agroecosystems in the face of increasing demand for food and climate change.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hao, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chai, Y. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ordonez, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wright, E. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Archontoulis, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schachtman, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-03-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.03.31.018416</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The effects of soil depth on the structure of microbial communities in agricultural soils in Iowa, USA]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-03-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.032573v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Widespread imprinting of transposable elements and young genes in the maize endosperm 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.032573v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Fertilization and seed development is a critical time in the plant life cycle, and coordinated development of the embryo and endosperm are required to produce a viable seed. In the endosperm, some genes show imprinted expression where transcripts are derived primarily from one parental genome. Imprinted gene expression has been observed across many flowering plant species, though only a small proportion of genes are imprinted. Understanding the rate of turnover for gain or loss of imprinted expression has been complicated by the reliance on single nucleotide polymorphisms between alleles to enable testing for imprinting. Here, we develop a method to use whole genome assemblies of multiple genotypes to assess for imprinting of both shared and variable portions of the genome using data from reciprocal crosses. This reveals widespread maternal expression of genes and transposable elements with presence-absence variation within maize and across species. Most maternally expressed features are expressed primarily in the endosperm, suggesting that maternal de-repression in the central cell facilitates expression. Furthermore, maternally expressed TEs are enriched for maternal expression of the nearest gene. Read alignments over maternal TE-gene pairs indicate fused transcripts, suggesting that variable TEs contribute imprinted expression of nearby genes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Anderson, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Higgins, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brandvain, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Springer, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.08.032573</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Widespread imprinting of transposable elements and young genes in the maize endosperm]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.036095v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A Statistical Framework for Evolutionary Analysis of Recurrent Somatic Mutations in Cancers 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.036095v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Current cancer genomics databases have accumulated millions of somatic mutations that remain to be further explored, faciltating enormous high throuput analyses to explore the underlying mechanisms that may contribute to malignant initiation or progression. In the context of over-dominant passenger mutations (unrelated to cancers), the challenge is to identify somatic mutations that are cancer-driving. Under the notion that carcinogenesis is a form of somatic-cell evolution, we developed a two-component mixture model that enables to accomplish the following analyses. (i) We formulated a quasi-likelihood approach to test whether the two-component model is significantly better than a single-component model, which can be used for new cancer gene predicting. (ii) We implemented an empirical Bayesian method to calculate the posterior probabilities of a site to be cancer-driving for all sites of a gene, which can be used for new driving site predicting. (iii) We developed a computational procedure to calculate the somatic selection intensity at driver sites and passenger sites, respectively, as well as site-specific profiles for all sites. Using these newly-developed methods, we comprehensively analyzed 294 known cancer genes based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.10.036095</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Statistical Framework for Evolutionary Analysis of Recurrent Somatic Mutations in Cancers]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.13.040121v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
FOXO regulates neuromuscular junction homeostasis during Drosophila aging 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.13.040121v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The transcription factor FOXO is a known regulator of lifespan extension and tissue homeostasis. It has been linked to the maintenance of neuronal processes across many species, and has been shown to promote youthful characteristics by regulating cytoskeletal flexibility and synaptic plasticity at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ). However, the role of FOXO in aging neuromuscular junction function has yet to be determined. We profiled adult Drosophila FOXO-null mutant abdominal ventral longitudinal muscles and found that young mutants exhibited morphological profiles similar to those of aged wild-type flies, such as larger bouton areas and shorter terminal branches. We also observed changes to the axonal cytoskeleton and an accumulation of late endosomes in FOXO null mutants and motor neuron-specific FOXO knockdown flies, similar to those of aged wild-types. Motor neuron-specific overexpression of FOXO can delay age-dependent changes to NMJ morphology, suggesting FOXO is responsible for maintaining NMJ integrity during aging. Through genetic screening, we identify several downstream factors mediated through FOXO-regulated NMJ homeostasis, including genes involved in the p38-MAPK pathway. Interestingly, the phosphorylation of p38 and ERK were increased in the motor neuron-specific FOXO knockdown flies, suggesting FOXO acts as a suppressor of MAPK activation. Our work reveals that FOXO is a key regulator for NMJ homeostasis, and it maintains NMJ integrity by repressing MAPK signaling during aging.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Birnbaum, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.13.040121</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[FOXO regulates neuromuscular junction homeostasis during Drosophila aging]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.045229v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Maternally administered naltrexone and its major active metabolite 6β-naltrexol transport across the placental barrier in vitro 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.045229v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Opioid use disorder (OUD) has become a growing concern in the U.S. and has been a dominant presence among pregnant women, resulting in an unprecedented amount of prescription medications, particularly naltrexone (NTX), prescribed for pregnant women. Because of unknown potential harm that NTX can impose on the fetus and its premature brain, the needs for safety and regulation of NTX are still undetermined. To address this issue, a microfluidic device is fabricated to mimic structural phenotypes and physiological characteristic of an in vivo placental barrier to evaluate near-transport simulations of NTX and its primary metabolite, 6{beta}-naltrexol, across the placental barrier. Following transport analysis, cell layers are evaluated for possible gene-expressions released by an in vivo human placenta during NTX and 6{beta}-naltrexol placental exposure. When a 100 ng/mL dose of NTX and 6{beta}-naltrexol (1:1) is administered to the maternal channel, the mean fetal concentration for co-culture models exhibited ~2.5 % of NTX and ~2.2% of 6{beta}-naltrexol of the initial maternal concentration. To prototype and simulate fetal-brain exposure, perfusate from a fetal channel is directed to cultured N27 cells that are then evaluated for gene-expression.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pemathilaka, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reynolds, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hashemi, N. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.16.045229</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Maternally administered naltrexone and its major active metabolite 6β-naltrexol transport across the placental barrier in vitro]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.045161v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An in silico map of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA Structurome 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.045161v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
SARS-CoV-2 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus that has exploded throughout the global human population. This pandemic coronavirus strain has taken scientists and public health researchers by surprise and knowledge of its basic biology (e.g. structure/function relationships in its genomic, messenger and template RNAs) and modes for therapeutic intervention lag behind that of other human pathogens. In this report we used a recently-developed bioinformatics approach, ScanFold, to deduce the RNA structural landscape of the SARS-CoV-2 transcriptome. We recapitulate known elements of RNA structure and provide a model for the folding of an essential frameshift signal. Our results find that the SARS-CoV-2 is greatly enriched in unusually stable and likely evolutionarily ordered RNA structure, which provides a huge reservoir of potential drug targets for RNA-binding small molecules. Our results also predict regions that are accessible for intermolecular interactions, which can aid in the design of antisense therapeutics. All results are made available via a public database (the RNAStructuromeDB) where they may hopefully drive drug discovery efforts to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Andrews, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haniff, H. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Williams, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Greffe, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Disney, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.17.045161</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An in silico map of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA Structurome]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.047019v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genotypic characterization of the U.S. peanut core collection 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.047019v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea) is an important oil, food, and feed crop worldwide. The USDA peanut germplasm collection currently contains 8,982 accessions. In the 1990s, 812 accessions were selected as a core collection on the basis of phenotype and country of origin. The present study reports genotyping results for the entire available core collection. Each accession was genotyped with the Arachis_Axiom2 SNP array, yielding 14,430 high-quality, informative SNPs across the collection. Additionally, a subset of 253 accessions was replicated, using between two and five seeds per accession, to assess heterogeneity within these accessions. the genotypic diversity of the core is mostly captured in five genotypic clusters, which have some correspondence with botanical variety and market type. There is little genetic clustering by country of origin, reflecting peanuts rapid global dispersion in the 18th and 19th centuries. A genetic cluster associated with the hypogaea/aequatoriana/peruviana varieties, with accessions coming primarily from Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, is consistent with these having been the earliest landraces. The genetics, phenotypic characteristics, and biogeography are all consistent with previous reports of tetraploid peanut originating in Southeast Bolivia. Analysis of the genotype data indicates an early genetic radiation, followed by regional distribution of major genetic classes through South America, and then a global dissemination that retains much of the early genetic diversity in peanut. Comparison of the genotypic data relative to alleles from the diploid progenitors also indicates that subgenome exchanges, both large and small, have been major contributors to the genetic diversity in peanut.

All data is available at the National Ag Library: https://doi.org/10.15482/USDA.ADC/1518508 and at PeanutBase: https://peanutbase.org/data/public/Arachis_hypogaea/mixed.esm.KNWV
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Otyama, P. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kulkarni, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chamberlin, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ozias-Akins, P. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lincoln, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MacDonald, G. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anglin, N. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dash, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bertioli, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernandez-Baca, D. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Graham, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, E. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.17.047019</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genotypic characterization of the U.S. peanut core collection]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.047316v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transfer learning improves antibiotic resistance class prediction 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.047316v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationAntibiotic resistance is a growing public health problem, which affects millions of people worldwide, and if left unchecked is expected to upend many aspects of healthcare as it is practiced today. Identifying the type of antibiotic resistant genes in genome and metagenomic sample is of utmost importance in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of infections. Today there are multiple tools available that predict antibiotic resistance class from DNA and protein sequences, yet there is a lack of benchmarks on the performances of these tools.

ResultsWe have developed a dataset that is curated from 15 available databases, and annotated with their antibiotic class labels. We also developed a transfer learning approach with neural networks, TRAC, that outperforms existing antiobiotic resistance prediction tools. While TRAC provides the current state-of-the-art performance, we hope our newly developed dataset will also provide the community with a much needed standardized dataset to develop novel methods that can predict antibiotic resistance class with superior prediction performance.

AvailabilityTRAC is available at github (https://github.com/nafizh/TRAC) and the datasets are available at figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11413302).

Contactmhamid@mgh.harvard.edu, idoerg@iastate.edu
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hamid, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.17.047316</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transfer learning improves antibiotic resistance class prediction]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.064089v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The draft genome sequence of herbaceous diploid bamboo Raddia distichophylla 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.064089v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bamboos are important non-timber forest plants widely distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, America, and Pacific islands. They comprise the Bambusoideae in the grass family (Poaceae), including approximately 1,700 described species in 127 genera. In spite of the widespread uses of bamboo for food, construction and bioenergy, the gene repertoire of bamboo still remains largely unexplored. Raddia distichophylla (Schrad. ex Nees) Chase, belonging to the tribe Olyreae (Bambusoideae, Poaceae), is diploid herbaceous bamboo with only slightly lignified stems. In this study, we report a draft genome assembly of the approximately [~]589 Mb whole-genome sequence of R. distichophylla with a contig N50 length of 86.36 Kb. Repeated sequences account for [~]49.08% of the genome, of which LTR retrotransposons occupy [~]35.99% of whole genome. A total of 30,763 protein-coding genes were annotated in the R. distichophylla genome with an average transcript size of 2,887 bp. Access to this herbaceous bamboo genome sequence will provide novel insights into biochemistry, molecular-assisted breeding programs and germplasm conservation for bamboo species world-wide.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shi, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tong, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gao, L.-z.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.27.064089</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The draft genome sequence of herbaceous diploid bamboo Raddia distichophylla]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.066654v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Biochemically diverse CRISPR-Cas9 orthologs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.066654v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases are abundant in microbes. To explore this largely uncharacterized diversity, we applied cell-free biochemical screens to rapidly assess the protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) and guide RNA (gRNA) requirements of novel Cas9 proteins. This approach permitted the characterization of 79 Cas9 orthologs with at least 7 distinct classes of gRNAs and 50 different PAM sequence requirements. PAM recognition spanned the entire spectrum of T-, A-, C-, and G-rich nucleotides ranging from simple di-nucleotide recognition to complex sequence strings longer than 4. Computational analyses indicated that most of this diversity came from 4 groups of interrelated sequences providing new insight into Cas9 evolution and efforts to engineer PAM recognition. A subset of Cas9 orthologs were purified and their activities examined further exposing additional biochemical diversity. This constituted both narrow and broad ranges of temperature dependence, staggered-end DNA target cleavage, and a requirement for longer stretches of homology between gRNA and DNA target to function robustly. In all, the diverse collection of Cas9 orthologs presented here sheds light on Cas9 evolution and provides a rich source of PAM recognition and other potentially desirable properties that may be mined to expand the genome editing toolbox with new RNA-programmable nucleases.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gasiunas, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Young, J. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karvelis, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kazlauskas, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Urbaitis, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jasnauskaite, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grusyte, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Paulraj, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, P.-H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hou, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dooley, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cigan, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alarcon, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chilcoat, N. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bigelyte, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Curcuru, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mabuchi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sun, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fuchs, R. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schildkraut, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weigele, P. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jack, W. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robb, G. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Venclovas, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siksnys, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-04-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.04.29.066654</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Biochemically diverse CRISPR-Cas9 orthologs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-04-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.074187v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Inside-out regulation of E-cadherin conformation and adhesion 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.074187v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cadherin cell-cell adhesion proteins play key roles in tissue morphogenesis and wound healing. Cadherin ectodomains bind in two conformations, X-dimers and strand-swap dimers, with different adhesive properties. However, the mechanisms by which cells regulate ectodomain conformation are unknown. Cadherin intracellular regions associate with several actin-binding proteins including vinculin, which are believed to tune cell-cell adhesion by remodeling the actin cytoskeleton. Here, we show at the single molecule level, that vinculin association with the cadherin cytoplasmic region allosterically converts weak X-dimers into strong strand-swap dimers, and that this process is mediated by myosin II dependent changes in cytoskeletal tension. We also show that in epithelial cells, [~]70% of apical cadherins exist as strand-swap dimers while the remaining form X-dimers, providing two cadherin pools with different adhesive properties. Our results demonstrate, for the first time, the inside-out regulation of cadherin conformation and establish a mechanistic role for vinculin in this process.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTCadherin cell-cell adhesion proteins play key roles in the formation and maintenance of tissues. Their adhesion is carefully regulated to orchestrate complex movement of cells. While cadherin ectodomains bind in two conformations with different adhesive properties, the mechanisms by which cells regulate the conformation (and consequently adhesion) of individual cadherins are unknown. Here, we demonstrate that the association of intracellular vinculin to the cadherin cytoplasmic region, regulates cadherin adhesion by switching ectodomains from a weak binding to the strongly adhesive conformation. In contrast with the prevailing view which suggests that vinculin regulates adhesion solely by remodeling the cytoskeleton, we show that vinculin can directly modulate single cadherin ectodomain conformation and that this process is mediated by changes in cytoskeletal tension.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Koirala, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Priest, A. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yen, C.-F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheah, J. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gloerich, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yamada, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivasankar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.02.074187</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Inside-out regulation of E-cadherin conformation and adhesion]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.08.084400v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The enemy of my enemy is my friend: Nematode infection of pollinating and non-pollinating fig wasps has net benefits for the fig-fig wasp pollination mutualism 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.08.084400v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mutualistic associations between species pairs are ubiquitous in nature but are also components of broader organismal community networks. These community-level associations have shaped the evolution of individual mutualisms through interspecific interactions ranging from secondarily mutualistic to intensely antagonistic. Our understanding of this complex context remains limited because identifying species interacting with focal mutualists and assessing their associated fitness benefits and costs is difficult, especially over space and through time. Here, we focus on a community comprised of a fig and fig wasp mutualist, eight non-pollinating fig wasp (NPFW) commensals/antagonists, and a nematode previously believed to be associated only with the pollinator wasp mutualist. Through repeated sampling and field experiments, we identified that all NPFWs are targets for infection by this nematode. Further, this infection can impact NPFWs more severely than either mutualistic partner, suggesting a novel role of density-dependent facultative mutualism between fig and wasp mutualists and the nematode.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Van Goor, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Piatscheck, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Houston, D. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nason, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.08.084400</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The enemy of my enemy is my friend: Nematode infection of pollinating and non-pollinating fig wasps has net benefits for the fig-fig wasp pollination mutualism]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.12.091991v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
High-throughput in vitro specificity profiling of natural and high-fidelity CRISPR-Cas9 variants 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.12.091991v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cas9 is an RNA-guided endonuclease in the bacterial CRISPR-Cas immune system and a popular tool for genome editing. The most commonly used Cas9 variant, Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 (SpCas9), is relatively non-specific and prone to off-target genome editing. Other Cas9 orthologs and engineered variants of SpCas9 have been reported to be more specific than wild-type (WT) SpCas9. However, systematic comparisons of the cleavage activities of these Cas9 variants have not been reported. In this study, we employed our high-throughput in vitro cleavage assay to compare cleavage activities and specificities of two natural Cas9 variants (SpCas9 and Staphylococcus aureus Cas9) and three engineered SpCas9 variants (SpCas9 HF1, HypaCas9, and HiFi Cas9). We observed that all Cas9s tested were able to cleave target sequences with up to five mismatches. However, the rate of cleavage of both on-target and off-target sequences varied based on the target sequence and Cas9 variant. For targets with multiple mismatches, SaCas9 and engineered SpCas9 variants are more prone to nicking, while WT SpCas9 creates double-strand breaks (DSB). These differences in cleavage rates and DSB formation may account for the varied specificities observed in genome editing studies. Our analysis reveals mismatch position-dependent, off-target nicking activity of Cas9 variants which have been underreported in previous in vivo studies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Murugan, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Severin, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sashital, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.12.091991</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[High-throughput in vitro specificity profiling of natural and high-fidelity CRISPR-Cas9 variants]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.15.098970v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Robust scan synchronized force-fluorescence imaging. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.15.098970v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Simultaneous atomic force microscope (AFM) and sample scanning confocal fluorescence microscope measurements are widely used to obtain mechanistic and structural insights into protein dynamics in live cells. However, the absence of a robust technique to synchronously scan both AFM and confocal microscope piezo stages makes it difficult to visualize force-induced changes in fluorescent protein distribution in cells. To address this challenge, we have built an integrated AFM-confocal fluorescence microscope platform that implements a synchronous scanning method which eliminates image artifacts from piezo motion ramping, produces intuitive, accurate pixel binning and enables the collection of a scanned image of a sample while applying force to the sample. As proof of principle, we use this instrument to monitor the redistribution of fluorescent E-cadherin, an essential transmembrane protein, in live cells, upon application of mechanical force.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schmidt, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lajoie, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivasankar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.15.098970</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Robust scan synchronized force-fluorescence imaging.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.16.099804v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evolutionary Transcriptome Analysis Based on Differentially Expressed (DE) Genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.16.099804v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
To address how gene regulation plays a key role in phenotypic innovations through high throughput transcriptomes, it is desirable to develop statistically-sound methods that enable researchers to study the pattern of transcriptome evolution. Most methods currently available are based on the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) model that considers the stabilizing selection as the baseline model of transcriptome evolution. In this paper, we developed a new evolutionary approach, based on the genome-wide p-value profile arising from statistical testing of differentially expressed (DE) genes between species. Our current approach is focused on the estimation of transcriptome distance between species. We first establish the relationship between the evolutionary model (the Markov-chain or Poisson model) and the proportion of null hypothesis (u0), which can be used to estimate the transcriptome distance. Further, we calculate the posterior probability of a gene being DE when a p-value is given, denoted by Q=P(DE|p), and develop a simple algorithm to estimate the transcriptome distance for any number of genes in the genome. Our compute simulations showed the statistical performance of these new methods are generally satisfactory.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.16.099804</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evolutionary Transcriptome Analysis Based on Differentially Expressed (DE) Genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.18.101832v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The transcriptome of Listeria monocytogenes during co-cultivation with cheese rind bacteria suggests adaptation by induction of ethanolamine and 1,2-propanediol catabolism pathway genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.18.101832v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The survival of Listeria (L.) monocytogenes in foods and food production environments (FPE) is dependent on several genes that increase tolerance to stressors; this includes competing with intrinsic bacteria. We aimed to uncover genes that are differentially expressed (DE) in L. monocytogenes sequence type (ST) 121 strain 6179 when co-cultured with cheese rind bacteria. L. monocytogenes was cultivated in broth or on plates with either a Psychrobacter or Brevibacterium isolate from cheese rinds. RNA was extracted from co-cultures in broth after two or 12 hours and from plates after 24 and 72 hours. Broth co-cultivations with Brevibacterium or Psychrobacter yielded up to 392 and 601 DE genes, while plate co-cultivations significantly affected the expression of up to 190 and 485 L. monocytogenes genes, respectively. Notably, the transcription of virulence genes encoding the Listeria adhesion protein and Listeriolysin O were induced during plate and broth co-cultivations. The expression of several systems under the control of the global stress gene regulator, {sigma}B, increased during co-cultivation. A cobalamin-dependent gene cluster, responsible for the catabolism of ethanolamine and 1,2-propanediol, was upregulated in both broth and plate co-cultures conditions. Finally, a small non-coding (nc)RNA, Rli47, was induced after 72 hours of co-cultivation on plates and accounted for 50-90% of the total reads mapped to L. monocytogenes. A recent study has shown that Rli47 may contribute to L. monocytogenes stress survival by slowing growth during stress conditions through the suppression of branch-chained amino acid biosynthesis. We hypothesize that Rli47 may have an impactful role in the response of L. monocytogenes to co-cultivation by regulating a complex network of metabolic and virulence mechanisms.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Anast, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz-Esser, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.18.101832</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The transcriptome of Listeria monocytogenes during co-cultivation with cheese rind bacteria suggests adaptation by induction of ethanolamine and 1,2-propanediol catabolism pathway genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.20.107169v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Cis-regulatory elements within TEs can influence expression of nearby maize genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.20.107169v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Transposable elements (TEs) have the potential to create regulatory variation both through disruption of existing DNA regulatory elements and through creation of novel DNA regulatory elements. In a species with a large genome, such as maize, the many TEs interspersed with genes creates opportunities for significant allelic variation due to TE presence/absence polymorphisms among individuals. We used information on putative regulatory elements in combination with knowledge about TE polymorphisms in maize to identify TE insertions that interrupt existing accessible chromatin regions (ACRs) in B73 as well as examples of polymorphic TEs that contain ACRs among four inbred lines of maize including B73, Mo17, W22, and PH207. The TE insertions in three other assembled maize genomes (Mo17, W22 or PH207) that interrupt ACRs that are present in the B73 genome can trigger changes to the chromatin suggesting the potential for both genetic and epigenetic influences of these insertions. Nearly 20% of the ACRs located over 2kb from the nearest gene are located within an annotated TE. These are regions of unmethylated DNA that show evidence for functional importance similar to ACRs that are not present within TEs. Using a large panel of maize genotypes we tested if there is an association between the presence of TE insertions that interrupt, or carry, an ACR and the expression of nearby genes. TEs that carry ACRs exhibit an enrichment for being associated with higher expression of nearby genes, suggesting that these TEs may create novel regulatory elements. These analyses highlight the potential for TEs to rewire transcriptional responses in eukaryotic genomes.

Data AvailabilityIn this study we utilize previously published datasets that are available through the following accessions: SRX4727413, SRR8738272, and SRR8740852.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Noshay, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marand, A. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mejia Guerra, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crisp, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Springer, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.20.107169</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Cis-regulatory elements within TEs can influence expression of nearby maize genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108985v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Engineering 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase to improve heat tolerance in maize seed development 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108985v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Endosperm starch synthesis is a primary determinant of grain yield and is sensitive to high temperature stress. The maize chloroplast-localized 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase (6PGDH), PGD3, is critical for endosperm starch accumulation. Maize also has two cytosolic isozymes, PGD1 and PGD2 that are not required for kernel development. We found that cytosolic PGD1 and PGD2 isozymes have heat stable activity, while amyloplast-localized PGD3 activity is labile under heat stress conditions. We targeted heat-stable 6PGDH to endosperm amyloplasts by fusing the Waxy1 chloroplast targeting peptide coding sequence to the Pgd1 and Pgd2 open reading frames. These WPGD1 and WPGD2 fusion proteins import into isolated chloroplasts demonstrating a functional targeting sequence. Transgenic maize plants expressing WPGD1 and WPGD2 with an endosperm specific promoter increased 6PGDH activity with enhanced heat stability in vitro. WPGD1 and WPGD2 transgenes complement the pgd3 defective kernel phenotype indicating the fusion proteins are targeted to the amyloplast. In the field, the WPGD1 and WPGD2 transgenes can mitigate grain yield losses in high nighttime temperature conditions by increasing kernel number. These results provide insight on subcellular distribution of metabolic activities in the endosperm and suggest the amyloplast pentose phosphate pathway is a heat-sensitive step in maize kernel metabolism that contributes to yield loss during heat stress.

Significance StatementHeat stress reduces yield in maize by affecting the number of kernels that develop and the accumulation of seed storage molecules during grain fill. Climate change is expected to increase frequency and duration of high temperature stress, which will lower grain yields. Here we show that one enzyme in central carbon metabolism is sensitive to high temperatures. By providing a heat-resistant form of the enzyme in the correct subcellular compartment, a larger number of kernels develop per plant during heat stress in the field. This genetic improvement could be included as part of integrated approaches to mitigate yield losses due to climate change.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ribeiro, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hennen-Bierwagen, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Myers, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cline, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Settles, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.21.108985</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Engineering 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase to improve heat tolerance in maize seed development]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.109215v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Design and Validation of a Frugal, Automated, Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesizer 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.109215v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) has enabled widespread use of synthetic peptides in applications ranging from pharmaceuticals to materials science. The demand for synthetic peptides has driven recent efforts to produce automated SPPS synthesizers which utilize fluid-handling components common to chemistry laboratories to drive costs down to several thousand dollars. Herein, we describe the design and validation of a more  frugal SPPS synthesizer that uses inexpensive, consumer-grade fluid-handling components to achieve a prototype price point between US$300 and $600. We demonstrated functionality by preparing and characterizing peptides with a variety of distinct properties including binding functionality, nanoscale self-assembly, and oxidation-induced fluorescence. This system yielded micromoles of peptide at a cost of approximately $1/residue, a cost which may be further reduced by optimization and bulk purchasing.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kallmyer, N. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rider, N. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reuel, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.21.109215</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Design and Validation of a Frugal, Automated, Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesizer]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.110429v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Influence of the artificial sodium saccharin sweetener Sucram(R) on the microbial community composition in the rumen content and attached to the rumen epithelium in dairy cattle: A pilot study 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.110429v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The products of rumen microbial fermentations are considered essential for animal growth and performance. Changes in these microbial communities can have major effects on animal growth and performance. Saccharin-based artificial sweeteners can be included in livestock diets to increase palatability and encourage feed intake. Despite the importance of the rumen microbial fermentation, little or no research is available regarding how saccharin-based artificial sweeteners affect rumen content and rumen epithelial microbial communities. The aim of this study was to identify changes in both the rumen content and rumen epithelial microbial communities in response to the supplementation of Sucram(R), a sodium-saccharin-based sweetener (Pancosma S.A./ADM Groups, Rolle, Switzerland) during standard, non-stress conditions using 16SrRNA gene amplicon sequencing.

The rumen epithelial and rumen content microbiota of five Holstein-Friesian milking dairy cattle were compared before (baseline, BL) and after a 28-day supplementation of Sucram(R). Illumina MiSeq-based 16S rRNA gene sequencing was conducted, and community analysis revealed significant changes in the abundance of specific phylotypes when comparing BL to Sucram(R) experimental groups. Sucram(R) did not have a significant effect on overall rumen microbial community structure between experimental groups. Statistically significant changes in microbial community composition following Sucram(R) supplementation were observed most consistently across a number of bacterial taxa in the rumen epithelium, while fewer changes were seen in the rumen content. Predicted genomic potentials of several significantly different OTUs were mined for genes related to feed efficiency and saccharin degradation. Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) classified as Prevotella and Sharpea were significantly (p<0.05) increased in samples supplemented with Sucram(R), whereas a reduction in abundance was seen for OTUs classified as Treponema, Leptospiraceae, Ruminococcus and methanogenic archaea. This is the first study to report an effect of Sucram(R) on ruminant microbial communities, suggesting possible beneficial impacts of Sucram(R) on animal health and performance that may extend beyond increasing feed palatability.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Koester, L. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cortes, B. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lyte, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz-Esser, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.22.110429</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Influence of the artificial sodium saccharin sweetener Sucram(R) on the microbial community composition in the rumen content and attached to the rumen epithelium in dairy cattle: A pilot study]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.23.112961v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Functional analysis of the teosinte branched 1 genes in the tetraploid switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) by CRISPR/Cas9-directed mutagenesis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.23.112961v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Tillering is an important biomass yield component trait in switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.). Teosinte branched 1 (tb1)/Branched 1 (BRC1) gene is a known regulator for tillering/branching in several plant species; however, its role on tillering in switchgrass remains unknown. Here, we report physiological and molecular characterization of mutants created by CRISPR/Cas9. We successfully obtained non-chimeric Pvtb1a and Pvtb1b mutants from chimeric T0 mutants using nodal culture. The biallelic Pvtb1a-Pvtb1b mutant plants produced significantly more tillers and higher fresh weight biomass than the wild-type plants. The increased tiller production in the mutant plants resulted primarily from hastened outgrowth of lower axillary buds. Increased tillers were also observed in transgene-free T1 monoallelic mutants for either Pvtb1a-Pvtb1b or Pvtb1b gene alone, suggesting Pvtb1 genes act in a dosage-dependent manner. Transcriptome analysis showed 831 genes were differentially expressed in the Pvtb1a-Pvtb1b double knockdown mutant. Gene Ontology analysis revealed downregulation of Pvtb1 genes affected multiple biological processes, including transcription, flower development, cell differentiation, and stress/defense responses in edited plants. This study demonstrates that Pvtb1 genes play a pivotal role in tiller production as a negative regulator in switchgrass and provides opportunities for further research aiming to elucidate the molecular pathway regulating tillering in switchgrass.

HighlightSolid non-chimeric mutants were successfully isolated from CRISPR/Cas9-induced chimeric mutants using nodal culture. Teosinte branched 1 (tb1) genes are involved in various pathways to regulate tillering in switchgrass.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>LIU, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Currey, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fei, S.-z.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.23.112961</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Functional analysis of the teosinte branched 1 genes in the tetraploid switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) by CRISPR/Cas9-directed mutagenesis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.29.123828v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Coordinated evolution between N2 neuraminidase and H1 and H3 hemagglutinin genes increased influenza A virus genetic diversity in swine 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.29.123828v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWThe neuraminidase (NA) and hemagglutinin (HA) of influenza A virus (IAV) are essential surface glycoproteins. In this study, the evolution of subtype N2 NA paired with H1 and H3 subtype HA in swine was evaluated to understand if genetic diversity of HA and NA were linked. Using time-scaled Bayesian phylodynamic analyses, the relationships of paired swine N2 with H1 or H3 from 2009 to 2018 were evaluated. These data demonstrated increased relative genetic diversity within the major N2 clades circulating in swine (N2.1998 between 2014-2017 and N2.2002 between 2010-2016). Relative genetic diversity of NA-HA pairs (e.g., N2.1998B/ H1.Delta1B) were correlated, suggesting intergene epistasis. Preferential pairing was observed among specific NA and HA genetic clades and this was associated with gene reassortment between cocirculating influenza A strains. Using the phylogenetic topology of inferred N2 trees, the expansion of genetic diversity in the NA gene was quantified and increases in diversity were observed subsequent to NA-HA reassortment events. The rate of evolution among NA-N2 clades and HA-H1 and HA-H3 clades were similar. The frequent regional movement of pigs and their influenza viruses is a possible explanation driving this pattern of drift, reassortment, and rapid evolution. Bayesian phylodynamic analyses demonstrated strong spatial patterns in N2 genetic diversity, and that frequent interstate movement of N2 clades homogenized diversity. The reassortment and evolution of NA and its influence on HA evolution may affect antigenic drift, impacting vaccine control programs and animal health.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zeller, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vincent, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-05-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.05.29.123828</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Coordinated evolution between N2 neuraminidase and H1 and H3 hemagglutinin genes increased influenza A virus genetic diversity in swine]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-05-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.127902v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Fluorogenic DNase Sensor Reveals Ubiquitous DNase Activity in Podosomes and Invadopodia 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.127902v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Podosomes and invadopodia, collectively termed invadosomes, are important adhesive and degradative units formed in macrophages, osteoclasts, dendritic cells, cancer cells, and many other cell types. Invadosomes are well known for recruiting proteases that degrade matrix proteins and facilitate cell invasion. In contrast to the extensively studied proteases, another important class of degradative enzymes, DNase, remains uninvestigated and in fact, unknown in invadosomes. Using surface nuclease sensor (SNS), which reports deoxyribonuclease (DNase) activity on the cell membrane by fluorescence signal, we revealed that invadosomes, regardless of cell types or species, universally recruit DNase and readily degrade extracellular double-stranded DNA (dsDNA). We identified the recruited DNase as GPI-anchored membrane protein DNase X which functions locally at the cell-substrate interface and is co-localized with the actin cores of the invadosomes. DNase recruitment is highly consistent and rapid in invadosomes. Co-imaging of F-actin and DNase activity shows that 46-86% invadosomes (dependent on cell types) have associated DNase activities. Time series imaging shows that DNase becomes active within a minute after the actin nucleation, functioning concomitantly with protease activity in podosomes but preceding it in invadopodia. Overall, this discovery suggests a richer arsenal of degradative enzymes in invadosomes at the cell-substrate interface. This work would likely prompt more studies to investigate DNase in invadosomes, in particular, to understand the physiological role of invadosome-associated membrane DNase in cell functions such as immune response, cell migration, matrix remodeling, etc.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pal, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-06-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.06.01.127902</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Fluorogenic DNase Sensor Reveals Ubiquitous DNase Activity in Podosomes and Invadopodia]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-06-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.128199v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Robotic Assay for Drought (RoAD): An Automated Phenotyping System for Brassinosteroid and Drought Response 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.128199v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a group of plant steroid hormones involved in regulating growth, development, and stress responses. Many components of the BR pathway have previously been identified and characterized. However, BR phenotyping experiments are typically performed on petri plates and/or in a low-throughput manner. Additionally, the BR pathway has extensive crosstalk with drought responses, but drought experiments are time-consuming and difficult to control. Thus, we developed Robotic Assay for Drought (RoAD) to perform BR and drought response experiments in soil-grown Arabidopsis plants. RoAD is equipped with a bench scale, a precisely controlled watering system, an RGB camera, and a laser profilometer. It performs daily weighing, watering, and imaging tasks and is capable of administering BR response assays by watering plants with Propiconazole (PCZ), a BR biosynthesis inhibitor. We developed image processing algorithms for both plant segmentation and phenotypic trait extraction in order to accurately measure traits in 2-dimensional (2D) and 3-dimensional (3D) spaces including plant surface area, leaf length, and leaf width. We then applied machine learning algorithms that utilized the extracted phenotypic parameters to identify image-derived traits that can distinguish control, drought, and PCZ-treated plants. We carried out PCZ and drought experiments on a set of BR mutants and Arabidopsis accessions with altered BR responses. Finally, we extended the RoAD assays to perform BR response assays using PCZ in Zea mays (maize) plants. This study establishes an automated and non-invasive robotic imaging system as a tool to accurately measure morphological and growth-related traits of Arabidopsis and maize plants, providing insights into the BR-mediated control of plant growth and stress responses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Xiang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nolan, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elmore, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuel, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gai, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shah, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huser, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hurd, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McLaughlin, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howell, S. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-06-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.06.01.128199</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Robotic Assay for Drought (RoAD): An Automated Phenotyping System for Brassinosteroid and Drought Response]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-06-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.09.142034v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
STREPTOCOCCUS PNEUMONIAE SEROTYPE 22F INFECTION IN RESPIRATORY SYNCYTIAL VIRUS INFECTED NEONATAL LAMBS ENHANCES MORBIDITY 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.09.142034v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the primary cause of viral bronchiolitis resulting in hospitalization and a frequent cause of secondary respiratory bacterial infection, especially by Streptococcus pneumoniae (Spn) in infants. While murine studies have demonstrated enhanced morbidity during a viral/bacterial co-infection, human meta-studies have conflicting results. Moreover, little knowledge about the pathogenesis of emerging Spn serotype 22F, and especially the co-pathologies between RSV and Spn is known. Here, colostrum-deprived neonate lambs were divided into four groups. Two of the groups were nebulized with RSV M37, and the other two groups mock nebulized. At day 3 post-infection, one RSV group (RSV/Spn) and one mock-nebulized group (Spn only) were inoculated with Spn intratracheally. At day 6 post-infection, bacterial/viral loads were assessed along with histopathology and correlated with clinical symptoms. Lambs dually infected with RSV/Spn had higher RSV titers, but lower Spn. Additionally, lung lesions were observed to be more intense in the RSV/Spn group characterized by increased interalveolar wall thickness accompanied by neutrophil and lymphocyte infiltration. Despite lower Spn in lungs, co-infected lambs had more significant morbidity and histopathology, which correlated with a different cytokine response. Thus, enhanced disease severity during dual infection may be due to lesion development and altered immune responses rather than bacterial counts.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Alnajjar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sitthicharoenchai, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gallup, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ackermann, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Verhoeven, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-06-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.06.09.142034</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[STREPTOCOCCUS PNEUMONIAE SEROTYPE 22F INFECTION IN RESPIRATORY SYNCYTIAL VIRUS INFECTED NEONATAL LAMBS ENHANCES MORBIDITY]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-06-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.09.143271v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Differential expression of COVID-19-related genes in European Americans and African Americans 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.09.143271v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected African American populations disproportionately in regards to both morbidity and mortality. A multitude of factors likely account for this discrepancy. Gene expression represents the interaction of genetics and environment. To elucidate whether levels of expression of genes implicated in COVID-19 vary in African Americans as compared to European Americans, we re-mine The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) RNA-Seq data. Multiple genes integral to infection, inflammation and immunity are differentially regulated across the two populations. Most notably, F8A2 and F8A3, which encode the HAP40 protein that mediates early endosome movement in Huntingtons Disease, are more highly expressed by up to 24-fold in African Americans. Such differences in gene expression can establish prognostic signatures and have critical implications for precision treatment of diseases such as COVID-19. We advocate routine inclusion of information such as postal code, education level, and profession (as a proxies for socioeconomic condition) and race in the metadata about each individual sampled for sequencing studies. This relatively simple change would enable large-scale data-driven approaches to dissect relationships among race, socio-economic factors, and disease.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-06-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.06.09.143271</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Differential expression of COVID-19-related genes in European Americans and African Americans]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-06-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.19.162081v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The 20-hydroxyecdysone agonist, halofenozide, primes anti-Plasmodium immunity in Anopheles gambiae via the ecdysone receptor 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.19.162081v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mosquito physiology and immunity are integral determinants of malaria vector competence. This includes the principal role of hormonal signaling in Anopheles gambiae initiated shortly after blood-feeding, which stimulates immune induction and promotes vitellogenesis through the function of 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E). Previous studies demonstrated that manipulating 20E signaling through the direct injection of 20E or the application of a 20E agonist can significantly impact Plasmodium infection outcomes, reducing oocyst numbers and the potential for malaria transmission. In support of these findings, we demonstrate that a 20E agonist, halofenozide, is able to induce anti-Plasmodium immune responses that limit Plasmodium ookinetes. We demonstrate that halofenozide requires the function of ultraspiracle (USP), a component of the canonical heterodimeric ecdysone receptor, to induce malaria parasite killing responses. Additional experiments suggest that the effects of halofenozide treatment are temporal, such that its application only limits malaria parasites when applied prior to infection. Unlike 20E, halofenozide does not influence cellular immune function or AMP production. Together, our results further demonstrate the potential of targeting 20E signaling pathways to reduce malaria parasite infection in the mosquito vector and provide new insight into the mechanisms of halofenozide-mediated immune activation that differ from 20E.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Reynolds, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-06-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.06.19.162081</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The 20-hydroxyecdysone agonist, halofenozide, primes anti-Plasmodium immunity in Anopheles gambiae via the ecdysone receptor]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-06-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.30.180323v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Organic Dust Exposure Induces Stress Response and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Monocytic Cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.30.180323v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Exposure to airborne organic dust (OD), rich in microbial pathogen-associated molecular patterns, has been shown to induce inflammatory responses in the lung resulting in changes in airway structure and function. A common manifestation in lung inflammation is the occurrence of altered mitochondrial structure and bioenergetics, consequently regulating mitochondrial ROS (mROS) and creating a vicious cycle of mitochondrial dysfunction.The role of mitochondrial dysfunction in airway diseases such as COPD and asthma is well known. However, whether OD exposure induces mitochondrial dysfunction largely remains unknown. Therefore, in this study, we tested a hypothesis that OD exposure induces mitochondrial stress using a human monocytic cell line (THP-1). We examined the mechanisms of organic dust extract (ODE) exposure-induced mitochondrial structural and functional changes in THP-1 cells.In addition, the effect of co-exposure to ethyl pyruvate (EP), a known anti-inflammatory agent, or mitoapocynin (MA), a mitochondria targeting NOX2 inhibitor was examined. Transmission electron microscopy images showed significant changes in cellular and organelle morphology upon ODE exposure. ODE exposure with and without EP co-treatment increased the mtDNA leakage into the cytosol. Next, ODE exposure increased the PINK1 and Parkin expression, cytoplasmic cytochrome c levels and reduced mitochondrial mass and cell viability, indicating mitophagy. MA treatment was partially protective by decreasing Parkin expression, mtDNA and cytochrome c release and increasing cell viability.Competing Interest StatementAGK has an equity interest in PK Biosciences Corporation located in Ames, IA.
The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by Iowa State University per its conflict of interest policies. All other authors have declared no potential conflicts of interest.
AbbreviationsODOrganic DustODEOrgaic Dust ExtractEPEthyl PyruvateMAMitoapocyninLPSLipopolysaccharidePGNPeptidoglycanPAMPsPathogen Associated Molecular PatternsCOPDChronic Obstructive Pulmonary DiseaseAHRAirway hyperresponsivenessROSReactive Oxygen SpeciesRNSReactive Nitrogen SpeciesATPAdenosine TriphosphateOXPHOSOxidative PhosphorylationHMGB1High Mobility Group Box 1STATSignal Transducer and Activator of TranscriptionTPPTriphenylphosphoniumMPTP1-Methyl-4-Phenyl-1,2,3,6-TetrahydropyridineiNOSinducible Nitric Oxide SynthaseNOXNADPH OxidaseMTT3-[4,5-dimethylthiazole-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromideTEMTransmission Electron MicroscopyDMSODimethyl SufoxidemtND1mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase 1MFNMitofusinOPA1Optic Atrophy 1DRP1Dynamin-related protein 1EREndoplasmic ReticulumPINK1PTEN- induced kinase 1BNIP3Bcl-2 Homology 3 (BH3)-onlyMPTMitochondrial Permeability TransitionCOX4i2Cytochrome C Oxidase subunit 4 isoform 2ETCElectron Transport ChainSOD2Superoxide Dismutase 2mtDAMPsmitochondrial Damage Associated Molecular PattersmtTFAmitochondrial Transcription Factor AMGCMultinucleated Giant CellFBRForeign Body ReactionsOMMOuter Mitochondrial MembraneIMMInner Mitochondrial MembraneIMSIntermembrane SpaceILInterleukincGAScyclic GMP-AMP synthaseTLRToll-like receptorRAGEReceptor for advanced glycation end productsVDACVoltage-dependent anion channelView Full Text
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mahadev-Bhat, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shrestha, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Massey, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karriker, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charavaryamath, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.06.30.180323</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Organic Dust Exposure Induces Stress Response and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Monocytic Cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182535v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Organic dust induced mitochondrial dysfunction could be targeted via cGAS-STING or mitochondrial NOX-2 inhibition 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.182535v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
ABSTRACTOrganic dust (OD) exposure in animal production industries poses serious respiratory and other health risks. OD consists of microbial products and particulate matter and OD exposure induced respiratory inflammation is under intense investigation. However, the effect of OD exposure on brain largely remains unknown. Recently, we have shown that OD exposure of brain microglial cells induces an inflammatory phenotype with the release of mitochondrial DNA (mt-DNA). Therefore, we tested a hypothesis that OD-exposure induced secreted mt-DNA signaling drives the inflammation. OD samples were collected from commercial swine operations and a filter sterilized OD extract (ODE) was prepared. Mouse (C57BL/6) microglial cell line was treated with medium or ODE (5%) for 48 hours along with either PBS or mitoapocynin (MA, 10 μM, NOX-2 inhibitor). Microglia treated with control or anti-STING siRNA were exposed to medium or ODE. Next, mouse (C57BL/6) pups were euthanized under an approved protocol, organotypic brain slice cultures (BSCs) were prepared and exposed to medium or ODE with or without MA treatment daily for five days. Culture supernatant, cell pellets and mt-free cytosolic fractions were processed to quantify mt-superoxide, mt-DNA, cytochrome C, TFAM, mitochondrial stress markers and mt-DNA induced signaling via cGAS-STING and TLR9. Data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and post-hoc tests. A p value of ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. ODE exposure increased the mt-superoxide formation andMA treatment decreased the ODE-induced mt-DNA release into cytosol. ODE exposure increased the cytochrome C and TFAM levels. ODE increased MFN1/2 and PINK1 but not DRP1 and MA treatment decreased the MFN2 expression. MA treatment decreased the ODE-exposure induced mt-DNA signaling via cGAS-STING and TLR9. Anti-STING siRNA decreased the ODE-induced increase in IRF3, IFN-β and Iba1 expression. In BSCs, MA-treatment decreased the ODE induced TNF-α, IL-6 and MFN1. Taken together, OD exposure induced mt-DNA signaling could be curtailed through mitochondrial NOX-2 inhibition or STING suppression to reduce neuroinflammation.Competing Interest StatementAGK has an equity interest in PK Biosciences Corporation located in Ames, IA.
The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by Iowa State University per its conflict of interest policies. All other authors have declared no potential conflicts of interest.View Full Text
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Massey, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shrestha, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhat, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kondru, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charli, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karriker, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charavaryamath, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.01.182535</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Organic dust induced mitochondrial dysfunction could be targeted via cGAS-STING or mitochondrial NOX-2 inhibition]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.183509v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
MetaFunPrimer: primer design for targeting genes observed in metagenomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.183509v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
High throughput primer design is needed to simultaneously design primers for multiple genes of interest, such as a group of functional genes. We have developed MetaFunPrimer, a bioinformatic pipeline to design primer targets for genes of interests, with a prioritization based on ranking the presence of gene targets in references, such as metagenomes. MetaFunPrimer takes inputs of protein and nucleotide sequences for gene targets of interest accompanied by a set of reference metagenomes or genomes for determining genes of interest. Its output is a set of primers that may be used to amplify genes of interest. To demonstrate the usage and benefits of MetaFunPrimer, a total of 78 HT-qPCR primer pairs were designed to target observed ammonia monooxygenase subunit A (amoA) genes of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) in 1,550 soil metagenomes. We demonstrate that these primers can significantly improve targeting of amoA-AOB genes in soil metagenomes compared to previously published primers.

IMPORTANCEAmplification-based gene characterization allows for sensitive and specific quantification of functional genes. Often, there is a large diversity of genes represented for a function of interest, and multiple primers may be necessary to target associated genes. Current primer design tools are limited to designing primers for only a few genes of interest. MetaFunPrimer allows for high throughput primer design for functional genes of interest and also allows for ranking gene targets by their presence and abundance in environmental datasets. This tool enables high throughput qPCR approaches for characterizing functional genes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Liu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Villanueva, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Choi, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gunturu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ouyang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tiemann, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cole, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.01.183509</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[MetaFunPrimer: primer design for targeting genes observed in metagenomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.184655v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CYFIP2 containing WAVE complexes inhibit cell migration 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.02.184655v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Branched actin networks polymerized by the Arp2/3 complex are critical for cell migration. The WAVE complex is the machinery that activates Arp2/3 in a RAC1-dependent manner at the leading edge of migrating cells. Multiple WAVE complexes are assembled in a cell through various combinations of paralogous subunits. Here we report the surprising phenotype associated with loss-of-function of CYFIP2, a subunit of the WAVE complex. In three different human mammary cell lines and in prechordal plate cells of gastrulating zebrafish embryos, CYFIP2 depletion promoted, rather than impaired, membrane protrusions and migration persistence. CYFIP2, however, assembled WAVE complexes that polymerize branched actin at the cell cortex and rescued membrane protrusions of CYFIP1/2 double knock-out cells, although less efficiently than CYFIP1. Point mutations of CYFIP2 associated with intellectual disability in children were gain-of-function, as they made CYFIP2 as active as CYFIP1 in this rescue experiment. Biochemical reconstitutions of CYFIP2-containing WAVE complexes showed that they bound equally well to active RAC1 as CYFIP1-containing WAVE complexes, yet they were poorly activated in response to RAC1 binding. Together these results suggest that CYFIP2-containing WAVE complexes titrate active RAC1 and thereby prevent efficient CYFIP1-containing complexes from being activated. In this context, where cell migration is governed by the balance of CYFIP1/2 expression, releasing the restrained activity of CYFIP2-containing WAVE complexes leads to pathology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Polesskaya, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boutillon, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lavielle, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vacher, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnitzler, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Molinie, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rocques, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fokin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bieche, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>David, N. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gautreau, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.02.184655</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CYFIP2 containing WAVE complexes inhibit cell migration]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.06.190751v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identification of Bovine Genotypes Conferring Diminished Susceptibility to Salmonellosis and Colonization by Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.06.190751v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
ABSTRACTSalmonella and E. coli O157:H7 are two of the most important problems for the beef industry. Cattle can develop salmonellosis and persistently harbor Salmonella, or they can asymptomatically shed Salmonella and/or E. coli O157:H7 resulting in contamination of the hide and carcass surfaces during processing. Additionally, Salmonella infiltrates lymph nodes that get incorporated into ground beef. In this study, we investigated the possibility of identifying cattle with reduced susceptibility to one or both of these infections. Empirical observations from previous studies suggested that a diminished susceptibility was possible in amelanotic cattle, i.e., cattle bearing the mcr1/mcr1 genotype and lacking overt black pigmentation. By searching for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) present in the 34 genes encoding the Salmonella interactome, we identified a SNP that was consistently present in amelanotic cattle with diminished susceptibility to Salmonella. Specifically, we used an ex vivo assay to screen 500 cattle blood samples for the diminished ability of Salmonella to penetrate peripheral leukocytes. Diminished Salmonella penetration was observed in 150 of these blood samples and 147 of these samples harbored two alleles bearing a SNP that introduces a miRNA cleavage site (bta-let-7b) in the 3’UTR of the bsynJ1 gene, which we designate as the SYNJ1/SNYJ1 genotype. Further ex vivo studies revealed a decreased expression of SYNJ1 in leukocytes bearing the SYNJ1/SNYJ1 genotype. In vivo experimental challenge studies revealed a diminished susceptibility to salmonellosis in cattle with the SYNJ1/SNYJ1::mcr1/mcr1 genotype. Additional in vivo challenge studies revealed that SYNJ1/SNYJ1::mcr1/mcr1 cattle have a decreased susceptibility to lymph node infiltration by two Salmonella serotypes (S. Anatum and S. Montevideo) implicated in this lymph node problem, and a decreased susceptibility to E. coli O157:H7 colonization of the recto-anal junction. A field study revealed that the SYNJ1/SNYJ1::mcr1/mcr1 genotype was five times more prevalent, when compared to the SYNJ1/synj1::mcr1/mcr1 and synj1/ synj1::mcr1/mcr1 genotypes, in Salmonella-free lymph nodes. Small-scale genetic surveys revealed that the SYNJ1/SNYJ1 genotype was present in the following mcr1/mcr1 breeds: Akaushi, Barzona, Braunvieh, Hereford, Piedmontese, Red and White Holsteins, Red Angus, Red Poll, Shorthorn, Simmental (Red), and Tarentaise. Studies using the aforementioned ex vivo penetration assay, which putatively predicts the diminished susceptibility phenotype, revealed that the penetrance of the diminished susceptibility is &gt;99% in SYNJ1/SNYJ1::mcr1/mcr1 cattle but only ∼1% in SYNJ1/SNYJ1 cattle with at least one MCR1 allele. Further studies with the ex vivo assay revealed that three additional SNPs are part of a genotype conferring diminished susceptibility to a broad array of Salmonella serotypes commonly associated with cattle. In summary, the studies presented herein reveal a bovine genotype associated with decreased susceptibility to Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7. PSR Genetics LLC holds a U.S. patent on testing for the SYNJ1/SNYJ1 genotype (patent number 9,049,848) while the three complementary SNPs are under further investigation.Competing Interest StatementThis study was funded by PSR Genetics LLC which included a rental agreement for laboratory space at Iowa State UniversityView Full Text
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Anderson, K. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ramsey, D. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Day, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carlson, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.06.190751</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identification of Bovine Genotypes Conferring Diminished Susceptibility to Salmonellosis and Colonization by Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.08.193318v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Whole genome survey of big cats (Genus: Panthera) identifies novel microsatellites of utility in conservation genetic study 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.08.193318v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Big cats (Genus: Panthera) are among the most threatened mammal groups of the world, owing to illegal transnational trade. Conservation genetic studies and effective curbs on poaching are important for the conservation of these charismatic apex predators. A limited number of microsatellite markers exists for Panthera species and researchers often cross-amplify domestic cat microsatellites to study these species. We conducted data mining of seven Panthera genome sequences to discover microsatellites for conservation genetic studies of four threatened big cat species. A total of 32 polymorphic microsatellite loci were identified in silico and tested with 99 big cat individuals and 7 Eurasian lynx. The developed markers were polymorphic in most of the tested species. We propose a set of 15 novel microsatellite markers for use in conservation genetics and wildlife forensic investigations of big cat species. Cumulatively, these markers have a high discriminatory power of one in a million for unrelated individuals and one in a thousand for siblings. Similar PCR conditions of these markers increase the prospects of achieving efficient multiplex PCR assays. This study is a pioneering attempt to synthesise genome wide microsatellite markers for big cats.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jee Yun Hyun</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Puneet Pandey</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kyung Seok Kim</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alvin Chon</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Daecheol Jeong</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jong Bhak</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mi-Hyun Yoo</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hey-Kyung Song</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Randeep Singh</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mi-Sook Min</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Surendra Prakash Goyal</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Damdingiin Bayarkhagva</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hang Lee</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.08.193318</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Whole genome survey of big cats (Genus: Panthera) identifies novel microsatellites of utility in conservation genetic study]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.11.192575v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Constrained non-coding sequence provides insights into regulatory elements and loss of gene expression in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.11.192575v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
DNA sequencing technology has advanced so quickly, identifying key functional regions using evolutionary approaches is required to understand how those genomes work. This research develops a sensitive sequence alignment approach to identify functional constrained non-coding sequences in the Andropogoneae tribe. The grass tribe Andropogoneae contains several crop species descended from a common ancestor ~18 million years ago. Despite broadly similar phenotypes, they have tremendous genomic diversity with a broad range of ploidy levels and transposons. These features make Andropogoneae a powerful system for studying conserved non-coding sequence (CNS), here we used it to understand the function of CNS in maize. We find that 86% of CNS comprise known genomic elements e.g., cis-regulatory elements, chromosome interactions, introns, several transposable element superfamilies, and are linked to genomic regions related to DNA replication initiation, DNA methylation and histone modification. In maize, we show that CNSs regulate gene expression and variants in CNS are associated with phenotypic variance, and rare CNS absence contributes to loss of gene expression. Furthermore, we find the evolution of CNS is associated with the functional diversification of duplicated genes in the context of the maize subgenomes. Our results provide a quantitative understanding of constrained non-coding elements and identify functional non-coding variation in maize.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Baoxing Song</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.11.192575</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Constrained non-coding sequence provides insights into regulatory elements and loss of gene expression in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.11.197939v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Single-cell analysis of mosquito hemocytes identifies signatures of immune cell sub-types and cell differentiation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.11.197939v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mosquito immune cells, known as hemocytes, are integral to cellular and humoral responses that limit pathogen survival and mediate immune priming. However, without reliable cell markers and genetic tools, studies of mosquito immune cells have been limited to morphological observations, leaving several aspects of their biology uncharacterized. Here, we use single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to characterize mosquito immune cells, demonstrating an increased complexity to previously defined prohemocyte, oenocytoid, and granulocyte subtypes. Through functional assays relying on phagocytosis, phagocyte depletion, and RNA-FISH experiments, we define markers to accurately distinguish immune cell subtypes and provide evidence for immune cell maturation and differentiation. In addition, gene-silencing experiments demonstrate the importance of lozenge in defining the mosquito oenocytoid cell fate. Together, our scRNA-seq analysis provides an important foundation for studies of mosquito immune cell biology and a valuable resource for comparative invertebrate immunology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hyeogsun Kwon</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Oscar Franzen</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mubasher Mohammed</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johan Ankarklev</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ryan C Smith</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.11.197939</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Single-cell analysis of mosquito hemocytes identifies signatures of immune cell sub-types and cell differentiation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.200980v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Liquid-liquid phase separation driven compartmentalization of reactive nucleoplasm. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.200980v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The nucleus of eukaryotic cells harbors active and out of equilibrium environments conducive to diverse gene regulatory processes. On a molecular scale, gene regulatory processes take place within hierarchically compartmentalized sub-nuclear bodies. While the impact of nuclear structure on gene regulation is widely appreciated, it has remained much less clear whether and how gene regulation is impacting nuclear order itself. Recently, the liquid-liquid phase separation emerged as a fundamental mechanism driving the formation of biomolecular condensates, including membrane-less organelles, chromatin territories, and transcriptional domains. The transience and environmental sensitivity of biomolecular condensation are strongly suggestive of kinetic gene-regulatory control of phase separation. To better understand kinetic aspects controlling biomolecular phase-separation, we have constructed a minimalist model of the reactive nucleoplasm. The model is based on the Cahn-Hilliard formulation of ternary protein-RNA-nucleoplasm components coupled to non-equilibrium and spatially dependent gene expression. We find a broad range of kinetic regimes through an extensive set of simulations where the interplay of phase separation and reactive timescales can generate heterogeneous multi-modal gene expression patterns. Furthermore, the significance of this finding is that heterogeneity of gene expression is linked directly with the heterogeneity of length-scales in phase-separated condensates.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Laghmach, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.13.200980</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Liquid-liquid phase separation driven compartmentalization of reactive nucleoplasm.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.193052v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Towards genetic modification of plant-parasitic nematodes: delivery of macromolecules to adults and expression of exogenous mRNA in second stage juveniles. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.193052v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plant-parasitic nematodes are a continuing threat to food security, causing an estimated 100 billion USD in crop losses each year. The most problematic are the obligate sedentary endoparasites (primarily root knot nematodes and cyst nematodes). Progress in understanding their biology is held back by a lack of tools for functional genetics: forward genetics is largely restricted to studies of natural variation in populations, and reverse genetics is entirely reliant on RNA interference. There is an expectation that the development of functional genetic tools would accelerate the progress of research on plant-parasitic nematodes, and hence the development of novel control solutions. Here, we develop some of the foundational biology required to deliver a functional genetic tool kit in plant-parasitic nematodes. We characterise the gonads of male Heterodera schachtii and Meloidogyne hapla in the context of spermatogenesis. We test and optimise various methods for the delivery, expression, and/or detection of exogenous nucleic acids in plant-parasitic nematodes. We demonstrate that delivery of macromolecules to cyst and root knot nematode male germlines is difficult, but possible. Similarly, we demonstrate the delivery of oligonucleotides to root knot nematode gametes. Finally, we develop a transient expression system in plant-parasitic nematodes by demonstrating the delivery and expression of exogenous mRNA encoding various reporter genes throughout the body of H. schachtii juveniles using lipofectamine-based transfection. We anticipate these developments to be independently useful, will expedite the development of genetic modification tools for plant-parasitic nematodes, and ultimately catalyze research on a group of nematodes that threaten global food security.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kranse, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beasley, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adams, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pires da Silva, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bell, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lilley, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Urwin, P. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bird, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miska, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smant, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gheysen, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jones, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Viney, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Abad, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siddique, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Williamson, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Akay, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eves-van den Akker, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.15.193052</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Towards genetic modification of plant-parasitic nematodes: delivery of macromolecules to adults and expression of exogenous mRNA in second stage juveniles.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.17.208389v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Aspirin inhibition of prostaglandin synthesis impairs egg development across mosquito taxa 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.17.208389v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Several endocrine signals are known to mediate mosquito egg development including insulin-like peptide, 20-hydroxyecdysone, and juvenile hormone. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) as an additional mediator of oogenesis in the mosquitoes, Aedes albopictus and Anopheles gambiae. The injection of aspirin (an inhibitor of cyclooxygenase) shortly after blood-feeding significantly inhibited egg development at choriogenesis in a dose-dependent manner in Ae. albopictus. Moreover, oral administration of aspirin to An. albopictus and An. gambiae also inhibited egg production. The aspirin treatment suppressed expression of the genes (Yellow-g and Yellow-g2) associated with exochorion darkening and led to the production of a malformed egg shell in Ae. albopictus. These inhibitory effects of aspirin on egg development were rescued by the addition of PGE2, confirming the specificity of aspirin in inhibiting prostaglandin production. To validate these results, we identified a putative PGE2 receptor (Aa-PGE2R) in Ae. albopictus. Aa-PGE2R expression was highly inducible in adult ovary after blood-feeding. RNA interference of Aa-PGE2R expression resulted in the significant suppression of choriogenesis similar to aspirin treatment, where the addition of PGE2 to Aa-PGE2R-silenced females failed to rescue egg production. Together, these results suggest that PG synthesis and signaling are required for egg development across diverse mosquito taxa.

Author SummaryProgstaglandins (PGs) play crucial roles in mediating various physiological processes in insects. Aspirin (ASP) inhibits PG biosynthesis and has been used as an anti-inflammatory drug. ASP injection or feeding to mosquitoes of Aedes albopictus or Anopheles gambiae significantly inhibits egg production at chorion formation. This led to significant reduction in fecundity and egg hatchability. PG signal is interrupted by RNA interference (RNAi) of PGE2 receptor. The RNAi treatment also gave a similar damage to females in egg production as seen in ASP treatment. Thus, PG signal is required for egg production of these mosquitoes.

Data Availability StatementAll relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information file.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Al Baki, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ahmed, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kwon, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hall, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.17.208389</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Aspirin inhibition of prostaglandin synthesis impairs egg development across mosquito taxa]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.212290v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Ivermectin inhibits extracellular vesicle secretion from parasitic nematodes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.212290v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lymphatic filariasis (LF) is a disease caused by parasitic filarial nematodes that is endemic in 49 countries and affects or threatens over 890 million people. Strategies to control LF rely heavily on mass administration of anthelmintic drugs including ivermectin (IVM), a macrocyclic lactone drug considered an Essential Medicine by the WHO. However, despite its widespread use the therapeutic mode of action of IVM against filarial nematodes is not clear. We have previously reported that filarial nematodes secrete extracellular vesicles (EVs) and that their cargo has immunomodulatory properties. Here we investigate the effects of IVM and other anti-filarial drugs on parasitic nematode EV secretion, motility, and protein secretion. We show that inhibition of EV secretion was a specific property of IVM, which had consistent and significant inhibitory effects across nematode life stages and species (with the exception of male parasites). IVM inhibited EV secretion, but not parasite motility, at therapeutically relevant concentrations. Protein secretion was inhibited by IVM in the microfilariae stage, but not in any other stage tested. Our data provides evidence that inhibiting the secretion of immunomodulatory EVs by parasitic nematodes could explain, at least in part, IVM mode of action and provides a phenotype for novel drug discovery.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Loghry, H. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zamanian, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wheeler, N. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Day, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimber, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.20.212290</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Ivermectin inhibits extracellular vesicle secretion from parasitic nematodes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.214452v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Endogenous zebrafish neural Cre drivers generated by CRISPR/Cas9 short homology directed targeted integration 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.214452v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Cre/lox recombinase system has been widely used for spatiotemporal control of gene expression in animal model systems, however, efficient methods to isolate zebrafish Cre drivers that reliably recapitulate endogenous gene expression patterns are needed. Here, we apply CRISPR/Cas9 targeting to integrate a 2A-Cre recombinase transgene with 48bp homology arms into proneural genes ascl1b, olig2 and neurod1. We observed high rates of germline transmission ranging from 10%-100% (2/20 olig2; 1/5 neurod1; 3/3 ascl1b). The transgenic lines Tg(ascl1b-2A-Cre)is75, Tg(olig2-2A-Cre)is76, and Tg(neurod1-2A-Cre)is77 expressed functional Cre recombinase in the expected proneural cell populations. The results demonstrate Cre recombinase expression is driven by the native promoter and regulatory elements of the targeted genes. This approach provides a straightforward, efficient, and cost-effective method to generate cell type specific zebrafish Cre drivers whose spatial and temporal restricted expression mimics endogenous genes, surmounting the challenges associated with promoter BAC cloning and transposon mediated transgenesis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Almeida, M. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Welker, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ekker, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Essner, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.21.214452</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Endogenous zebrafish neural Cre drivers generated by CRISPR/Cas9 short homology directed targeted integration]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216028v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Automated Classification of Bacterial Cell Sub-Populations with Convolutional Neural Networks. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216028v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Quantification of phenotypic heterogeneity present amongst bacterial cells can be a challenging task. Conventionally, classification and counting of bacteria sub-populations is achieved with manual microscopy, due to the lack of alternative, high-throughput, autonomous approaches. In this work, we apply classification-type convolutional neural networks (cCNN) to classify and enumerate bacterial cell sub-populations (B. subtilis clusters). Here, we demonstrate that the accuracy of the cCNN developed in this study can be as high as 86% when trained on a relatively small dataset (81 images). We also developed a new image preprocessing algorithm, specific to fluorescent microscope images, which increases the amount of training data available for the neural network by 72 times. By summing the classified cells together, the algorithm provides a total cell count which is on parity with manual counting, but is 10.2 times more consistent and 3.8 times faster. Finally, this work presents a complete solution framework for those wishing to learn and implement cCNN in their synthetic biology work.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tamiev, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Furman, P. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reuel, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.22.216028</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Automated Classification of Bacterial Cell Sub-Populations with Convolutional Neural Networks.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.217067v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A zebrafish model of Granulin deficiency reveals essential roles in myeloid cell differentiation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.217067v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Granulin (GRN) is a pleiotropic protein involved in inflammation, wound healing, neurodegenerative disease, and tumorigenesis. These roles in human health have prompted research efforts to utilize Granulin in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, frontotemporal dementia, and to enhance wound healing. How granulin contributes to each of these diverse biological functions, however, remains largely unknown. Here, we have uncovered a new role for granulin during myeloid cell differentiation. Using a zebrafish model of granulin deficiency, we reveal that in the absence of granulin a (grna), myeloid progenitors are unable to terminally differentiate into neutrophils and macrophages during normal and emergency myelopoiesis. In addition, macrophages fail to recruit to the wound, resulting in abnormal healing. Our CUT&RUN experiments identify Pu.1, which together with Irf8 positively regulate grna expression. Importantly, we demonstrate functional conservation between the mammalian granulin and the zebrafish orthologue grna. Our findings uncover a previously unrecognized role for granulin during myeloid cell differentiation, opening a new field of study that has the potential to impact different aspects of the human health.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Espin Palazon, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Campbell, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fursova, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snella, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McCune, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Solchenberger, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmid, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahoo, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morton, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Traver, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.23.217067</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A zebrafish model of Granulin deficiency reveals essential roles in myeloid cell differentiation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.24.220640v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Long non-coding RNA regulation of spermatogenesis and endosomal processes via the spectrin cytoskeleton in Drosophila 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.24.220640v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The spectrin cytoskeleton has been shown to be critical in diverse processes such as axon development and degeneration, myoblast fusion, and spermatogenesis. Spectrin can be modulated in a tissue specific manner through junctional protein complexes, however, it has not been shown that lncRNAs interact with and regulate spectrin. Here we provide evidence of a lncRNA that interacts with  and {beta} Spectrin to regulate spermatogenesis and endosomal related activity in fat bodies of Drosophila. Protein-RNA and Protein-Protein biochemical analysis indicated the interaction between  and {beta} Spectrin is modulated by the lncRNA CR45362. Immunocytochemistry revealed CR45362 is highly expressed in the basal testis while  and {beta} Spectrin are clearly disrupted in this same region of CR45362 mutants. We genetically demonstrate -Spectrin and CR45362 deficiencies cause spermatid nuclear bundling defects with congruous changes of spectrin distribution and reduced Lysotracker staining in the fat body. Our data suggests lncRNA regulation of spectrin could provide cells with a repertoire of modulatory molecules to manipulate cell-type specific cytoskeletal and endosomal requirements.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bouska, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-07-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.24.220640</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Long non-coding RNA regulation of spermatogenesis and endosomal processes via the spectrin cytoskeleton in Drosophila]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-07-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.31.227629v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Molecular Parallelism Underlies Convergent Highland Adaptation of Maize Landraces 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.31.227629v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Convergent phenotypic evolution provides some of the strongest evidence for adaptation. However, the extent to which recurrent phenotypic adaptation has arisen via parallelism at the molecular level remains unresolved, as does the evolutionary origin of alleles underlying such adaptation. Here, we investigate genetic mechanisms of convergent highland adaptation in maize landrace populations and evaluate the genetic sources of recurrently selected alleles. Population branch excess statistics reveal strong evidence of parallel adaptation at the level of individual SNPs, genes and pathways in four independent highland maize populations, even though most SNPs show unique patterns of local adaptation. The majority of selected SNPs originated via migration from a single population, most likely in the Mesoamerican highlands. Polygenic adaptation analyses of quantitative traits reveal that alleles affecting flowering time are significantly associated with elevation, indicating the flowering time pathway was targeted by highland adaptation. In addition, repeatedly selected genes were significantly enriched in the flowering time pathway, indicating their significance in adapting to highland conditions. Overall, our study system represents a promising model to study convergent evolution in plants with potential applications to crop adaptation across environmental gradients.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Josephs, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roberts, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rellan-Alvarez, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.07.31.227629</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Molecular Parallelism Underlies Convergent Highland Adaptation of Maize Landraces]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.235432v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identification of a prostaglandin E2 receptor that regulates mosquito oenocytoid immune cell function in limiting bacteria and parasite infection 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.235432v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lipid-derived signaling molecules known as eicosanoids have integral roles in mediating immune and inflammatory processes across metazoans. This includes the function of prostaglandins and their cognate G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) to employ their immunological actions. In insects, prostaglandins have been implicated in the regulation of both cellular and humoral immune responses, yet studies have been limited by the absence of a described prostaglandin receptor. Here, we characterize a prostaglandin E2 receptor (AgPGE2R) in the mosquito Anopheles gambiae and examine its contributions to innate immunity. AgPGE2R expression is most abundant in circulating hemocytes where it is primarily localized to oenocytoid immune cell populations. Through the administration of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and AgPGE2R-silencing by RNAi, we demonstrate that PGE2 signaling regulates the expression of a subset of prophenoloxidases (PPOs) and antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). PGE2 priming via the AgPGE2R significantly limited bacterial replication and suppressed Plasmodium oocyst survival. Additional experiments establish that PGE2 priming increases phenoloxidase (PO) activity through the increased expression of PPO1 and PPO3, which significantly influence Plasmodium oocyst survival. We also provide evidence that PGE2 priming is concentration-dependent, where high concentrations of PGE2 promote oenocytoid lysis, negating the protective effects of PGE2 priming on anti-Plasmodium immunity. Taken together, our results characterize the AgPGE2R and the role of prostaglandin signaling on immune cell function, providing new insights into the role of PGE2 on anti-bacterial and anti-Plasmodium immune responses in the mosquito host.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kwon, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hall, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.03.235432</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identification of a prostaglandin E2 receptor that regulates mosquito oenocytoid immune cell function in limiting bacteria and parasite infection]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.07.238279v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Machine learning prediction and experimental validation of antigenic drift in H3 influenza A viruses in swine 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.07.238279v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The antigenic diversity of influenza A virus (IAV) circulating in swine challenges the development of effective vaccines, increasing zoonotic threat and pandemic potential. High throughput sequencing technologies are able to quantify IAV genetic diversity, but there are no accurate approaches to adequately describe antigenic phenotypes. This study evaluated an ensemble of non-linear regression models to estimate virus phenotype from genotype. Regression models were trained with a phenotypic dataset of pairwise hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assays, using genetic sequence identity and pairwise amino acid mutations as predictor features. The model identified amino acid identity, ranked the relative importance of mutations in the hemagglutinin (HA) protein, and demonstrated good prediction accuracy. Four previously untested IAV strains were selected to experimentally validate model predictions by HI assays. Error between predicted and measured distances of uncharacterized strains were 0.34, 0.70, 2.19, and 0.17 antigenic units. These empirically trained regression models can be used to estimate antigenic distances between different strains of IAV in swine using sequence data. By ranking the importance of mutations in the HA, we provide criteria for identifying antigenically advanced IAV strains that may not be controlled by existing vaccines and can inform strain updates to vaccines to better control this pathogen.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zeller, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arendsee, Z. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Souza, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vincent, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.07.238279</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Machine learning prediction and experimental validation of antigenic drift in H3 influenza A viruses in swine]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.09.243188v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Feature selection and causal analysis for microbiome studies in the presence of confounding using standardization 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.09.243188v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundMicrobiome studies have uncovered associations between microbes and human, animal, and plant health outcomes. This has led to an interest in developing microbial interventions for treatment of disease and optimization of crop yields which requires identification of microbiome features that impact the outcome in the population of interest. That task is challenging because of the high dimensionality of microbiome data and the confounding that results from the complex and dynamic interactions among host, environment, and microbiome. In the presence of such confounding, variable selection and estimation procedures may have unsatisfactory performance in identifying microbial features with an effect on the outcome.

ResultsIn this manuscript, we aim to estimate population-level effects of individual microbiome features while controlling for confounding by a categorical variable. Due to the high dimensionality and confounding-induced correlation between features, we propose feature screening, selection, and estimation conditional on each stratum of the confounder followed by a standardization approach to estimation of population-level effects of individual features.

Comprehensive simulation studies demonstrate the advantages of our approach in recovering relevant features. Utilizing a potential-outcomes framework, we outline assumptions required to ascribe causal, rather than associational, interpretations to the identified microbiome effects. We conducted an agricultural study of the rhizosphere microbiome of sorghum in which nitrogen fertilizer application is a confounding variable. In this study, the proposed approach identified microbial taxa that are consistent with biological understanding of potential plant-microbe interactions.

ConclusionsStandardization enables more accurate identification of individual microbiome features with an effect on the outcome of interest compared to other variable selection and estimation procedures when there is confounding by a categorical variable.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Goren, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>He, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sheflin, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chiniquy, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Prenni, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tringe, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schachtman, D. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.09.243188</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Feature selection and causal analysis for microbiome studies in the presence of confounding using standardization]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.10.245175v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Ectopic expression of a maize gene is induced by Composite Insertions generated by Alternative Transposition 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.10.245175v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Transposable elements (TEs) are DNA sequences that can mobilize and proliferate throughout eukaryotic genomes. Previous studies have shown that in plant genomes, TEs can influence gene expression in various ways such as inserting in introns or exons to alter transcript structure and content, and providing novel promoters and regulatory elements to generate new regulatory patterns. Furthermore, TEs can also regulate gene expression at the epigenetic level by modifying chromatin structure, changing DNA methylation status and generating small RNAs. In this study, we demonstrated that Ac/fAc transposable elements are able to induce ectopic gene expression by duplicating and shuffling enhancer elements. Ac/fAc elements belong to the hAT family of Class II TEs. They can undergo standard transposition events, which involve the two termini of a single transposon, or alternative transposition events which involve the termini of two different, nearby elements. Our previous studies have shown that alternative transposition can generate various genome rearrangements such as deletions, duplications, inversions, translocations and Composite Insertions (CIs). We identified over 50 independent cases of CIs generated by Ac/fAc alternative transposition and analyzed 10 of them in detail. We show that these CIs induced ectopic expression of the maize pericarp color 2 (p2) gene, which encodes a Myb-related protein. All the CIs analyzed contain sequences including a transcriptional enhancer derived from the nearby p1 gene, suggesting that the CI-induced activation of p2 is effected by mobilization of the p1 enhancer. This is further supported by analysis of a mutant in which the CI is excised and p2 expression is lost. These results show that alternative transposition events are not only able to induce genome rearrangements, but also generate Composite Insertions that can control gene expression.

SummaryWhen Barbara McClintock originally identified and characterized Transposable Elements (TEs) in maize, she termed them "Controlling Elements" due to their effects on gene expression. Here we show that maize Ac/Ds TEs can acquire a genomic enhancer and generate Composite Insertions (CIs) that activate expression of a nearby gene. CIs are structurally variable elements that include TE termini enclosing sequences from an original donor locus, and are formed when the termini of two nearby TEs transpose during S phase from a replicated to unreplicated site. In this way, TEs may acquire genomic enhancers to generate Controlling Elements as described by McClintock.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Peterson, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zuo, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Su, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.10.245175</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Ectopic expression of a maize gene is induced by Composite Insertions generated by Alternative Transposition]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.13.249870v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A comparative analysis of chromatin accessibility in cattle, pig, and mouse tissues 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.13.249870v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundAlthough considerable progress has been made towards annotating the noncoding portion of the human and mouse genomes, regulatory elements in other species, such as livestock, remain poorly characterized. This lack of functional annotation poses a substantial roadblock to agricultural research and diminishes the value of these species as model organisms. As active regulatory elements are typically characterized by chromatin accessibility, we implemented the Assay for Transposase Accessible Chromatin (ATAC-seq) to annotate and characterize regulatory elements in pigs and cattle, given a set of eight adult tissues.

ResultsOverall, 306,304 and 273,594 active regulatory elements were identified in pig and cattle, respectively. 71,478 porcine and 47,454 bovine regulatory elements were highly tissue-specific and were correspondingly enriched for binding motifs of known tissue-specific transcription factors. However, in every tissue the most prevalent accessible motif corresponded to the insulator CTCF, suggesting pervasive involvement in 3-D chromatin organization. Taking advantage of a similar dataset in mouse, open chromatin in pig, cattle, and mice were compared, revealing that the conservation of regulatory elements, in terms of sequence identity and accessibility, was consistent with evolutionary distance; whereas pig and cattle shared about 20% of accessible sites, mice and ungulates only had about 10% of accessible sites in common. Furthermore, conservation of accessibility was more prevalent at promoters than at intergenic regions.

ConclusionsThe lack of conserved accessibility at distal elements is consistent with rapid evolution of enhancers, and further emphasizes the need to annotate regulatory elements in individual species, rather than inferring elements based on homology. This atlas of chromatin accessibility in cattle and pig constitutes a substantial step towards annotating livestock genomes and dissecting the regulatory link between genome and phenome.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Halstead, M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kern, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saelao, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chanthavixay, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Medrano, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Van Eenennaam, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Korf, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuggle, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ernst, C. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>ROSS, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.13.249870</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A comparative analysis of chromatin accessibility in cattle, pig, and mouse tissues]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.21.261883v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Inheritance of Rootstock Effects in Avocado ( Persea americana  Mill.) cv. Hass 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.21.261883v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Grafting is typically utilized to merge adapted seedling rootstocks with highly productive clonal scions. This process implies the interaction of multiple genomes to produce a unique tree phenotype. Yet, the interconnection of both genotypes obscures individual contributions to phenotypic variation (i.e. rootstock-mediated heritability), hampering tree breeding. Therefore, our goal was to quantify the inheritance of seedling rootstock effects on scion traits using avocado (Persea americana Mill.) cv. Hass as model fruit tree. We characterized 240 rootstocks from 8 avocado cv. Hass orchards in three regions of the province of Antioquia, in the northwest Andes of Colombia, using 13 microsatellite markers (simple sequence repeats - SSRs). Parallel to this, we recorded 20 phenotypic traits (including morphological, eco-physiological, and fruit yield and quality traits) in the scions for three years (2015-2017). Relatedness among rootstocks was inferred through the genetic markers and inputted in a  genetic prediction model in order to calculate narrow-sense heritabilities (h2) on scion traits. We used three different randomization tests to highlight traits with consistently significant heritability estimates. This strategy allowed us to capture five traits with significant heritability values that ranged from 0.33 to 0.45 and model fits (R2) that oscillated between 0.58 and 0.74 across orchards. The results showed significance in the rootstock effects for four complex harvest and quality traits (i.e. total number of fruits, number of fruits with exportation quality, and number of fruits discarded because of low weight or thrips damage), while the only morphological trait that had a significant heritability value was overall trunk height (an emergent property of the rootstock-scion interaction). These findings suggest the inheritance of rootstock effects, beyond root phenotype, on a surprisingly wide spectrum of scion traits in  Hass avocado. They also reinforce the utility of SSR markers for relatedness reconstruction and genetic prediction of complex traits. This research is, up to date, the most cohesive evidence of narrow-sense inheritance of rootstock effects in a tropical fruit tree crop. Ultimately, our work reinforces the importance of considering the rootstock-scion interaction to broaden the genetic basis of fruit tree breeding programs, while enhancing our understanding of the consequences of grafting.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Reyes-Herrera, P. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Munoz-Baena, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Velasquez-Zapata, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Patino, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Delgado-Paz, O. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diaz-Diez, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Navas-Arboleda, A. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cortes, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.21.261883</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Inheritance of Rootstock Effects in Avocado ( Persea americana  Mill.) cv. Hass]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.21.261941v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Generation of thymidine auxotrophic Agrobacterium tumefaciens strains for plant transformation 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.21.261941v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Agrobacterium-mediated transformation is a widely used gene delivery method for fundamental researches and crop trait improvement projects. Auxotrophic Agrobacterium tumefaciens strains are highly desirable for plant transformation because they can be easily removed from the explants after co-cultivation due to their dependence on essential nutrient supplementation. The thymidine auxotrophic A. tumefaciens strain LBA4404Thy- has been successfully used for plant transformation, however, auxotrophic version of other commonly used strains are not available yet to public laboratories. Here we report the generation of EHA101, EHA105 and EHA105D thymidine auxotrophic strains. These strains exhibited thymidine-dependent growth in the bacterial medium, and the transient GUS expression assay using Arabidopsis seedling showed that they retain the equivalent T-DNA transfer capability as the original strains thus are suitable for plant transformation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Aliu, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Azanu, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.21.261941</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Generation of thymidine auxotrophic Agrobacterium tumefaciens strains for plant transformation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.21.262022v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Analysis of the oxidative stress regulon identifies soxS as a genetic target for resistance reversal in multi-drug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.21.262022v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In bacteria, the defense system deployd to counter oxidative stress is orchestrated by three transcriptional factors - SoxS, SoxR, and OxyR. Although the regulon that these factors control is known in many bacteria, similar data is not available for Klebsiella pneumoniae. To address this data gap, oxidative stress was artificially induced in K. pneumoniae MGH 78578 using paraquat and the corresponding oxidative stress regulon recorded using RNA-seq. The soxS gene was significantly induced during oxidative stress and a knock-out mutant was constructed, to explore its functionality. The wild-type and mutant were grown in the presence of paraquat and subjected to RNA-seq to elucidate the soxS regulon in K. pneumoniae MGH78578. Genes that are commonly regulated both in the oxidative stress regulon and soxS regulon were identified and denoted as the  oxidative SoxS regulon - these included a stringent group of genes specifically regulated by SoxS. Efflux pump encoding genes such as acrAB-tolC, acrE, and global regulators such as marRAB were identified as part of this regulon. Consequently, the isogenic soxS mutant was found to exhibit a reduction in the minimum bactericidal concentration against tetracycline compared to that of the wild type. Impaired efflux activity, allowing tetracycline to be accumulated in the cytoplasm to bactericidal levels, was further evaluated using a tetraphenylphosphonium (TPP+) accumulation assay. The soxS mutant was also susceptible to tetracycline in vivo, in a zebrafish embryo model. We conclude that the soxS gene could be considered as a genetic target against which an inhibitor could be developed in the future and used in combinatorial therapy with tetracycline to combat infections associated with multi-drug resistant K. pneumoniae.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Anes, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dever, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eshwar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivasankaran, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sakalauskaite, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lehner, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Devineau, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Daugelavicius, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fanning, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srikumar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.21.262022</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Analysis of the oxidative stress regulon identifies soxS as a genetic target for resistance reversal in multi-drug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.25.266924v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genome-wide methylation prediction of biological age using reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces and Bayesian ridge regressions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.25.266924v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The use of DNA methylation signatures to predict chronological age and the aging rate is of interest in many fields, including disease prevention and treatment, forensics, and anti-aging medicine. Although a large number of methylation markers have been found to be significantly associated with age, most age-prediction methods use a small number of markers selected based on either previously published studies or datasets containing methylation information. Here, we implemented reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS) regression and ridge regression model in a Bayesian framework that utilized phenotypic and methylation profiles simultaneously to predict chronological age. We used over 450,000 CpG sites from the whole blood of a large cohort of 4,409 human individuals with a range of 10-101 years of age. Models were fitted using adjusted and un-adjusted methylation measurements for cell heterogeneity. Non-adjusted methylation scores delivered a significantly higher prediction accuracy than adjusted methylation data, with a correlation between age and predicted age of 0.98 and a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 3.54 years in non-adjusted data, 0.90 (correlation) and 7.16 (RMSE) years in adjusted data. Reducing the number of predictors through subset selection improved predictive power with a correlation of 0.98 and an RMSE of 2.98 years in the RKHS model. We found distinct global methylation patterns, with significant hypermethylation in CpG islands and hypomethylation in other CpG types including CpG shore, shelf, and open sea (p < 5e-06). Epigenetic drift seemed to be a widespread phenomenon as more than 97% of the age-associated methylation sites had heteroscedasticity. Apparent methylomic aging rate (AMAR) had a sex-specific pattern, with an increase in AMAR in females with age compared to males.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Amiri Roudbar, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Momen, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mousavi, S. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salek Ardestani, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brito Lopes, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gianola, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khatib, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.25.266924</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genome-wide methylation prediction of biological age using reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces and Bayesian ridge regressions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.26.268102v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic and epigenetic contributions to variation in transposable element expression responses to abiotic stress in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.26.268102v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
O_LITransposable elements (TEs) pervade most eukaryotic genomes but the repetitive nature of TEs has complicated the analysis of their expression. Although the majority of TEs are silent, we document the activation of some TEs during abiotic stress.
C_LIO_LITE expression was monitored in seedling leaf tissue of maize inbreds subjected to heat or cold stress conditions. DNA methylation profiles and comparative genomics were used to probe the variability of TE expression responses.
C_LIO_LIAlthough there was no evidence for a genome-wide activation of TEs, a subset of TE families generate transcripts only in stress conditions. There is substantial variation for which TE families exhibit stress-responsive expression in the three genotypes. The stress-responsive activation of a TE family can often be attributed to a small number of elements in the family. These elements that are activated often contain small regions lacking DNA methylation, while fully methylated elements are rarely expressed. A comparison of the expression of specific TEs in different maize genotypes reveals high levels of variability that can be attributed to both genome content differences and epigenetic variation.
C_LIO_LIThis study provides insights into the genetic and epigenetic factors that influence TE regulation in normal and stress conditions.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Liang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Noshay, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crisp, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Enders, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Springer, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.26.268102</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic and epigenetic contributions to variation in transposable element expression responses to abiotic stress in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.30.273748v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Sequence-encoded and Composition-dependent Protein-RNA Interactions Control Multiphasic Condensate Topologies 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.30.273748v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Multivalent protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions are the drivers of biological phase separation. Biomolecular condensates typically contain a dense network of multiple proteins and RNAs, and their competing molecular interactions play key roles in regulating the condensate composition and structure. Employing a ternary system comprising of a prion-like polypeptide (PLP), arginine-rich polypeptide (RRP), and RNA, we show that competition between the PLP and RNA for a single shared partner, the RRP, leads to RNA-induced demixing of PLP-RRP condensates into stable coexisting phases-homotypic PLP condensates and heterotypic RRP-RNA condensates. The morphology of these biphasic condensates (non-engulfing/ partial engulfing/ complete engulfing) is determined by the RNA-to-RRP stoichiometry and the hierarchy of intermolecular interactions, providing a glimpse of the broad range of multiphasic patterns that are accessible to these condensates. Our findings provide a minimal set of physical rules that govern the composition and spatial organization of multicomponent and multiphasic biomolecular condensates.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kaur, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Raju, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alshareedah, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Davis, R. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, P. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-08-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.08.30.273748</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Sequence-encoded and Composition-dependent Protein-RNA Interactions Control Multiphasic Condensate Topologies]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-08-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.01.278242v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A Look-ahead Monte Carlo Simulation Method for Improving Parental Selection in Trait Introgression 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.01.278242v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Multiple trait introgression is the process by which multiple desirable traits are converted from a donor to a recipient cultivar through backcrossing and selfing. The goal of this procedure is to recover all the attributes of the recipient cultivar, with the addition of the specified desirable traits. A crucial step in this process is the selection of parents to form new crosses. In this study, we propose a new selection approach that estimates the genetic distribution of the progeny of backcrosses after multiple generations using information of recombination events. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, a case study has been conducted using maize data where our method is compared with state-of-the-art approaches. Simulation results suggest that the proposed method, look-ahead Monte Carlo, achieves higher probability of success than existing approaches.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Moeinizade, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pham, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.01.278242</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Look-ahead Monte Carlo Simulation Method for Improving Parental Selection in Trait Introgression]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.02.279810v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Inhibition of HIF-1α accumulation in prostate cancer cells is initiated during early stages of mammalian orthoreovirus infection 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.02.279810v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mammalian orthoreovirus (MRV) is a safe and effective cancer killing virus that has completed Phase I-III clinical trials against numerous cancer types. While many patients experience benefit from MRV therapy, pre-defined set points necessary for FDA approval have not been reached. Therefore, additional research into MRV biology and the effect of viral therapy on different tumor genetic subtypes and microenvironments is necessary to identify tumors most amenable to MRV virotherapy. In this work we analyzed the stage of viral infection necessary to inhibit HIF-1, an aggressive cancer activator induced by hypoxia. We ruled out a number of viral proteins and the virus genome as being necessary and determined that a step parallel with virus core movement across the endosomal membrane was required for this inhibition. Altogether, this work clarifies the mechanisms of MRV-induced HIF-1 inhibition and provides biological relevance for using MRV to inhibit the devastating effects of tumor hypoxia.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bussiere, L. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.02.279810</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Inhibition of HIF-1α accumulation in prostate cancer cells is initiated during early stages of mammalian orthoreovirus infection]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.02.279885v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identification and evolution of Cas9 tracrRNAs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.02.279885v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cas9 trans-activating CRISPR RNAs (tracrRNAs) form distinct structures essential for target recognition and cleavage and dictate exchangeability between orthologous proteins. As non-coding RNAs that are often apart from the CRISPR array, their identification can be arduous. In this paper, a new bioinformatic method for the detection of Cas9 tracrRNAs is presented. The approach utilizes a co-variance model (CM) based on both sequence homology and predicted secondary structure to locate tracrRNAs. This method predicts a tracrRNA for 98% of CRISPR-Cas9 systems identified by us. The identified tracrRNAs exhibit wide variation in sequence identity, however, CM analyses allow 94.7% to be categorized into just 10 related groups. Finally, association between Cas9 amino acid sequence-based phylogeny and tracrRNA secondary structure is evaluated, revealing strong evidence that secondary structure is evolutionarily conserved among Cas9 lineages. Altogether, our findings provide insight into Cas9 tracrRNA evolution and efforts to characterize the tracrRNA of new Cas9 systems.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dooley, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baken, E. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Young, J. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.02.279885</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identification and evolution of Cas9 tracrRNAs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.04.283788v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Integrated omics networks reveal the temporal signaling events of brassinosteroid response in Arabidopsis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.04.283788v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Brassinosteroids (BRs) are plant steroid hormones that are known to regulate cell division and stress response. We used a systems biology approach to integrate multi-omic datasets and unravel the molecular signaling events of BR response in Arabidopsis. We profiled the levels of 32,549 transcripts, 9,035 protein groups, and 26,950 phosphorylation sites from Arabidopsis seedlings treated with brassinolide (BL, most active BR) for six different lengths of time. We then constructed a network inference pipeline called Spatiotemporal Clustering and Inference of Omics Networks (SC-ION) that was able to integrate these multi-omic data into one, cohesive regulatory network. Our network illustrates the signaling cascade of BR response, starting with kinase-substrate phosphorylation and ending with transcriptional regulation. We used our network predictions to identify putative, relevant phosphorylation sites on the TF BRI1-EMS-SUPPRESSOR 1 (BES1); the importance of which we experimentally validated. Additionally, we identified an uncharacterized TF, which we named BRONTOSAURUS (BRON), that regulates cell division. Further, we show that bron mutant roots are hypersensitive to BL. Together, this work demonstrates the power of integrative network analysis applied to multiomic data and provides fundamental insights into the molecular signaling events occurring during BR response.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nolan, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sozzani, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.04.283788</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Integrated omics networks reveal the temporal signaling events of brassinosteroid response in Arabidopsis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.08.288365v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Y2H-SCORES: A statistical framework to infer protein-protein interactions from next-generation yeast-two-hybrid sequence data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.08.288365v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Interactomes embody one of the most effective representations of cellular behavior by revealing function through protein associations. In order to build these models at the organism scale, high-throughput techniques are required to identify interacting pairs of proteins. Next-generation interaction screening (NGIS) protocols that combine yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) with deep sequencing are promising approaches to generate protein-protein interaction networks in any organism. However, challenges remain to mining reliable information from these screens and thus, limit its broader implementation. Here, we describe a statistical framework, designated Y2H-SCORES, for analyzing high-throughput Y2H screens that considers key aspects of experimental design, normalization, and controls. Three quantitative ranking scores were implemented to identify interacting partners, comprising: 1) significant enrichment under selection for positive interactions, 2) degree of interaction specificity among multi-bait comparisons, and 3) selection of in-frame interactors. Using simulation and an empirical dataset, we provide a quantitative assessment to predict interacting partners under a wide range of experimental scenarios, facilitating independent confirmation by one-to-one bait-prey tests. Simulation of Y2H-NGIS identified conditions that maximize detection of true interactors, which can be achieved with protocols such as prey library normalization, maintenance of larger culture volumes and replication of experimental treatments. Y2H-SCORES can be implemented in different yeast-based interaction screenings, accelerating the biological interpretation of experimental results. Proof-of-concept was demonstrated by discovery and validation of a novel interaction between the barley powdery mildew effector, AVRA13, with the vesicle-mediated thylakoid membrane biogenesis protein, HvTHF1.

Author SummaryOrganisms respond to their environment through networks of interacting proteins and other biomolecules. In order to investigate these interacting proteins, many in vitro and in vivo techniques have been used. Among these, yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) has been integrated with next generation sequencing (NGS) to approach protein-protein interactions on a genome-wide scale. The fusion of these two methods has been termed next-generation-interaction screening, abbreviated as Y2H-NGIS. However, the massive and diverse data sets resulting from this technology have presented unique challenges to analysis. To address these challenges, we optimized the computational and statistical evaluation of Y2H-NGIS to provide metrics to identify high-confidence interacting proteins under a variety of dataset scenarios. Our proposed framework can be extended to different yeast-based interaction settings, utilizing the general principles of enrichment, specificity, and in-frame prey selection to accurately assemble protein-protein interaction networks. Lastly, we showed how the pipeline works experimentally, by identifying and validating a novel interaction between the barley powdery mildew effector AVRA13 and the barley vesicle-mediated thylakoid membrane biogenesis protein, HvTHF1. Y2H-SCORES software is available at GitHub repository https://github.com/Wiselab2/Y2H-SCORES.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Velasquez-Zapata, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elmore, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, R. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.08.288365</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Y2H-SCORES: A statistical framework to infer protein-protein interactions from next-generation yeast-two-hybrid sequence data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.276915v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Protocols for rational design of protein solubility and aggregation properties using Aggrescan3D standalone 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.276915v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Protein aggregation is a major hurdle in the development and manufacturing of protein-based therapeutics. Development of aggregation-resistant and stable protein variants can be guided by rational redesign using computational tools. Here, we describe the architecture and functionalities of the Aggrescan3D (A3D) standalone package for the rational design of protein solubility and aggregation properties based on three-dimensional protein structures. We present the case studies of the three therapeutic proteins, including antibodies, exploring the practical use of the A3D standalone tool. The case studies demonstrate that protein solubility can be easily improved by the A3D prediction of non-destabilizing amino acid mutations at the protein surfaces.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kuriata, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Badaczewska-Dawid, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pujols, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ventura, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kmiecik, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.09.276915</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Protocols for rational design of protein solubility and aggregation properties using Aggrescan3D standalone]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.289611v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Chromosome-level Genome Assembly of a Regenerable Maize Inbred Line A188 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.289611v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The highly embryogenic and transformable maize inbred line A188 is an attractive model for analyzing maize gene function. Here we constructed a chromosome-level genome assembly of A188 using long reads and optical maps. Genome comparison of A188 with the reference line B73 identified pervasive structural variation, including a 1.8 Mb duplication on the Gametophyte factor1 locus for unilateral cross-incompatibility and six inversions of 0.7 Mb or greater. Increased copy number of the gene, carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase 1 (ccd1) in A188 is associated with elevated expression during seed development. High ccd1 expression together with low expression of yellow endosperm 1 (y1) condition reduced carotenoid accumulation, which accounts for the white seed phenotype of A188 that contrasts with the yellow seed of B73 that has high expression of y1 and low expression of the single-copy ccd1. Further, transcriptome and epigenome analyses with the A188 reference genome revealed enhanced expression of defense pathways and altered DNA methylation patterns of embryonic callus.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lin, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>He, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zheng, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koo, D.-H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Le, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zheng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tamang, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lin, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McFarland, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qin, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McCarty, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wei, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cho, M.-J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Park, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaeppler, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaeppler, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Springer, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>White, F. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.09.289611</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Chromosome-level Genome Assembly of a Regenerable Maize Inbred Line A188]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.289769v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Automatic Traits Extraction and Fitting for Field High-throughput Phenotyping Systems 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.289769v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
High-throughput phenotyping is a modern technology to measure plant traits efficiently and in large scale by imaging systems over the whole growth season. Those images provide rich data for statistical analysis of plant phenotypes. We propose a pipeline to extract and analyze the plant traits for field phenotyping systems. The proposed pipeline include the following main steps: plant segmentation from field images, automatic calculation of plant traits from the segmented images, and functional curve fitting for the extracted traits. To deal with the challenging problem of plant segmentation for field images, we propose a novel approach on image pixel classification by transform domain neural network models, which utilizes plant pixels from greenhouse images to train a segmentation model for field images. Our results show the proposed procedure is able to accurately extract plant heights and is more stable than results from Amazon Turks, who manually measure plant heights from original images.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Guo, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nettleton, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yeh, C.-T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zheng, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hey, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.09.289769</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Automatic Traits Extraction and Fitting for Field High-throughput Phenotyping Systems]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.10.288548v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Susceptibility of domestic swine to experimental infection with SARS-CoV-2 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.10.288548v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
SARS-CoV-2, the agent responsible for COVID-19 has been shown to infect a number of species. The role of domestic livestock and the risk associated for humans in close contact remains unknown for many production animals. Determination of the susceptibility of pigs to SARS-CoV-2 is critical towards a One Health approach to manage the potential risk of zoonotic transmission. Here, pigs undergoing experimental inoculation are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 at low levels. Viral RNA was detected in group oral fluids and nasal wash from at least two animals while live virus was isolated from a pig. Further, antibodies could be detected in two animals at 11 and 13 days post infection, while oral fluid samples at 6 days post inoculation indicated the presence of secreted antibodies. These data highlight the need for additional livestock assessment to better determine the potential role domestic animals may contribute towards the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pickering, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pinette, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Embury-Hyatt, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moffat, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marszal, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lewis, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.10.288548</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Susceptibility of domestic swine to experimental infection with SARS-CoV-2]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.11.277483v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
NGPINT: A Next-generation protein-protein interaction software 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.11.277483v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mapping protein-protein interactions at a proteome scale is critical to understanding how cellular signaling networks respond to stimuli. Since eukaryotic genomes encode thousands of proteins, testing their interactions one-by-one is a challenging prospect. High-throughput yeast-two hybrid (Y2H) assays that employ next-generation sequencing to interrogate cDNA libraries represent an alternative approach that optimizes scale, cost, and effort. We present NGPINT, a robust and scalable software to identify all putative interactors of a protein using Y2H in batch culture. NGPINT combines diverse tools to align sequence reads to target genomes, reconstruct prey fragments and compute gene enrichment under reporter selection. Central to this pipeline is the identification of fusion reads containing sequences derived from both the Y2H expression plasmid and the cDNA of interest. To reduce false positives, these fusion reads are evaluated as to whether the cDNA fragment forms an in-frame translational fusion with the Y2H transcription factor. NGPINT successfully recognized 95% of interactions in simulated test runs. As proof of concept, NGPINT was tested using published data sets and recognized all validated interactions. NGPINT can be used in any organism with an available reference, thus facilitating the discovery of protein-protein interactions in non-model organisms.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Velasquez-Zapata, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fuerst, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elmore, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, R. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.11.277483</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[NGPINT: A Next-generation protein-protein interaction software]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.11.294181v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A long-range chromatin interaction regulates SATB homeobox 1 gene expression in trophoblast stem cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.11.294181v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
SATB homeobox proteins are important regulators of developmental gene expression. Among the stem cell lineages determined during early embryonic development, trophoblast stem (TS) cells exhibit robust SATB expression. Both SATB1 and SATB2 act to maintain trophoblast stem-state. However, the molecular mechanisms that regulate TS-specific Satb expression are not yet known. We identified Satb1 variant 2 as the predominant transcript in trophoblasts. Histone marks, and RNA polymerase II occupancy in TS cells indicated active state of the promoter. A novel cis-regulatory region with active histone marks was identified [~]21kbp upstream of variant 2 promoter. CRISPR/Cas9 mediated disruption of this sequence decreased Satb1 expression in TS cells and chromatin conformation capture confirmed looping of this regulatory region into the promoter. Scanning position weight matrices across the enhancer predicted two ELF5 binding sites in close vicinity of SATB1 sites, which were confirmed by chromatin immunoprecipitation. Knockdown of ELF5 downregulated Satb1 expression in TS cells and overexpression of ELF5 increased the enhancer-reporter activity. Interestingly, ELF5 interacts with SATB1 in TS cells, and the enhancer activity was upregulated following SATB overexpression. Our findings indicate that trophoblast-specific Satb1 expression is regulated by long-range chromatin looping of an enhancer that interacts with ELF5 and SATB proteins.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yu, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chakravarthi, V. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borosha, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ratri, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dalal, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wolfe, M. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Starks, R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuteja, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rumi, M. A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.11.294181</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A long-range chromatin interaction regulates SATB homeobox 1 gene expression in trophoblast stem cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.15.298315v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A contiguous de novo genome assembly of sugar beet EL10 (Beta vulgaris L.) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.15.298315v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A contiguous assembly of the inbred  EL10 sugar beet (Beta vulgaris ssp. vulgaris) genome was constructed using PacBio long read sequencing, BioNano optical mapping, Hi-C scaffolding, and Illumina short read error correction. The EL10.1 assembly was 540 Mb, of which 96.7% was contained in nine chromosome-sized pseudomolecules with lengths from 52 to 65 Mb, and 31 contigs with a median size of 282 kb that remained unassembled. Gene annotation incorporating RNAseq data and curated sequences via the MAKER annotation pipeline generated 24,255 gene models. Results indicated that the EL10.1 genome assembly is a contiguous genome assembly highly congruent with the published sugar beet reference genome. Gross duplicate gene analyses of EL10.1 revealed little large-scale intra-genome duplication. Reduced gene copy number for well-annotated gene families relative to other core eudicots was observed, especially for transcription factors. Variation in genome size in B. vulgaris was investigated by flow cytometry among 50 individuals drawn from EL10 progeny and three unrelated germplasm accessions, producing estimates from 633 to 875 Mb/1C. Read depth mapping with short-read whole genome sequences from other sugar beet germplasm suggested that relatively few regions of the sugar beet genome appeared associated with high-copy number variation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>McGrath, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Funk, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Galewski, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Townsend, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Davenport, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Daligault, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnson, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hastie, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Darracq, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Willems, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barnes, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liachko, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sullivan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koren, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phillippy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pulman, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Childs, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yocum, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fermin, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mutasa-Gottgens, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stevanato, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taguchi, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorn, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.15.298315</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A contiguous de novo genome assembly of sugar beet EL10 (Beta vulgaris L.)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.17.301192v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The narrow-spectrum anthelmintic oxantel is a potent agonist of a novel acetylcholine receptor subtype in whipworms 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.17.301192v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In the absence of efficient alternative strategies, the control of parasitic nematodes, impacting human and animal health, mainly relies on the use of broad-spectrum anthelmintic compounds. Unfortunately, most of these drugs have a limited single-dose efficacy against infections caused by the whipworm, Trichuris. These infections are of both human and veterinarian importance. However, in contrast to a wide range of parasitic nematode species, the narrow-spectrum anthelmintic oxantel has a high efficacy on Trichuris spp. Despite this knowledge, the molecular target(s) of oxantel within Trichuris is still unknown. In the distantly related pig roundworm, Ascaris suum, oxantel has a small, but significant effect on the recombinant homomeric Nicotine-sensitive ionotropic acetylcholine receptor (N-AChR) made up of five ACR-16 subunits. Therefore, we hypothesized that in whipworms, a putative homolog of an ACR-16 subunit, can form a functional oxantel-sensitive receptor. Using the pig whipworm T. suis as a model, we identified and cloned a novel ACR-16-like receptor subunit and successfully expressed the corresponding homomeric channel in Xenopus laevis oocytes. Electrophysiological experiments revealed this receptor to have distinctive pharmacological properties with oxantel acting as a full agonist, hence we refer to the receptor as an O-AChR subtype. Pyrantel activated this novel O-AChR subtype moderately, whereas classic nicotinic agonists surprisingly resulted in only minor responses. We demonstrated that the novel Tsu-ACR-16-like receptor is indeed a target for oxantel and is more responsive to oxantel than the ACR-16 receptor from A. suum. These finding most likely explain the high sensitivity of whipworms to oxantel, and highlights the importance of the discovery of additional distinct receptor subunit types within Trichuris that can be used as valuable screening tools to evaluate the effect of new synthetic or natural anthelmintic compounds.

Author SummaryThe human whipworm, Trichuris trichiura, is an intestinal parasitic nematode infecting approximately 289.6 million people globally, primarily children living in developing countries. Chronic T. trichiura infection may cause dysentery, growth stunting and decreased cognitive performance. Whipworm infections are notoriously difficult to control with most available anthelmintics, including those commonly used in mass drug administration programs. Recently performed randomised controlled trials with whipworm-infected humans, have reported superior efficacies of oxantel, a classic, narrow-spectrum anthelmintic, developed for the treatment of Trichuris infections. Despite this knowledge, the molecular target(s) of oxantel within the whipworm has not been identified. In this study, we used the whipworm from pigs as a model and identified a receptor, which was explored using the Xenopus oocyte expression system. We demonstrated that this receptor is highly responsive to oxantel, and therefore a major target of oxantel within Trichuris. In addition, we discovered that this receptor-type is distinctive and only present in the ancient group of parasitic nematodes, Clade I, which also includes the important zoonotic parasite Trichinella. Our findings, explain the specific mode of action of oxantel and open the way for additional characterization of similar receptor subtypes in other medically or veterinary important parasitic nematodes of Clade I.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hansen, T. V. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cirera, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Neveu, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Calloe, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Klaerke, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.17.301192</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The narrow-spectrum anthelmintic oxantel is a potent agonist of a novel acetylcholine receptor subtype in whipworms]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.306001v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Applications of spatial models to ordinal data: Geospatial Statistics for Soybean Iron Deficiency Chlorosis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.306001v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Models have been developed to account for heterogeneous spatial variation in field trials. These spatial models have been shown to successfully increase the quality of phenotypic data resulting in improved effectiveness of selection by plant breeders. The models were developed for continuous data types such as grain yield and plant height, but data for most traits, such as in iron deficiency chlorosis (IDC), are recorded on ordinal scales. Is it reasonable to make spatial adjustments to ordinal data by simply applying methods developed for continuous data? The objective of the research described herein is to evaluate methods for spatial adjustment on ordinal data, using soybean IDC as an example. Spatial adjustment models are classified into three different groups: group I, moving average grid adjustment; group II, geospatial autoregressive regression (SAR) models; and group III, tensor product penalized P-splines. Comparisons of eight models sampled from these three classes demonstrate that spatial adjustments depend on severity of field heterogeneity, the irregularity of the spatial patterns, and the model used. SAR models generally produce better performance metrics than other classes of models. However, none of the eight evaluated models fully removed spatial patterns indicating that there is a need to either adjust existing models or develop novel models for spatial adjustments of ordinal data collected in fields exhibiting discontinuous transitions between heterogeneous patches.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Xu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beavis, W. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.21.306001</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Applications of spatial models to ordinal data: Geospatial Statistics for Soybean Iron Deficiency Chlorosis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.24.312454v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Song type variations of Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) and their geographic distributions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.24.312454v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) is a familiar singer in the Western Hemisphere family Parulidae, yet apparent geographic variations in its song and potentially related causal mechanisms have not received detailed examination in previously published studies. Here, we analyzed song pattern variations of 651 Louisiana Waterthrush singers in audio spectrogram recordings obtained from our field work and publicly accessible bioacoustics archives. Visual and auditory assessment of the introductory note sequence of each song identified three distinct song types (A, B, and C) and 88.3% of the songs were assigned to one of these types. Linear Discriminant Analysis and Random Forest methods were used to verify the assignments and showed strong agreement (>90%) for Type A with slightly less agreement on Types B and C. User error rates (proportion of the Linear Discriminant Analysis classifications that were incorrect) were <10% for Types A and B, but 26% for Type C, while producer error rates (proportion of the song type for which the Linear Discriminant Analysis was incorrect) were >25% for Types A and C, but <5% for Type B. Our findings confirmed in a subset of 87 individuals that most between-individual variation was in the number of notes and note sequence duration while most within-individual variation resulted from the percent of downstrokes. The location of each singer was plotted on a map of the breeding range and results indicated the song types have large-scale discrete geographic distributions that co-occur in some regions but not range-wide. Evaluation of the distributions provided tentative support for a hypothesis that two of the song types may independently exhibit congruence with the geographic extent of Pleistocene glacial boundaries and the third song type may be distinguished by a lack of congruence, but further investigation is needed to elucidate whether the song variations represent subpopulations with three separate evolutionary histories.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Silcock, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schwartz, S. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carlini, J. U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dinsmore, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.24.312454</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Song type variations of Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla) and their geographic distributions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.25.314401v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Population Level Variation of Transposable Elements in a Maize Diversity Panel 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.25.314401v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Intact transposable elements (TEs) account for 65% of the maize genome and can impact gene function and regulation. Although TEs comprise the majority of the maize genome and affect important phenotypes, genome wide patterns of TE polymorphisms in maize have only been studied in a handful of maize genotypes, due to the challenging nature of assessing highly repetitive sequences. We implemented a method to use short read sequencing data from 509 diverse inbred lines to classify the presence/absence of 445,418 non-redundant TEs that were previously annotated in four genome assemblies including B73, Mo17, PH207, and W22. Different orders of TEs (i.e. LTRs, Helitrons, TIRs) had different frequency distributions within the population. LTRs with lower LTR similarity were generally more frequent in the population than LTRs with higher LTR similarity, though high frequency insertions with very high LTR similarity were observed. LTR similarity and frequency estimates of nested elements and the outer elements in which they insert revealed that most nesting events occurred very near the timing of the outer element insertion. TEs within genes were at higher frequency than those that were outside of genes and this is particularly true for those not inserted into introns. Many TE insertional polymorphisms observed in this population were tagged by SNP markers. However, there were also 19.9% of the TE polymorphisms that were not well tagged by SNPs (R2 < 0.5) that potentially represent information that has not been well captured in previous SNP based marker-trait association studies. This study provides a population scale genome-wide assessment of TE variation in maize, and provides valuable insight on variation in TEs in maize and factors that contribute to this variation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Della Coletta, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Monnahan, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Noshay, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilbert, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGaugh, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Springer, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.25.314401</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Population Level Variation of Transposable Elements in a Maize Diversity Panel]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.30.320150v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A pseudomolecule assembly of the Rocky Mountain elk genome reveals putative immune system gene loss near chromosomal fissions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.30.320150v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis) is a major reservoir for Brucella abortus in the Greater Yellowstone area, which has significant economic implications to the cattle industry. Vaccination attempts against intracellular bacterial diseases in elk populations have not been successful due to a negligible adaptive cellular immune response. A lack of genomic resources has impeded attempts to better understand why vaccination does not induce protective immunity. To overcome this limitation, PacBio, Illumina, and HiC sequencing with a total of 686-fold coverage was used to assemble the elk genome into 35 pseudomolecules. A robust gene annotation was generated resulting in 18,013 gene models and 33,422 mRNAs. The accuracy of the assembly was assessed using synteny to the red deer and cattle genomes identifying several chromosomal rearrangements, fusions and fissions. Because this genome assembly and annotation provide a foundation for genome-enabled exploration of Cervus species, we demonstrate its utility by exploring the conservation of immune system-related genes. We conclude by comparing cattle immune system-related genes to the elk genome, revealing nine putative gene losses in elk.

Author SummaryBrucellosis, also known as contagious abortion, is a bacterial disease that commonly affects livestock and remains prevalent in Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis). Since the 1920s the USDA has led a program to eradicate Brucellosis from cattle, yet wild Rocky Mountain elk continue to be a source of transmission. Attempts to vaccinate wild elk herds have been unsuccessful, due to a poor and short-lived immune response. To investigate the genetic basis for this inherent difference, we created the first genome and annotation for the Rocky Mountain elk. This genome assembly is of the highest quality and contains single linear sequences for all 35 chromosomes. In order to generate gene models, an array of RNA-Seq data and proteins from many different organ tissues and cells were used in gene prediction software. Specifically, we compare cattle immune system genes with the Rocky Mountain elk, revealing the putative loss of nine immune-system related genes in elk.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Masonbrink, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alt, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bayles, D. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boggiatto, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edwards, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tatum, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Williams, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wilson-Welder, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zimin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Severin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Olsen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-09-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.09.30.320150</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A pseudomolecule assembly of the Rocky Mountain elk genome reveals putative immune system gene loss near chromosomal fissions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-09-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.01.322974v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Perilipin2 down-regulation in beta cells impairs insulin secretion under nutritional stress and damages mitochondria 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.01.322974v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Perilipin 2 (PLIN2) is the lipid droplet (LD) protein in {beta} cells that increases under nutritional stress. Down-regulation of PLIN2 is often sufficient to reduce LD accumulation. To determine whether PLIN2 positively or negatively affects {beta} cell function under nutritional stress, PLIN2 was down-regulated in mouse {beta} cells, INS1 cells, and human islet cells. {beta} cell specific deletion of PLIN2 in mice on a high fat diet reduced glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) in vivo and in vitro. Down-regulation of PLIN2 in INS1 cells blunted GSIS after 24 h incubation with 0.2 mM palmitic acids. Down-regulation of PLIN2 in human pseudoislets cultured at 5.6 mM glucose impaired both phases of GSIS, indicating that PLIN2 is critical for GSIS. Down-regulation of PLIN2 decreased specific OXPHOS proteins in all three models and reduced oxygen consumption rates in INS1 cells and mouse islets. Moreover, we found that PLIN2 deficient INS1 cells increased the distribution of a fluorescent oleic acid analog to mitochondria and showed signs of mitochondrial stress as indicated by susceptibility to fragmentation and alterations of acyl-carnitines and glucose metabolites. Collectively, PLIN2 in {beta} cells have an important role in preserving insulin secretion, {beta} cell metabolism and mitochondrial function under nutritional stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mishra, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Promes, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harata, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivitz, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fink, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhardwaj, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Neill, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sah, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Strack, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stephens, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>King, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jackson, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Greenberg, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anokye-Danso, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ahima, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ankrum, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Imai, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.01.322974</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Perilipin2 down-regulation in beta cells impairs insulin secretion under nutritional stress and damages mitochondria]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.07.329466v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Algorithmic and data modeling: will algorithmic modeling improve predictions of traits evaluated on ordinal scales? 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.07.329466v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Selection of markers linked to alleles at quantitative trait loci (QTL) for tolerance to Iron Deficiency Chlorosis (IDC) has not been successful. Genomic selection has been advocated for continuous numeric traits such as yield and plant height. For ordinal data types such as IDC, genomic prediction models have not been systematically compared. The objectives of research reported in this manuscript were to evaluate the most commonly used genomic prediction method, ridge regression and its equivalent logistic ridge regression method, with algorithmic modeling methods including random forest, gradient boosting, support vector machine, K-nearest neighbors, Naive Bayes, and artificial neural network using the usual comparator metric of prediction accuracy. In addition we compared the methods using metrics of greater importance for decisions about selecting and culling lines for use in variety development and genetic improvement projects. These metrics include specificity, sensitivity, precision, decision accuracy, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. We found that Support Vector Machine provided the best specificity for culling IDC susceptible lines, while Random Forest GP models provided the best combined set of decision metrics for retaining IDC tolerant and culling IDC susceptible lines.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Xu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kurek, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beavis, W. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.07.329466</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Algorithmic and data modeling: will algorithmic modeling improve predictions of traits evaluated on ordinal scales?]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.12.336156v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Using Machine Learning To Develop A Fully Automated Soybean Nodule Acquisition Pipeline (SNAP) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.12.336156v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Nodules form on plant roots through the symbiotic relationship between soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) roots and bacteria (Bradyrhizobium japonicum), and are an important structure where atmospheric nitrogen (N2) is fixed into bio-available ammonia (NH3) for plant growth and developmental. Nodule quantification on soybean roots is a laborious and tedious task; therefore, assessment is done on a less informative qualitative scale. We report the Soybean Nodule Acquisition Pipeline (SNAP) for nodule quantification that combines RetinaNet and UNet deep learning architectures for object (i.e., nodule) detection and segmentation. SNAP was built using data from 691 unique roots from diverse soybean genotypes, vegetative growth stages, and field locations; and has a prediction accuracy of 99%. SNAP reduces the human labor and inconsistencies of counting nodules, while acquiring quantifiable traits related to nodule growth, location and distribution on roots. The ability of SNAP to phenotype nodules on soybean roots at a higher throughput enables researchers to assess the genetic and environmental factors, and their interactions on nodulation from an early development stage. The application of SNAP in research and breeding pipelines may lead to more nitrogen use efficient soybean and other legume species cultivars, as well as enhanced insight into the plant-Bradyrhizobium relationship.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jubery, T. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carley, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganapathysubramanian, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.12.336156</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Using Machine Learning To Develop A Fully Automated Soybean Nodule Acquisition Pipeline (SNAP)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.14.339002v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
How do neuroglial cells respond to ultrasound induced cavitation? 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.14.339002v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Reactive astrocytes are known to play a vital role in the overall response of the brain during a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Modern studies have speculated the existence of cavitation in the skull during a TBI, which has alarming potential to cause detrimental damages. Previous studies have confirmed the upregulation of various harmful genes in neurodegenerative diseases. Studying the longitudinal presence of these harmful genes in response to cavitation allows for optimized understanding and treatment methods in cavitation exposure. We seek to characterize the longitudinal genetic expression levels that astrocytes exhibit after exposure to cavitation and further elucidate the startling presence of cranial cavitation. Astrocytic expression levels of various common genes that have been documented in TBI research are our target of interest, like, TNF, IL-1{beta}, and NOS1. Results summarize specific gene trends from 1-48 hours after cavitation. Our data concludes that maximum expression is not consistently exhibited immediately after cavitation exposure, and most genes have individualized genetic trends. IL-1{beta} shows a decreasing expression over 48 hours, and TNF shows upregulation until the 6 hour time point but then begins to decrease in expression. The upregulation of NOS1 has been documented in neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. This study has shown a consistent upregulation in NOS1 expression from 0-48 hours. These results postulate a possible linkage between cavitation damage and neurodegenerative diseases. This analysis also provides novelty in optimizing treatments for astrocytic function post-TBI and legitimizing the concern of cranial cavitation existence. These results add motivation for future studies of cavitation elimination or minimization via advanced helmet and airbag engineering.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wrede, A. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montazami, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hashemi, N. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.14.339002</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[How do neuroglial cells respond to ultrasound induced cavitation?]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.17.343707v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Meta-GWAS for quantitative trait loci identification in soybean 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.17.343707v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We report a meta-Genome Wide Association Study involving 73 published studies in soybean (Glycine max L. [Merr.]) covering 17,556 unique accessions, with improved statistical power for robust detection of loci associated with a broad range of traits. De novo GWAS and meta-analysis were conducted for composition traits including fatty acid and amino acid composition traits, disease resistance traits, and agronomic traits including seed yield, plant height, stem lodging, seed weight, seed mottling, seed quality, flowering timing, and pod shattering. To examine differences in detectability and test statistical power between single- and multi-environment GWAS, comparison of meta-GWAS results to those from the constituent experiments were performed. Using meta-GWAS analysis and the analysis of individual studies, we report 483 quantitative trait loci (QTL) at 393 unique loci. Using stringent criteria to detect significant marker trait associations, 66 candidate genes were identified, including 17 candidate genes for agronomic traits, 19 for seed related traits, and 33 for disease reaction traits. This study identified potentially valuable candidate genes that affect multiple traits. The success in narrowing down the genomic region for some loci through overlapping mapping results of multiple studies is a promising avenue for community-based studies and plant breeding applications.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shook, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jones, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diers, B. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.17.343707</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Meta-GWAS for quantitative trait loci identification in soybean]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.17.343780v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PATRIOT: A pipeline for tracing identical-by-descent chromosome segments to improve genomic prediction in self-pollinating crop species 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.17.343780v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The lowering genotyping cost is ushering in a wider interest and adoption of genomic prediction and selection in plant breeding programs worldwide. However, improper conflation of historical and recent linkage disequilibrium between markers and genes restricts high accuracy of genomic prediction (GP). Multiple ancestors may share a common haplotype surrounding a gene, without sharing the same allele of that gene. This prevents parsing out genetic effects associated with the underlying allele of that gene among the set of ancestral haplotypes. We present  Parental Allele Tracing, Recombination Identification, and Optimal predicTion (i.e., PATRIOT) approach that utilizes marker data to allow for a rapid identification of lines carrying specific alleles, increases the accuracy of genomic relatedness and diversity estimates, and improves genomic prediction. Leveraging identity by descent, PATRIOT showed an improvement in GP accuracy by 16.6% compared to the traditional rrBLUP method. This approach will help to increase the rate of genetic gain and allow available information to be more effectively utilized within breeding programs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shook, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lourenco, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.17.343780</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PATRIOT: A pipeline for tracing identical-by-descent chromosome segments to improve genomic prediction in self-pollinating crop species]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.348052v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
orfipy: a fast and flexible tool for extracting ORFs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.348052v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
SummarySearching for ORFs in transcripts is a critical step prior to annotating coding regions in newly-sequenced genomes and to search for alternative reading frames within known genes. With the tremendous increase in RNA-Seq data, faster tools are needed to handle large input datasets. These tools should be versatile enough to fine-tune search criteria and allow efficient downstream analysis. Here we present a new python based tool, orfipy, which allows the user to flexibly search for open reading frames in fasta sequences. The search is rapid and is fully customizable, with a choice of Fasta and BED output formats.

Availability and implementationorfipy is implemented in python and is compatible with python v3.6 and higher. Source code: https://github.com/urmi-21/orfipy. Installation: from the source, or via PyPi (https://pypi.org/project/orfipy) or bioconda (https://anaconda.org/bioconda/orfipy).

Contactusingh@iastate.edu, mash@iastate.edu

Supplementary informationSupplementary data are available at https://github.com/urmi-21/orfipy
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.20.348052</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[orfipy: a fast and flexible tool for extracting ORFs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.24.337204v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Silver nanoparticles induce a triclosan like antibacterial action mechanism in multi-drug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.24.337204v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Infections associated with antimicrobial-resistant bacteria now represent a significant threat to human health using conventional therapy, necessitating the development of alternate and more effective antibacterial compounds. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) have been proposed as potential antimicrobial agents to combat infections. A complete understanding of their antimicrobial activity is required before these molecules can be used in therapy. Lysozyme coated Ag NPs were synthesized and characterized by TEM-EDS, XRD, UV-vis, FTIR spectroscopy, zeta potential and oxidative potential assay. Biochemical assays and deep level transcriptional analysis using RNA sequencing were used to decipher how Ag NPs exert their antibacterial action against multi-drug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae MGH78578. RNAseq data revealed that Ag NPs induced a triclosan-like bactericidal mechanism responsible for the inhibition of the type II fatty acid biosynthesis. Additionally, released Ag+ generated oxidative stress both extra- and intracellularly in K. pneumoniae. The data showed that triclosan-like activity and oxidative stress cumulatively underpinned the antibacterial activity of Ag NPs. This result was confirmed by the analysis of the bactericidal effect of Ag NPs against the isogenic K. pneumoniae MGH78578{Delta} soxS mutant, which exhibits a compromised oxidative stress response compared to the wild type. Silver nanoparticles induce a triclosan-like antibacterial action mechanism in multi-drug resistant K. pneumoniae. This study extends our understanding of anti-Klebsiella mechanisms associated with exposure to Ag NPs. This allowed us to model how bacteria might develop resistance against silver nanoparticles, should the latter be used in therapy.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pareek, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Devineau, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivasankaran, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhargava, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Panwar, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srikumar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fanning, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.24.337204</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Silver nanoparticles induce a triclosan like antibacterial action mechanism in multi-drug resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.27.355495v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Meta-Analysis Identifies Pleiotropic Loci Controlling Phenotypic Trade-offs in Sorghum 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.27.355495v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Community association populations are composed of phenotypically and genetically diverse accessions. Once these populations are genotyped, the resulting marker data can be reused by different groups investigating the genetic basis of different traits. Because the same genotypes are observed and scored for a wide range of traits in different environments, these populations represent a unique resource to investigate both pleiotropy and genotype by environment interactions. Here we assembled a set of 234 separate trait datasets for the Sorghum Association Panel, a group of 406 sorghum genotypes widely employed by the sorghum genetics community. Comparison of genome wide association studies conducted with two independently generated marker sets for this population demonstrate that existing genetic marker sets do not saturate the genome and likely capture only 35-43% of potentially detectable loci controlling variation for traits scored in this population. While limited evidence for pleiotropy was apparent in cross-GWAS comparisons, a multivariate adaptive shrinkage approach recovered both known pleiotropic effects of existing loci and new pleiotropic effects, particularly significant impacts of known dwarfing genes on root architecture. In addition, we identified new loci with pleiotropic effects consistent with known trade-offs in sorghum development. These results demonstrate the potential for mining existing trait datasets from widely used community association populations to enable new discoveries from existing trait datasets as new, denser genetic marker datasets are generated for existing community association populations.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mural, R. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grzybowski, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miao, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Damke, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sapkota, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boyles, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salas Fernandez, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sigmon, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kresovich, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.27.355495</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Meta-Analysis Identifies Pleiotropic Loci Controlling Phenotypic Trade-offs in Sorghum]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.27.356758v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A skyline birth-death process for inferring the population size from a reconstructed tree with occurrences 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.27.356758v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Phylodynamic models generally aim at jointly inferring phylogenetic relationships, model parameters, and more recently, population size through time for clades of interest, based on molecular sequence data. In the fields of epidemiology and macroevolution these models can be used to estimate, respectively, the past number of infected individuals (prevalence) or the past number of species (paleodiversity) through time. Recent years have seen the development of "total-evidence" analyses, which combine molecular and morphological data from extant and past sampled individuals in a unified Bayesian inference framework. Even sampled individuals characterized only by their sampling time, i.e. lacking morphological and molecular data, which we call occurrences, provide invaluable information to reconstruct past population sizes.

Here, we present new methodological developments around the Fossilized Birth-Death Process enabling us to (i) efficiently incorporate occurrence data while remaining computationally tractable and scalable; (ii) consider piecewise-constant birth, death and sampling rates; and (iii) reconstruct past population sizes, with or without knowledge of the underlying tree. We implement our method in the RevBayes software environment, enabling its use along with a large set of models of molecular and morphological evolution, and validate the inference workflow using simulations under a wide range of conditions.

We finally illustrate our new implementation using two empirical datasets stemming from the fields of epidemiology and macroevolution. In epidemiology, we apply our model to the Covid-19 outbreak on the Diamond Princess ship. We infer the total prevalence throughout the outbreak, by taking into account jointly the case count record (occurrences) along with viral sequences for a fraction of infected individuals. In macroevolution, we present an empirical case study of cetaceans. We infer the diversity trajectory using molecular and morphological data from extant taxa, morphological data from fossils, as well as numerous fossil occurrences. Our case studies highlight that the advances we present allow us to further bridge the gap between between epidemiology and pathogen genomics, as well as paleontology and molecular phylogenetics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Andreoletti, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zwaans, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warnock, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aguirre-Fernandez, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barido-Sottani, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gupta, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stadler, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Manceau, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-10-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.27.356758</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A skyline birth-death process for inferring the population size from a reconstructed tree with occurrences]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-10-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.30.362889v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Paper-based Sensing of Fucosylated Biological Compounds 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.30.362889v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Advances in sensing technology have enabled rapid analysis of various biomolecules including complex carbohydrates. However, glycan analysis is limited by the throughput and complexity of assays for quantifying them. We describe a simple, low-cost enzymatic assay for the rapid analysis of fucosylation, down to linkage specificity, and its application to high-throughput screening of biologically relevant fucosylated compounds, to facilitate simple and straightforward analytical techniques. Paper-based devices integrate biosensor platforms and other diagnostic assays by fusing them with wax printing technology, making their fabrication even more inexpensive and simple. The specificity of the assay is established by linkage-specific glycosidic enzymes and the colorimetric output is visible to the naked eye, with costs that are lower than fluorescence/luminescence-based assays ($0.02/reaction). This platform was further improved by enhancing storage stability to retain analytical performance over time using desiccation and freeze-drying techniques. The assay platform allows analysis of hundreds of samples in minutes and we anticipate that this rapid and simple analytical method will be extended towards developing a universal glyco-barcoding platform for high throughput screening of glycosylation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Enam, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mansell, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robinson, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alvarez-Acosta, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cademartiri, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.10.30.362889</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Paper-based Sensing of Fucosylated Biological Compounds]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.02.365874v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Characterization of Nonmotor Symptoms in the MitoPark Mouse Model of Parkinson's Disease 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.02.365874v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mitochondrial dysfunction has been implicated as a key player in the pathogenesis of Parkinsons disease (PD). The MitoPark mouse, a transgenic mitochondrial impairment model developed by specific inactivation of TFAM in dopaminergic neurons, spontaneously exhibits progressive motor deficits and neurodegeneration, recapitulating several features of PD. Since non-motor symptoms are now recognized as important features of the prodromal stage of PD, we monitored the clinically relevant motor and nonmotor symptoms from ages 8-24 wks in MitoPark mice and their littermate controls. As expected, motor deficits in MitoPark mice began around 12-14 wks and became severe by 16-24 wks. Interestingly, male MitoPark mice showed spatial memory deficits before female mice, beginning at 8 wks and becoming most severe at 16 wks, as determined by Morris water maze. When compared to age-matched control mice, MitoPark mice exhibited olfactory deficits in novel and social scent tests as early as 10-12 wks. MitoPark mice between 16-24 wks spent more time immobile in forced swim and tail suspension tests, and made fewer entries into open arms of the elevated plus maze, indicating a depressive and anxiety-like phenotype, respectively. Importantly, depressive behavior as determined by immobility in forced swim test was reversible by antidepressant treatment with desipramine. Collectively, our results indicate that MitoPark mice progressively exhibit deficits in cognitive learning and memory, olfactory discrimination, and anxiety-and depression-like behaviors. Thus, MitoPark mice can serve as an invaluable model for studying motor and non-motor symptoms in addition to studying pathology in PD.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Langley, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ghaisas, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Palanisamy, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ay, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jin, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anantharam, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.02.365874</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Characterization of Nonmotor Symptoms in the MitoPark Mouse Model of Parkinson's Disease]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.05.370437v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
High-Throughput Image-Based Plant Stand Count Estimation Using Convolutional Neural Networks 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.05.370437v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWThe future landscape of modern farming and plant breeding is rapidly changing due to the complex needs of our society. The explosion of collectable data has started a revolution in agriculture to the point where innovation must occur. To a commercial organization, the accurate and efficient collection of information is necessary to ensure that optimal decisions are made at key points of the breeding cycle. However, due to the sheer size of a breeding program and current resource limitations, the ability to collect precise data on individual plants is not possible. In particular, efficient phenotyping of crops to record its color, shape, chemical properties, disease susceptibility, etc. is severely limited due to labor requirements and, oftentimes, expert domain knowledge. In this paper, we propose a deep learning based approach, named DeepStand, for image-based corn stand counting at early phenological stages. The proposed method adopts a truncated VGG-16 network as a backbone feature extractor and merges multiple feature maps with different scales to make the network robust against scale variation. Our extensive computational experiments suggest that our proposed method can successfully count corn stands and out-perform other state-of-the-art methods. It is the goal of our work to be used by the larger agricultural community as a way to enable high-throughput phenotyping without the use of extensive time and labor requirements.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Khaki, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pham, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kent, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.05.370437</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[High-Throughput Image-Based Plant Stand Count Estimation Using Convolutional Neural Networks]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.08.373464v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Disproportionate CH4 sink strength from an endemic, sub-alpine Australian soil microbial community 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.08.373464v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Soil-to-atmosphere methane (CH4) fluxes are dependent on opposing microbial processes of production and consumption. Here we use a soil-vegetation gradient in an Australian sub-alpine ecosystem to examine links between composition of soil microbial communities, and the fluxes of greenhouse gases they regulate. For each soil-vegetation type (forest, grassland, and bog), we measured carbon dioxide (CO2) and CH4 fluxes and their production/consumption at 5-cm intervals to a depth of 30 cm. All soils were sources of CO2, ranging from 49-93 mg CO2 m-2 h-1. Forest soils were strong net sinks for CH4 at rates up to -413 {micro}g CH4 m-2 h-1. Grassland soils varied with some soils acting as sources and some as sinks, but overall averaged -97 {micro}g CH4 m-2 h-1. Bog soils were net sources of CH4 (+340 {micro}g CH4 m-2 h-1). Methanotrophs were dominated by USC in forest and grassland soils, and Candidatus Methylomirabilis sp. in the bog soils. Methylocystis were also detected at relatively low abundance. The potential disproportionately large contribution of these ecosystems to global CH4 oxidation, and poorly understood microbial community regulating it, highlight our dependence on soil ecosystem services in remote locations can be driven by a unique population of soil microbes.

Originality-Significance Statement(Identify the key aspects of originality and significance that place the work within the top 10% of current research in environmental microbiology)

Novel methanotrophic bacteria have been discovered in recent years, but few studies have examined the total known diversity of methanotrophs together with the net flux of CH4 from soils. We used an ecosystem with a vegetation-soil gradient in the sub-alpine regions of Australia (with extremely strong consumption of atmospheric CH4) to examine microbial and abiotic drivers of CH4 fluxes across this gradient. Recently characterized methanotrophs, either USC in forest and grassland soils, or oxygenic Candidatus Methylomirabilis sp. in the bog soil were dominant. Methanotrophs belonging to the families Methylococcaceae and Methylocystaceae represented only a small minority of the methanotrophs in this ecosystem.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>McDaniel, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hernandez, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dumont, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ingram, L. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adams, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.08.373464</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Disproportionate CH4 sink strength from an endemic, sub-alpine Australian soil microbial community]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.09.375535v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
DeepCorn: A Semi-Supervised Deep Learning Method for High-Throughput Image-Based Corn Kernel Counting and Yield Estimation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.09.375535v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWThe success of modern farming and plant breeding relies on accurate and efficient collection of data. For a commercial organization that manages large amounts of crops, collecting accurate and consistent data is a bottleneck. Due to limited time and labor, accurately phenotyping crops to record color, head count, height, weight, etc. is severely limited. However, this information, combined with other genetic and environmental factors, is vital for developing new superior crop species that help feed the worlds growing population. Recent advances in machine learning, in particular deep learning, have shown promise in mitigating this bottleneck. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning method for counting on-ear corn kernels in-field to aid in the gathering of real-time data and, ultimately, to improve decision making to maximize yield. We name this approach DeepCorn, and show that this framework is robust under various conditions and can accurately and efficiently count corn kernels. We also adopt a semi-supervised learning approach to further improve the performance of our proposed method. Our experimental results demonstrate the superiority and effectiveness of our proposed method compared to other state-of-the-art methods.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Khaki, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pham, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuhl, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kent, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.09.375535</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[DeepCorn: A Semi-Supervised Deep Learning Method for High-Throughput Image-Based Corn Kernel Counting and Yield Estimation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.10.377028v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phenotypic and environmental predictors of reproductive success in painted turtles 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.10.377028v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Sexual selection is often assumed to elicit sexually dimorphic traits. However, most work on this assumption in tetrapod vertebrates has focused on birds. In this field experiment, we assessed relationships between both sexually dimorphic (body size, claw length) and non-dimorphic traits (forelimb stripe color, baseline corticosterone concentrations) and reproductive success in adult painted turtles to explicate the roles of these phenotypes in mate choice and the evolution of sexual dimorphism. We also modified adult sex ratios in experimental ponds to elucidate the role of biased sex ratios on reproductive success, which is a timely test of the potential threat of biased sex ratios on population persistence in a species with temperature-dependent sex determination. We found no strong influence of male phenotypes on male siring success, but female body size and baseline corticosterone concentrations predicted female clutch sizes. We find weak evidence that adult sex ratio influences male siring success, with a male-biased sex ratio producing lower male siring success than a female-biased sex ratio. This study offers evidence that female mate choice may not be an important selective force on male phenotypes, but that instead selection occurs on female phenotypes, particularly body size and corticosterone concentrations. Further, biased adult sex ratios can influence reproductive success of both sexes. Finally, the use of Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR (KASP) was highly successful in parentage analysis, which adds reptiles to the growing list of taxa successfully genotyped with this new technology.

Lay SummaryFemale painted turtles arent choosy about traits of their mates. In a field experiment, we find that male traits do not predict male fitness, but key female traits (body size and stress levels) do predict female reproductive success. Further, we find weak evidence that adult sex ratio influences individual fitness in this species with environmental sex determination. Ultimately, we reject the long-assumed importance of female mate choice in this freshwater turtle.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Judson, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hoekstra, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holden, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janzen, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.10.377028</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phenotypic and environmental predictors of reproductive success in painted turtles]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.17.387241v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
High Spatial-Resolution Imaging Of The Dynamics Of Cuticular Lipid Deposition During Arabidopsis Flower Development 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.17.387241v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The extensive collection of glossy (gl) and eceriferum (cer) mutants of maize and Arabidopsis have proven invaluable in dissecting the branched metabolic pathways that support cuticular lipid deposition. This branched pathway integrates the fatty acid elongation-decarbonylative branch and the fatty acid elongation-reductive branch that has the capacity to generate hundreds of cuticular lipid metabolites. In this study a combined transgenic and biochemical strategy was implemented to explore and compare the physiological function of three homologous genes, Gl2, Gl2-like and CER2 in the context of this branched pathway. These biochemical characterizations integrated new extraction-chromatographic procedures with high-spatial resolution mass spectrometric imaging methods to profile the cuticular lipids on developing floral tissues transgenically expressing these transgenes in wild-type or cer2 mutant lines of Arabidopsis. Collectively, these datasets establish that both the maize Gl2 and Gl2-like genes are functional homologs of the Arabidopsis CER2 gene. In addition, the dynamic distribution of cuticular lipid deposition follows distinct floral organ localization patterns indicating that the fatty acid elongation-decarbonylative branch of the pathway is differentially localized from the fatty acid elongation-reductive branch of the pathway.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Alexander, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilbertson, J. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xie, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.17.387241</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[High Spatial-Resolution Imaging Of The Dynamics Of Cuticular Lipid Deposition During Arabidopsis Flower Development]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.19.390609v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Peroxisome import stress impairs ribosome biogenesis and induces endoplasmic reticulum genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.19.390609v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Peroxisome biogenesis diseases (PBDs) are characterized by global defects in peroxisomal function and can result in severe brain, liver, kidney, and bone malfunctions. PBDs are due to mutations in peroxisome biogenesis factors (PEX genes) that are responsible for peroxisome assembly and function. Increasing evidence suggests that peroxisome import functions decline during aging. However, the transcriptome profiling of peroxisome import defects and how they affect disease development are still lacking. PEX5 encodes the cytoplasmic receptors for peroxisome-targeting signal types 1. We generate knock-in human HEK293 cells mutant using CRISPR to transiently express PEX5 cysteine 11 to alanine mutant (PEX5C11A), which blocks PEX5 recycling and exerts dominant negative effect on PEX5 mediated peroxisome import. To identify conserved responses, we perform transcriptomic analysis on Drosophila oenocyte-specific Pex1, Pex12 and Pex5 knockdowns and on human cells with impaired peroxisome import (PEX5C11A and PEX5 siRNA respectively). PEX5C11A induction triggers vast transcriptomic changes, including decreased oxidative phosphorylation, increased MAPK signaling and HIPPO signaling. PEX5 siRNA specifically decreases spliceosome activity and increases cholesterol metabolism. Using gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), we identify protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum pathway, specifically ER-associated protein degradation (ERAD) pathway is induced in all PEX knockdowns in Drosophila. Peroxisome dysfunction elevates eIF2 phosphorylation in both Drosophila and human cell culture independent of XBP1 activation, suggesting increased integrative stress response (ISR). Moreover, peroxisome stress decreases ribosome biogenesis genes and impairs ribosome biogenesis in flies and human cells. Specifically, peroxisome stress impairs the 5-ETS cleavage activity during the ribosome biogenesis and dampens 40S small ribosomal export in both flies and human. Our results suggest that reduced ribosome biogenesis and elevated ISR could be conserved cellular response to peroxisome import stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.19.390609</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Peroxisome import stress impairs ribosome biogenesis and induces endoplasmic reticulum genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.26.400507v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A novel high-accuracy genome assembly method utilizing a high-throughput workflow 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.26.400507v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Across domains of biological research using genome sequence data, high-quality reference genome sequences are essential for characterizing genetic variation and understanding the genetic basis of phenotypes. However, the construction of genome assemblies for various species is often hampered by complexities of genome organization, especially repetitive and complex sequences, leading to mis-assembly and missing regions. Here, we describe a high-throughput gold standard genome assembly workflow using a large-scale bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) library with a refined two-step pooling strategy and the Lamp assembler algorithm. This strategy minimizes the laborious processes of physical map construction and clone-by-clone sequencing, enabling inexpensive sequencing of several thousand BAC clones. By applying this strategy with a minimum tiling path BAC clone library for the short arm of chromosome 2D (2DS) of bread wheat, 98% of BAC sequences, covering 92.7% of the 2DS chromosome, were assembled correctly for this species with a highly complex and repetitive genome. We also identified 48 large mis-assemblies in the reference wheat genome assembly (IWGSC RefSeq v1.0) and corrected these large mis-assemblies in addition to filling 92.2% of the gaps in RefSeq v1.0. Our 2DS assembly represents a new benchmark for the assembly of complex genomes with both high accuracy and efficiency.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zeng, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cao, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xing, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qin, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nagle, M. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xiong, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bajaj, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chitikineni, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nie, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Safar, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Simkova, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dolezel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hao, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cao, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ma, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ji, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shi, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Varshney, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.26.400507</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A novel high-accuracy genome assembly method utilizing a high-throughput workflow]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.30.403683v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Characterization of genetic diversity and population structure within Staphylococcus chromogenes by multilocus sequence Typing 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.30.403683v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Staphylococcus chromogenes is a common skin commensal in cattle and has been identified as a frequent cause of bovine mastitis and intramammary infections. To better understand the extent of strain diversity within this species and to facilitate study of strain variation as a factor in pathogenicity, we have developed a seven locus Multilocus Sequence Typing (MLST) scheme. The scheme was tested on 120 isolates collected from three geographic locations, Vermont and Washington State in the United States and Belgium. A total of 46 sequence types (STs) were identified with most of the STs being location specific. The utility of the typing scheme is indicated by a discrimination power of 95.6% for all isolates and greater than 90% for isolates from each of the three locations. Phylogenetic analysis placed 39 of the 46 STs into single core group consistent with a common genetic lineage; the STs in this group differ by less than 0.5% at the nucleotide sequence level. Most of the diversification in this lineage group can be attributed to mutation; recombination plays a limited role. This lineage group includes two clusters of single nucleotide variants in starburst configurations indicative of recent clonal expansion; nearly 50% of the isolates sampled in this study are in these two clusters. The remaining seven STs were set apart from the core group by having alleles with highly variable sequences at one or more loci. Recombination had a higher impact than mutation in the diversification of these outlier STs. Alleles with hypervariable sequences were detected at five of the seven loci used in the MLST scheme; the average sequence distances between the hypervariable alleles and the common core alleles ranged from 12 to 34 nucleotides. The extent of these sequence differences suggests the hypervariable alleles may be remnants of an ancestral genotype.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Huebner, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mugabi, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hetesy, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fox, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>De Vliegher, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>De Visscher, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barlow, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sensabaugh, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-11-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.30.403683</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Characterization of genetic diversity and population structure within Staphylococcus chromogenes by multilocus sequence Typing]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-11-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.30.404426v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Exchange of molecular and cellular information: a hybrid model that integrates stem cell divisions and key regulatory interactions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.30.404426v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Stem cells give rise to the entirety of cells within an organ. Maintaining stem cell identity and coordinately regulating stem cell divisions is crucial for proper development. In plants, mobile proteins, such as WOX5 and SHR, regulate divisions in the root stem cell niche (SCN). However, how these proteins coordinately function to establish systemic behavior is not well understood. We propose a non-cell autonomous role for WOX5 in the CEI and identify a regulator, AN3/GIF1, that coordinates CEI divisions. Here we show with a multiscale hybrid model integrating ODEs and agent-based modeling that QC and CEI divisions have different dynamics. Specifically, by combining continuous models to describe regulatory networks and agent-based rules, we model systemic behavior, which led us to predict cell-type-specific expression dynamics of SHR, SCR, WOX5, AN3, and CYCD6;1, and experimentally validate CEI cell divisions. Conclusively, our results show an interdependency between CEI and QC divisions.

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]]></description>
<dc:creator>Van den Broeck, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Spurney, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fisher, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schwartz, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Madison, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gobble, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Long, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sozzani, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-12-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.11.30.404426</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Exchange of molecular and cellular information: a hybrid model that integrates stem cell divisions and key regulatory interactions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-12-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.413203v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
YieldNet: A Convolutional Neural Network for Simultaneous Corn and Soybean Yield Prediction Based on Remote Sensing Data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.413203v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWLarge scale crop yield estimation is, in part, made possible due to the availability of remote sensing data allowing for the continuous monitoring of crops throughout its growth state. Having this information allows stakeholders the ability to make real-time decisions to maximize yield potential. Although various models exist that predict yield from remote sensing data, there currently does not exist an approach that can estimate yield for multiple crops simultaneously, and thus leads to more accurate predictions. A model that predicts yield of multiple crops and concurrently considers the interaction between multiple crops yield. We propose a new model called YieldNet which utilizes a novel deep learning framework that uses transfer learning between corn and soybean yield predictions by sharing the weights of the backbone feature extractor. Additionally, to consider the multi-target response variable, we propose a new loss function. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed method accurately predicts yield from one to four months before the harvest, and is competitive to other state-of-the-art approaches.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Khaki, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pham, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-12-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.12.05.413203</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[YieldNet: A Convolutional Neural Network for Simultaneous Corn and Soybean Yield Prediction Based on Remote Sensing Data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-12-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.09.418376v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genome-wide sequence data show no evidence of admixture and introgression among pollinator wasps associated with a community of Panamanian strangler figs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.09.418376v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Interactions between plants and their animal pollinators can shape processes of divergence and gene flow within associated lineages. For example, in the obligate mutualism between figs (Ficus) and fig pollinator wasps (family Agaonidae), each wasp species typically pollinates a single fig species, potentially reinforcing reproductive isolation among different wasp species. Multiple pollinator species, however, can sometimes reproduce in the same host fig species, potentially enabling hybridization and introgression between wasp species. In a community of Panamanian strangler figs (section Americana), we use genome-wide ultraconserved element (UCE) loci to estimate phylogenetic relationships and test for hybridization and gene flow among 19 pollinator species associated with 16 host fig species. Previous studies showing ongoing pollinator sharing and a history of pollinator host switching are consistent with documented genetic admixture in their host figs. Here we investigate if host sharing and a dynamic evolutionary history including host switching has also resulted in hybridization and gene flow between pollinator species. Phylogenetic analyses recover strong support for well-delimited wasp species coupled with high interspecific divergence. There is no evidence for ongoing hybridization or introgression, even among pairs of pollinator species currently reproducing within the same host. In contrast to work suggesting admixture among Panamanian host figs, we conclude hybridization and interspecific gene flow have not been important processes shaping the evolutionary history of their pollinating wasps.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Satler, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Herre, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heath, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Machado, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zuniga, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nason, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-12-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.12.09.418376</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genome-wide sequence data show no evidence of admixture and introgression among pollinator wasps associated with a community of Panamanian strangler figs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-12-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.10.420240v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Plasmodesmata-dependent intercellular movement of bacterial effectors 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.10.420240v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Pathogenic microorganisms deliver protein effectors into host cells to suppress host immune responses. Recent findings reveal that phytopathogens manipulate the function of plant cell-to-cell communication channels plasmodesmata (PD) to promote diseases. Several bacterial and filamentous pathogen effectors have been shown to regulate PD in their host cells. A few effectors of filamentous pathogens have been reported to move from the infected cells to neighboring plant cells through PD; however, it is unclear whether bacterial effectors can traffic through PD in plants. In this study, we systemically determined the intercellular movement of Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst) DC3000 effectors between adjoining plant cells in Nicotiana benthamiana. We observed that at least 16 Pst DC3000 effectors move from transformed cells to the surrounding plant cells. The movement of the effectors is largely dependent on their molecular weights. The expression of PD regulators, Arabidopsis PD-located protein PDLP5 and PDLP7, lead to PD closure and inhibits the PD-dependent movement of a bacterial effector in N. benthamiana. Similarly, a 22-amino acid peptide of bacterial flagellin (flg22) treatment induces PD closure and suppresses the movement of a bacterial effector in N. benthamiana. Together, our findings demonstrated that bacterial effectors are able to move intercellularly through PD in plants.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Variz, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.-L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aung, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-12-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.12.10.420240</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Plasmodesmata-dependent intercellular movement of bacterial effectors]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-12-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.17.423269v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Gastrointestinal ulceration in calves presented to a central Iowa veterinary referral facility: An underappreciated morbidity? 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.17.423269v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Summary and ImplicationsThe objective of this retrospective investigation is to identify the incidence of gastrointestinal ulceration as a co-morbidity in calves presenting to a referral veterinary hospital. Approximately 24% of calves presented to the hospital that died or were euthanized had evidence of gastrointestinal ulceration. Previous administration of an NSAID was significantly associated with the presence of ulcers, whereas antibiotic administration, age at presentation, gender, or breed were not. Clinicians and producers should consider the risk of ulceration in calves treated with NSAIDs, in light of antiulcer therapies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mosichuk, A. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tatarniuk, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kreuder, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-12-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.12.17.423269</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Gastrointestinal ulceration in calves presented to a central Iowa veterinary referral facility: An underappreciated morbidity?]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-12-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.22.424024v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dynamic evolution of the MutS family in animals: multiple losses of MSH paralogues and gain of a viral MutS homologue in octocorals 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.22.424024v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MutS is a key component of the Mismatch Repair (MMR) pathway. Members of the MutS family of proteins are present in bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes, and viruses. Six MutS homologues (MSH1-6), have been identified in yeast, three of which function in nuclear MMR, while MSH1 has been associated with mitochondrial DNA repair. MSH1 is believed to be lacking in animals, potentially reflecting the loss of MMR in animal mitochondria, and correlated with higher rates of mitochondrial sequence evolution. An intriguing exception has been found in octocorals, a group of marine animals from phylum Cnidaria, which encode a MutS-homologue (mtMutS) in their mitochondrial genome. It has been suggested that this protein functions in mitochondrial DNA repair, which would explain some of the lowest rates of mitochondrial sequence evolution observed in this group. To place the acquisition of mtMutS in a functional context, we investigated the evolution of the whole MutS family in animals. Our study confirmed the acquisition of octocoral mtMutS by horizontal gene transfer from a giant virus. Surprisingly, we found orthologues of yeast MSH1 in all hexacorals (the sister group of octocorals) and several sponges and placozoans. By contrast, MSH1 orthologues were lacking in octocorals, medusozoan cnidarians, ctenophores, and bilaterian animals. Furthermore, while we were able to identify MSH2 and MSH6 in all animals, MSH4, MSH5, and, especially, MSH3 were missing in multiple species. Overall, our analysis reveals a dynamic evolution of MSH family in animals, with multiple losses of MSH1, MSH3, some losses of MSH4 and MSH5, and a gain of octocoral mtMutS.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Muthye, V. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lavrov, D. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-12-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.12.22.424024</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dynamic evolution of the MutS family in animals: multiple losses of MSH paralogues and gain of a viral MutS homologue in octocorals]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-12-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.30.424814v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Land-use and forest floor explain prokaryotic metacommunity structuring and spatial turnover in Amazonian forest-to-pasture conversion areas 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.30.424814v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Advancing extensive cattle production shifts the forest landscape and is considered one of the main drivers against biodiversity conservation in the Brazilian Amazonia. Considering soil as an ecosystem it becomes vital to identify the effects of land-use changes on soil microbial communities, structure, as well as its ecological functions and services. Herein, we explored relationships between land-use, soil types and forest floor (i.e., association between litter, root layer and bulk soil) on the prokaryotic metacommunity structuring in the Western Amazonia. Sites under high anthropogenic pressure were evaluated along a gradient of {+/-} 800 km. Prokaryotic metacommunity are synergistically affected by soil types and land-use systems. Especially, the gradient of soil fertility and land-use shapes the structuring of the metacommunity and determines its composition. Forest-to-pasture conversion increases alpha, beta, and gamma diversities when considering only the prokaryotes from the bulk soil. Beta diversity was significantly higher in all forests when the litter and root layer were taken into account with the bulk soil. Our argumentation is that the forest floor harbors a prokaryotic metacommunity that adds at the regional scale of diversity a spatial turnover hitherto underestimated. Our findings highlight the risks of biodiversity loss and, consequently, the soil microbial diversity maintenance in tropical forests.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rocha, F. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ribeiro, T. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fontes, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shwab, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coelho, M. R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lumbreras, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>da Motta, P. E. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Teixeira, W. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cole, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borsanelli, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dutra, I. d. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Oliveira, A. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jesus, E. d. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2020-12-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2020.12.30.424814</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Land-use and forest floor explain prokaryotic metacommunity structuring and spatial turnover in Amazonian forest-to-pasture conversion areas]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2020-12-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.07.425780v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Quantitative proteomics reveals extensive lysine ubiquitination in the Arabidopsis root proteome and uncovers novel transcription factor stability states 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.07.425780v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Protein activity, abundance, and stability can be regulated by posttranslational modification including ubiquitination. Ubiquitination is conserved among eukaryotes and plays a central role in modulating cellular function and yet we lack comprehensive catalogs of proteins that are modified by ubiquitin in plants. In this study, we describe an antibody-based approach to enrich peptides containing the di-glycine (diGly) remnant of ubiquitin and coupled that with isobaric labeling to enable quantification, from up to 16-multiplexed samples, for plant tissues. Collectively, we identified 7,130 diGly-modified lysine residues sites arising from 3,178 proteins in Arabidopsis primary roots. These data include ubiquitin proteasome dependent ubiquitination events as well as ubiquitination events associated with auxin treatment. Gene Ontology analysis indicated that ubiquitinated proteins are associated with numerous biological processes including hormone signaling, plant defense, protein homeostasis, and root morphogenesis. We determined the ubiquitinated lysine residues that directly regulate the stability of the transcription factors CRYPTOCHROME-INTERACTING BASIC-HELIX-LOOP-HELIX 1 (CIB1), CIB1 LIKE PROTEIN 2 (CIL2), and SENSITIVE TO PROTON RHIZOTOXICITY (STOP1) using site directed mutagenesis and in vivo degradation assays. These comprehensive site-level ubiquitinome profiles provide a wealth of data for future studies related to modulation of biological processes mediated by this posttranslational modification in plants.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Olatunji, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-01-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.01.07.425780</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Quantitative proteomics reveals extensive lysine ubiquitination in the Arabidopsis root proteome and uncovers novel transcription factor stability states]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-01-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.09.426059v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
MCPdb: The Bacterial Microcompartment Database 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.09.426059v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bacterial microcompartments are organelle-like structures composed entirely of proteins. They have evolved to carry out several distinct and specialized metabolic functions in a wide variety of bacteria. Their outer shell is constructed from thousands of tessellating protein subunits, encapsulating enzymes that carry out the internal metabolic reactions. The shell proteins are varied, with single, tandem and permuted versions of the PF00936 protein family domain comprising the primary structural component of their polyhedral architecture, which is reminiscent of a viral capsid. While considerable amounts of structural and biophysical data have been generated in the last 15 years, current resources present challenges for understanding the functional and structural properties of microcompartments (MCPs) and their diversity. In order to make the remarkable structural features of bacterial microcompartments accessible to a broad community of scientists and non-specialists, we developed MCPdb: The Bacterial Microcompartment Database (https://mcpdb.mbi.ucla.edu/). MCPdb is a comprehensive resource that categorizes and organizes known microcompartment protein structures and their larger assemblies. To emphazise the critical roles symmetric assembly and architecture play in microcompartment function, each structure in the MCPdb is validated and annotated with respect to: (1) its predicted natural assembly state (2) tertiary structure and topology and (3) the metabolic compartment type from which it derives. The current database includes 134 structures and is available to the public with the anticipation that it will serve as a growing resource for scientists interested in understanding protein-based metabolic organelles in bacteria.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ochoa, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bair, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holton, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bobik, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yeates, T. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-01-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.01.09.426059</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[MCPdb: The Bacterial Microcompartment Database]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-01-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.10.425752v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Native structure of the RhopH complex, a key determinant of malaria parasite nutrient acquisition 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.10.425752v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The RhopH complex is implicated in malaria parasites ability to invade and create new permeability pathways in host erythrocytes, but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here we enrich the endogenous RhopH complex in a native soluble form, comprising RhopH2, CLAG3.1 and RhopH3, directly from parasite cell lysates and determine its atomic structure using cryo electron microscopy, mass spectrometry, and the cryoID program. This first direct observation of an exported P. falciparum transmembrane protein--in a soluble, trafficking state and with atomic details of buried putative membrane-insertion helices--offers insights into assembly and trafficking of RhopH and other parasite-derived complexes to the erythrocyte membrane. Our study demonstrates the potential endogenous structural proteomics approach holds for elucidating the molecular mechanisms of hard-to-isolate complexes in their native, functional forms.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ho, C.-M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jih, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lai, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goldberg, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-01-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.01.10.425752</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Native structure of the RhopH complex, a key determinant of malaria parasite nutrient acquisition]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-01-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.13.425472v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Rapid screening of pest resistance genes in maize using a sugarcane mosaic virus vector 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.13.425472v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Spodoptera frugiperda (fall armyworm) is a notorious pest that threatens maize production world-wide. Current control measures involve the use of chemical insecticides and transgenic maize expressing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins. Although several additional transgenes have confirmed insecticidal activity in other plants, limited research has been conducted in maize, at least partially due to the technical difficulty of maize transformation. Here, we describe implementation of a sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV) vector for rapidly testing the efficacy of transgenes for the control of S. frugiperda in maize. Four categories of proteins were tested using the SCMV vector: (i) maize defense signaling proteins: peptide elicitors (Pep1 and Pep3) and jasmonate acid conjugating enzymes (JAR1a and JAR1b); (ii) maize defensive proteins: the previously identified ribosome-inactivating protein (RIP2) and maize proteinase inhibitor (MPI), and two proteins with predicted but unconfirmed anti-insect activities, an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) and a lectin (JAC1); (iii) lectins from other plant species: Allium cepa agglutinin (ACA) and Galanthus nivalis agglutinin (GNA); and (iv) spider and scorpion toxins: peptides from Urodacus yaschenkoi (UyCT3 and UyCT5) and Hadronyche versuta (Hvt). In most cases, S. frugiperda larval growth on maize was reduced by transient SCMV-mediated overexpression of genes encoding these proteins. Additionally, experiments with some of the SCMV-expressed genes showed effectiveness against two aphid species, Rhopalosiphum maidis (corn leaf aphid) and Myzus persicae (green peach aphid). Together, these results demonstrate that SCMV vectors can be exploited as a rapid screening method for testing the efficacy and insecticidal activity of candidate genes in maize.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chung, S. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bigham, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lappe, R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chan, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nagalakshmi, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dinesh-Kumar, S. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jander, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-01-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.01.13.425472</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Rapid screening of pest resistance genes in maize using a sugarcane mosaic virus vector]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-01-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.14.426684v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
De novo assembly, annotation, and comparative analysis of 26 diverse maize genomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.14.426684v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We report de novo genome assemblies, transcriptomes, annotations, and methylomes for the 26 inbreds that serve as the founders for the maize nested association mapping population. The data indicate that the number of pan-genes exceeds 103,000 and that the ancient tetraploid character of maize continues to degrade by fractionation to the present day. Excellent contiguity over repeat arrays and complete annotation of centromeres further reveal the locations and internal structures of major cytological landmarks. We show that combining structural variation with SNPs can improve the power of quantitative mapping studies. Finally, we document variation at the level of DNA methylation, and demonstrate that unmethylated regions are enriched for cis-regulatory elements that overlap QTL and contribute to changes in gene expression.

One sentence summaryA multi-genome analysis of maize reveals previously unknown variation in gene content, genome structure, and methylation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chougule, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>LIU, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ricci, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Olson, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Della Coletta, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tittes, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hudson, A. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marand, A. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wei, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tello-Ruiz, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Piri, R. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, D. w.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zeng, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, C. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilbert, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baggs, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krasileva, K. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Portwood, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, E. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MANCHANDA, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snodgrass, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufnagel, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pedersen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Syring, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kudrna, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Llaca, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fengler, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gent, J. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ware</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-01-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.01.14.426684</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[De novo assembly, annotation, and comparative analysis of 26 diverse maize genomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-01-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.24.427968v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Programmable Viscoelasticity in Protein-RNA Condensates with Disordered Sticker-Spacer Polypeptides 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.24.427968v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Liquid-liquid phase separation of multivalent proteins and RNAs drives the formation of biomolecular condensates that facilitate membrane-free compartmentalization of subcellular processes. With recent advances, it is becoming increasingly clear that biomolecular condensates are network fluids with time-dependent material properties. Here, employing microrheology with optical tweezers, we reveal molecular determinants that govern the viscoelastic behavior of condensates formed by multivalent Arg/Gly-rich sticker-spacer polypeptides and RNA. These condensates behave as Maxwell fluids with an elastically-dominant rheological response at shorter timescales and a liquid-like behavior at longer timescales. The viscous and elastic regimes of these condensates can be tuned by the polypeptide and RNA sequences as well as their mixture compositions. Our results establish a quantitative link between the sequence- and structure-encoded biomolecular interactions at the microscopic scale and the rheological properties of the resulting condensates at the mesoscale, enabling a route to systematically probe and rationally engineer biomolecular condensates with programmable mechanics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Alshareedah, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moosa, M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, P. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-01-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.01.24.427968</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Programmable Viscoelasticity in Protein-RNA Condensates with Disordered Sticker-Spacer Polypeptides]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-01-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.25.426574v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Teosinte introgression modulates phosphatidylcholine levels and induces early maize flowering time 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.25.426574v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Native Americans domesticated maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) from lowland teosinte parviglumis (Zea mays ssp.parviglumis) in the warm Mexican southwest and brought it to the highlands of Mexico and South America where it was exposed to lower temperatures that imposed strong selection on flowering time. Phospholipids are important metabolites in plant responses to low-temperature and phosphorus availability, and have been suggested to influence flowering time. Here, we combined linkage mapping with genome scans to identify High PhosphatidylCholine 1 (HPC1), a gene that encodes a phospholipase A1 enzyme, as a major driver of phospholipid variation in highland maize. Common garden experiments demonstrated strong genotype-by-environment interactions associated with variation at HPC1, with the highland HPC1 allele leading to higher fitness in highlands, possibly by hastening flowering. The highland maize HPC1 variant resulted in impaired function of the encoded protein due to a polymorphism in a highly conserved sequence. A meta-analysis across HPC1 orthologs indicated a strong association between the identity of the amino acid at this position and optimal growth in prokaryotes. Mutagenesis of HPC1 via genome editing validated its role in regulating phospholipid metabolism. Finally, we showed that the highland HPC1 allele entered cultivated maize by introgression from the wild highland teosinte Zea mays ssp. mexicana and has been maintained in maize breeding lines from the Northern US, Canada and Europe. Thus, HPC1 introgressed from teosinte mexicana underlies a large metabolic QTL that modulates phosphatidylcholine levels and has an adaptive effect at least in part via induction of early flowering time.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rodriguez-Zapata, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barnes, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Blocher-Juarez, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gates, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kur, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jensen, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Estevez-Palmas, J. M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janzen, G. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crow, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aguilar-Rangel, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Demesa-Arevalo, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Skopelitis, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perez-Limon, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stutts, W. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thomson, P. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chiu, Y.-C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jackson, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fiehn, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Runcie, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckler, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sawers, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rellan-Alvarez, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-01-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.01.25.426574</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Teosinte introgression modulates phosphatidylcholine levels and induces early maize flowering time]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-01-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.27.428443v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
DROSOPHILA MTOR COMPLEX 2 PRESERVES MITOCHONDRIAL AND CARDIAC FUNCTION UNDER HIGH FAT DIET TREATMENT 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.27.428443v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
High fat diet (HFD)-associated lipotoxicity is one of the major causes of cardiovascular diseases. The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, especially mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1), has been previously implicated in HFD-induced heart dysfunction. In the present study, we find that unlike mTORC1, mTOR complex 2 (mTORC2) protects hearts from HFD-induced cardiomyopathy and mitochondrial dysfunction in Drosophila. We show that HFD feeding induces contractile dysfunction along with altered mitochondrial morphology and function. Upon HFD feeding, the mitochondria of cardiomyocytes exhibit fragmentation, loss of membrane potential, and calcium overload. Interestingly, HFD feeding also reduces the activity of cardiac mTORC2. In line with this finding, the flies with cardiac-specific knockdown of rictor, the key subunit of mTORC2, show cardiac and mitochondrial dysfunction similar to what is observed in HFD-fed wild-type flies. Conversely, cardiac-specific activation of mTORC2 by overexpressing rictor attenuates HFD-induced mitochondrial and cardiac dysfunction. Thus, our findings suggest that mTORC2 is a cardioprotective factor and regulates mitochondrial homeostasis upon HFD feeding.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Requejo Figueroa, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-01-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.01.27.428443</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[DROSOPHILA MTOR COMPLEX 2 PRESERVES MITOCHONDRIAL AND CARDIAC FUNCTION UNDER HIGH FAT DIET TREATMENT]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-01-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.03.429521v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Bridging Between Material Properties Of Proteins And The Underlying Molecular Interactions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.03.429521v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In this work, we develop a novel method that bridges between material properties of proteins, particularly the modulus of elasticity, and the underlying molecular interactions. To this end, we employ both an all-atom normal mode analysis (NMA) model with the CHARMM force field and an elastic solid model for proteins and protein interfaces. And the "bridge" between the two models is a common physical property that they both can predict: the magnitude of thermal vibrations. This connection allows one to calibrate the Youngs moduli of proteins and protein interface regions. We find that the elastic moduli of proteins are mostly in the range of a few Gpa to 10 Gpa, while the elastic moduli of the interface regions are about an order smaller. The work is significant as it represents the first attempt to systematically compute the moduli of elasticity of proteins from molecular interactions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.03.429521</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Bridging Between Material Properties Of Proteins And The Underlying Molecular Interactions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.04.429796v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Case for Retaining Natural Language Descriptions of Phenotypes in Plant Databases and a Web Application as Proof of Concept 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.04.429796v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Similarities in phenotypic descriptions can be indicative of shared genetics, metabolism, and stress responses, to name a few. Finding and measuring similarity across descriptions of phenotype is not straightforward, with previous successes in computation requiring a great deal of expert data curation. Natural language processing of free text descriptions of phenotype is often less resource intensive than applying expert curation. It is therefore critical to understand the performance of natural language processing techniques for organizing and analyzing biological datasets and for enabling biological discovery. For predicting similar phenotypes, a wide variety of approaches from the natural language processing domain perform as well as curation-based methods. These computational approaches also show promise both for helping curators organize and work with large datasets and for enabling researchers to explore relationships among available phenotype descriptions. Here we generate networks of phenotype similarity and share a web application for querying a dataset of associated plant genes using these text mining approaches. Example situations and species for which application of these techniques is most useful are discussed.

Database URLsThe database and analytical tool called QuOATS are available at https://quoats.dill-picl.org/. Code for the web application is available at https://git.io/Jtv9J. Datasets are available for direct access via https://zenodo.org/record/7947342#.ZGwAKOzMK3I. The code for the analyses performed for the publication is available at https://github.com/Dill-PICL/Plant-data and https://github.com/Dill-PICL/NLP-Plant-Phenotypes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Braun, I. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bassham, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.04.429796</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Case for Retaining Natural Language Descriptions of Phenotypes in Plant Databases and a Web Application as Proof of Concept]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.04.429837v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
FINDER: An automated software package to annotate eukaryotic genes from RNA-Seq data and associated protein sequences 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.04.429837v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundGene annotation in eukaryotes is a non-trivial task that requires meticulous analysis of accumulated transcript data. Challenges include transcriptionally active regions of the genome that contain overlapping genes, genes that produce numerous transcripts, transposable elements and numerous diverse sequence repeats. Currently available gene annotation software applications depend on pre-constructed full-length gene sequence assemblies which are not guaranteed to be error-free. The origins of these sequences are often uncertain, making it difficult to identify and rectify errors in them. This hinders the creation of an accurate and holistic representation of the transcriptomic landscape across multiple tissue types and experimental conditions. Therefore, to gauge the extent of diversity in gene structures, a comprehensive analysis of genome-wide expression data is imperative.

ResultsWe present FINDER, a fully automated computational tool that optimizes the entire process of annotating genes and transcript structures. Unlike current state-of-the-art pipelines, FINDER automates the RNA-Seq pre-processing step by working directly with raw sequence reads and optimizes gene prediction from BRAKER2 by supplementing these reads with associated proteins. The FINDER pipeline (1) reports transcripts and recognizes genes that are expressed under specific conditions, (2) generates all possible alternatively spliced transcripts from expressed RNA-Seq data, (3) analyzes read coverage patterns to modify existing transcript models and create new ones, and (4) scores genes as high- or low-confidence based on the available evidence across multiple datasets. We demonstrate the ability of FINDER to automatically annotate a diverse pool of genomes from eight species.

ConclusionsFINDER takes a completely automated approach to annotate genes directly from raw expression data. It is capable of processing eukaryotic genomes of all sizes and requires no manual supervision - ideal for bench researchers with limited experience in handling computational tools.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhandary, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sen, T. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, R. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.04.429837</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[FINDER: An automated software package to annotate eukaryotic genes from RNA-Seq data and associated protein sequences]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.06.430062v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An MILP Model for Corn Planting and Harvest Scheduling Considering Storage Capacity and Growing Degree Units 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.06.430062v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWCorn planting and harvest scheduling is an important problem due to having a significant impact on corn yield, balancing the capacities for harvest, transport, and storage operations. Different corn hybrids also have different planting window and poor planting and harvest schedules may cause erratic weekly harvest quantities and logistical and productivity issues. In the 2021 Syngenta Crop Challenge, Syngenta released several large datasets that recorded the historical daily growing degree units (GDU) of two sites and provided planting window, required GDUs, and harvest quantity of corn hybrids planted in these two sites. Then, participants of this challenge were asked to schedule planting and harvesting dates of corn hybrids under two storage capacity scenarios so that facilities are not over capacity in harvesting weeks and have consistent weekly harvest quantities. The two storage capacity scenarios include: (1) planting and harvest scheduling given the maximum storage capacity, and (2) planting and harvest scheduling without maximum storage capacity to determine the lowest possible capacity for each site. In this paper, we propose two mixed integer linear programming (MILP) models for solving this problem considering both the storage capacity and the uncertainty in GDUs. Our results indicate that our proposed models can provide optimal planting and harvest scheduling under different GDU possibilities which ensures consistent weekly harvest quantities that are below the maximum capacity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Khalilzadeh, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.06.430062</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An MILP Model for Corn Planting and Harvest Scheduling Considering Storage Capacity and Growing Degree Units]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.11.430632v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evidence for Multiple Teosinte Hybrid Zones in Central Mexico 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.11.430632v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1O_LIHybrid zones provide an excellent opportunity for studying population dynamics and whether hybrid genetic architectures are locally adaptive. The genus Zea contains many diverse wild taxa collectively called teosinte. Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, the lowland progenitor of maize (Zea mays ssp. mays), and its highland relative Zea mays ssp. mexicana live parapatrically and, while putative hybrids have been identified in regions of range overlap, these have never been deeply explored.
C_LIO_LIHere we use a broadly sampled SNP data set to identify and confirm 112 hybrids between Zea mays ssp. parviglumis and Zea mays ssp. mexicana, mostly clustered in three genetically and geographically distinct hybrid groups in Central Mexico.
C_LIO_LIThese hybrid groups inhabit intermediate environments relative to parental taxa. We demonstrate that these individuals are true hybrids and not products of isolation by distance or ancestral to parviglumis and mexicana. This work expands on previous studies, clearly identifying hybrid zones in Zea, genetically characterizing hybrid groups, and showing what appear to be unique genetic architectures of hybridization in distinct hybrid groups.
C_LIO_LIWith the potential for local adaptation, variable hybrid zone dynamics, and differential architectures of hybridization, we present these teosinte hybrids and parental taxa as a promising model system for studying hybridization and hybrid zones.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hufnagel, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kananen, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Glaubitz, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanchez-Gonzalez, J. d. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doebley, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.11.430632</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evidence for Multiple Teosinte Hybrid Zones in Central Mexico]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.11.430806v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
BIAPSS - BioInformatic Analysis of liquid-liquid Phase-Separating protein Sequences 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.11.430806v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) has recently emerged as a cornerstone mechanism underlying the biogenesis of membraneless organelles (MLOs). However, a quantitative molecular grammar of protein sequences that controls the LLPS remains poorly understood. The progress in this field is hampered by the insufficiency of comprehensive databases and associated computational infrastructure for targeting biophysical and statistical analysis of phase separating biopolymers. Therefore, we have created a novel open-source web platform named BIAPSS (BioInformatic Analysis of liquid-liquid Phase-Separating protein Sequences) which contains interactive data analytic tools in combination with a comprehensive repository of bioinformatic data for on-the-fly exploration of sequence-dependent properties of proteins with known LLPS behavior. BIAPSS includes a residue-resolution biophysical analyzer for interrogating individual protein sequences (SingleSEQ tab). The latter allows users to correlate regions prone to phase separation with a large array of physicochemical attributes and various short linear motifs. BIAPSS also includes global statistics derived over the universe of most of the known LLPS-driver protein sequences (MultiSEQ tab) for revealing the regularities and sequence-specific signals driving phase separation. Finally, BIAPSS incorporates an extensive cross-reference section that links all entries to primary LLPS databases and other external resources thereby serving as a central navigation hub for the phase separation community. All of the data used by BIAPSS is freely available for download as well-formatted pre-processed data with detailed descriptions, facilitating rapid implementation in user-defined computational protocols.



O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=70 SRC="FIGDIR/small/430806v2_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
View larger version (24K):
org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1d90ddorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@111d084org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@90b3b0org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@51d71_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG TOC - graphical abstract

C_FIG Author summaryProteins, especially those with low complexity and intrinsically disordered regions, have recently come into the limelight because of mounting evidence showing that these regions can drive the formation of membraneless organelles (MLOs) in cells. The underlying physical mechanism for forming MLOs is liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS); a thermodynamically driven process whereby a cellular milieu with a relatively well-mixed distribution of biomolecules gets decomposed into liquid droplets where the concentration of selected biomolecules is higher. Deciphering molecular sequence grammar of phase separation has turned out to be challenging because of the complexity of this process in cells and the vastness of sequence space of LLPS-driver proteins. While the field is still in its infancy the growth of experimental data has already spurred the creation of several major databases which collect and annotate bimolecular systems with confirmed LLPS behavior. What is currently missing is a framework that would leverage the existing databases by integrating them with deep biophysical and bioinformatic analysis for identifying statistically significant features of protein sequences implicated in LLPS. In this work, we have addressed this challenge by creating an open-source web platform named BIAPSS (BioInformatic Analysis of liquid-liquid Phase-Separating protein Sequences) which integrates a comprehensive repository of pre-processed bioinformatic data for LLPS-driver protein sequences with interactive analytic applications for on-the-fly analysis of biophysical features relevant for LLPS behavior. BIAPSS empowers users with novel and effective tools for exploring LLPS-related sequence signals for individual proteins (SingleSEQ tab) and globally by integrating common regularities across subgroups or the entire LLPS sequence superset (MultiSEQ). The long-term plan for BIAPSS is to serve as a unifying hub for the experimental and computational community with a comprehensive set of analytic tools, biophysically featured data, and standardized protocols facilitating the identification of sequence hot spots driving the LLPS, which all can support applications for designing new sequences of biomedical interest.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Badaczewska-Dawid, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.11.430806</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[BIAPSS - BioInformatic Analysis of liquid-liquid Phase-Separating protein Sequences]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.12.430994v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
slim shady is a novel allele of PHYTOCHROMEB present in the T-DNA line SALK_015201 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.12.430994v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Auxin is a hormone that is required for hypocotyl elongation during seedling development. In response to auxin rapid changes in transcript and protein abundance occur in hypocotyls and some auxin responsive gene expression is linked to hypocotyl growth. To functionally validate proteomic studies, a reverse genetics screen was performed on mutants in auxin-regulated proteins to identify novel regulators of plant growth. This uncovered a long hypocotyl mutant, which we called slim shady, in an annotated insertion line in IMMUNOREGULATORY RNA-BINDING PROTEIN (IRR). Overexpression of the IRR gene failed to rescue the slim shady phenotype and characterization of a second T-DNA allele of IRR found that it had a wild-type hypocotyl length. The slim shady mutant has an elevated expression of numerous genes associated with the brassinosteroid-auxin-phytochrome (BAP) regulatory module compared to wild-type, including transcription factors that regulate brassinosteroid, auxin and phytochrome pathways. Additionally, slim shady seedlings fail to exhibit a strong transcriptional response to auxin. Using whole genome sequence and transcriptomics data for SALK_015201C we determined that a novel single nucleotide polymorphism in PHYTOCHROME B was responsible for the slim shady phenotype. This is predicted to convert induce a frameshift and premature stop codon at leucine 1125, within the histidine kinase-related domain of the carboxy terminus of PHYB, which is required for phytochrome signaling and function. Genetic complementation analyses with phyb-9 confirmed that slim shady is a mutant allele of PHYB. This study advances our understanding of the molecular mechanisms in seedling development, by furthering our understanding of how light signaling is linked to auxin dependent cell elongation. Furthermore, this study highlights the importance of confirming the genetic identity of research material before attributing phenotypes to known mutations sourced from T-DNA stocks.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dash, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McEwan, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mejia, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dilkes, B. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.12.430994</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[slim shady is a novel allele of PHYTOCHROMEB present in the T-DNA line SALK_015201]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.12.431003v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Interplay between brassinosteroids and TORC signaling in Arabidopsis revealed by integrated multi-dimensional analysis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.12.431003v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Brassinosteroids (BR) and Target of Rapamycin Complex (TORC) are two major processes coordinating plant growth and stress responses. BRs function through a signaling pathway to extensively regulate gene expression and TORC is known to regulate translation and autophagy. Recent studies revealed that these two pathways crosstalk, but a system-wide view of their interplay is still missing. Thus, we performed transcriptome, proteome, and phosphoproteome profiling of Arabidopsis mutants with altered levels of either BIN2 or RAPTOR1B, two key players in BR and TORC signaling, respectively. We found that perturbation of BIN2 or RAPTOR1B levels affects a common set of gene-products involved in growth and stress responses. Additionally, we performed Multiplexed Assay for Kinase Specificity (MAKS), which provided a system-wide view of direct BIN2 substrates. Furthermore, phosphoproteomic data was used to reconstruct a kinase-signaling network and to identify novel proteins dependent on BR and/or TORC signaling pathways. Loss of function mutants of many of these proteins led to an altered BR response and/or modulated autophagy activity. Altogether, these results provide genome-wide evidence for crosstalk between BR and TORC signaling and established a kinase signaling network that defines the molecular mechanisms of BR and TORC interactions in the regulation of plant growth/stress balance.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liao, C.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nolan, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bassham, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.12.431003</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Interplay between brassinosteroids and TORC signaling in Arabidopsis revealed by integrated multi-dimensional analysis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.16.431357v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
scGAE: topology-preserving dimensionality reduction for single-cell RNA-seq data using graph autoencoder 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.16.431357v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Dimensionality reduction is crucial for the visualization and interpretation of the high-dimensional single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. However, preserving topological structure among cells to low dimensional space remains a challenge. Here, we present the single-cell graph autoencoder (scGAE), a dimensionality reduction method that preserves topological structure in scRNA-seq data. scGAE builds a cell graph and uses a multitask-oriented graph autoencoder to preserve topological structure information and feature information in scRNA-seq data simultaneously. We further extended scGAE for scRNA-seq data visualization, clustering, and trajectory inference. Analyses of simulated data showed that scGAE accurately reconstructs developmental trajectory and separates discrete cell clusters under different scenarios, outperforming recently developed deep learning methods. Furthermore, implementation of scGAE on empirical data showed scGAE provided novel insights into cell developmental lineages and preserved inter-cluster distances.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Luo, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jin, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.16.431357</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[scGAE: topology-preserving dimensionality reduction for single-cell RNA-seq data using graph autoencoder]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.18.431864v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
pSONIC: Ploidy-aware Syntenic Orthologous Networks Identified via Collinearity 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.18.431864v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
With the rapid rise in availability of high-quality genomes for closely related species, methods for orthology inference that incorporate synteny are increasingly useful. Polyploidy perturbs the 1:1 expected frequencies of orthologs between two species, complicating the identification of orthologs. Here we present a method of ortholog inference, Ploidy-aware Syntenic Orthologous Networks Identified via Collinearity (pSONIC). We demonstrate the utility of pSONIC using four species in the cotton tribe (Gossypieae), including one allopolyploid, and place between 75-90% of genes from each species into nearly 32,000 orthologous groups, 97% of which consist of at most singletons or tandemly duplicated genes -- 58.8% more than comparable methods that do not incorporate synteny. We show that 99% of singleton gene groups follow the expected tree topology, and that our ploidy-aware algorithm recovers 97.5% identical groups when compared to splitting the allopolyploid into its two respective subgenomes, treating each as separate "species".
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Conover, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.18.431864</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[pSONIC: Ploidy-aware Syntenic Orthologous Networks Identified via Collinearity]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.19.431938v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Strategies to assure optimal trade-offs among competing objectives for genetic improvement of soybean 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.19.431938v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plant breeding is a decision making discipline based on understanding project objectives. Genetic improvement projects can have two competing objectives: maximize rate of genetic improvement and minimize loss of useful genetic variance. For commercial plant breeders competition in the marketplace forces greater emphasis on maximizing immediate genetic improvements. In contrast public plant breeders have an opportunity, perhaps an obligation, to place greater emphasis on minimizing loss of useful genetic variance while realizing genetic improvements. Considerable research indicates that short term genetic gains from Genomic Selection (GS) are much greater than Phenotypic Selection (PS), while PS provides better long term genetic gains because PS retains useful genetic diversity during the early cycles of selection. With limited resources must a soybean breeder choose between the two extreme responses provided by GS or PS? Or is it possible to develop novel breeding strategies that will provide a desirable compromise between the competing objectives? To address these questions, we decomposed breeding strategies into decisions about selection methods, mating designs and whether the breeding population should be organized as family islands. For breeding populations organized into islands decisions about possible migration rules among family islands were included. From among 60 possible strategies, genetic improvement is maximized for the first five to ten cycles using GS, a hub network mating design in breeding populations organized as fully connected family islands and migration rules allowing exchange of two lines among islands every other cycle of selection. If the objectives are to maximize both short-term and long-term gains, then the best compromise strategy is similar except a genomic mating design, instead of a hub networked mating design, is used. This strategy also resulted in realizing the greatest proportion of genetic potential of the founder populations. Weighted genomic selection applied to both non-isolated and island populations also resulted in realization of the greatest proportion of genetic potential of the founders, but required more cycles than the best compromise strategy.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramasubramanian, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beavis, W. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.19.431938</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Strategies to assure optimal trade-offs among competing objectives for genetic improvement of soybean]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.431880v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Collagen has a unique SEC24 preference for efficient export from the endoplasmic reticulum 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.431880v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
SEC24 is mainly involved in cargo sorting during COPII vesicle assembly. There are four SEC24 paralogs (A to D) in mammals, which are classified into two subgroups (SEC24A/B and SEC24C/D). Pathological mutations in SEC24D cause osteogenesis imperfecta with craniofacial dysplasia in humans. sec24d mutant fish also recapitulate the phenotypes. Consistent with the skeletal phenotypes, the secretion of collagen was severely defective in mutant fish, emphasizing the importance of SEC24D in collagen secretion. However, SEC24D patient-derived fibroblasts show only a mild secretion phenotype, suggesting tissue-specificity in the secretion process. Using Sec24d KO mice and cultured cells, we show that SEC24A and SEC24B also contribute to ER export of procollagen. In contrast, fibronectin 1 requires either SEC24C or SEC24D for ER export. On the basis of our results, we propose that procollagen interacts with multiple SEC24 paralogs for efficient export from the ER, and that this is the basis for tissue-specific phenotypes resulting from SEC24 paralog deficiency.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lu, C.-L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cain, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brudvig, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ortmeier, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boyadjiev, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weimer, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.23.431880</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Collagen has a unique SEC24 preference for efficient export from the endoplasmic reticulum]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.432605v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Gossypium stocksii genome as a novel resource for cotton improvement 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.432605v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
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.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Udall, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.23.432605</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Gossypium stocksii genome as a novel resource for cotton improvement]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.25.432931v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Regulation of plasmodesmata at specific cell-cell interfaces 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.25.432931v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Precise exchange of information and resources among cells is essential for multicellular organisms. Intercellular communication among diverse cell types requires differential mechanisms to achieve the specific regulation. Despite the significance of intercellular communication, it is largely unknown how the communication between different cells is regulated. Here, we report that two members of plasmodesmata-located proteins modulate plasmodesmata at two distinct cell-cell interfaces.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aung, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-02-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.02.25.432931</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Regulation of plasmodesmata at specific cell-cell interfaces]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-02-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.03.432938v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Lamp1 mediates lipid transport, but is dispensable for autophagy in Drosophila 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.03.432938v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The endolysosomal system not only is an integral part of the cellular catabolic machinery that processes and recycles nutrients for synthesis of biomaterials, but also acts as signaling hub to sense and coordinate the energy state of cells with growth and differentiation. Lysosomal dysfunction adversely influences vesicular transport-dependent macromolecular degradation and thus causes serious problems for human health. In mammalian cells, loss of the lysosome associated membrane proteins LAMP1/2 strongly impacts autophagy and cholesterol trafficking. Here we show that the previously uncharacterized Drosophila Lamp1 is a bona fide homolog of vertebrate LAMP1/2. Surprisingly and in contrast to Lamp1/2 double mutant mice, Drosophila Lamp1 is not required for viability or autophagy, suggesting that autophagy defects in Lamp1/2 mutants may have indirect causes. However, Lamp1 deficiency results in an expansion of the acidic compartment in flies. Furthermore, we find that Lamp1 mutant larvae have defects in lipid metabolism as they show elevated levels of sterols and diacylglycerols (DAGs). Since DAGs are the main lipid species used for transport though the hemolymph (blood) in insects, our results indicate broader functions of Lamp1 in lipid transport. Our findings make Drosophila an ideal model to study the role of LAMP proteins in lipid assimilation without the confounding effects of their storage and without interfering with autophagic processes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chaudrhy, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sica, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Surabhi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanchez Hernandez, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mesquita, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Selimovic, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riaz, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Macintosh, G. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jenny, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.03.432938</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Lamp1 mediates lipid transport, but is dispensable for autophagy in Drosophila]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.08.434433v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Systemic Tissue and Cellular Disruption from SARS-CoV-2 Infection revealed in COVID-19 Autopsies and Spatial Omics Tissue Maps 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.08.434433v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus has infected over 115 million people and caused over 2.5 million deaths worldwide. Yet, the molecular mechanisms underlying the clinical manifestations of COVID-19, as well as what distinguishes them from common seasonal influenza virus and other lung injury states such as Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), remains poorly understood. To address these challenges, we combined transcriptional profiling of 646 clinical nasopharyngeal swabs and 39 patient autopsy tissues, matched with spatial protein and expression profiling (GeoMx) across 357 tissue sections. These results define both body-wide and tissue-specific (heart, liver, lung, kidney, and lymph nodes) damage wrought by the SARS-CoV-2 infection, evident as a function of varying viral load (high vs. low) during the course of infection and specific, transcriptional dysregulation in splicing isoforms, T cell receptor expression, and cellular expression states. In particular, cardiac and lung tissues revealed the largest degree of splicing isoform switching and cell expression state loss. Overall, these findings reveal a systemic disruption of cellular and transcriptional pathways from COVID-19 across all tissues, which can inform subsequent studies to combat the mortality of COVID-19, as well to better understand the molecular dynamics of lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection and other viruses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Park, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foox, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hether, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Danko, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warren, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reeves, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Butler, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mozsary, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rosiene, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shaiber, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Afshinnekoo, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MacKay, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bram, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chandar, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Geiger, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Craney, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Velu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Melnick, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hajirasouliha, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beheshti, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saravia-Butler, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schisler, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fenessey, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Corvelo, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zody, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Germer, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salvatore, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Levy, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tatonetti, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shapira, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salvatore, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loda, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Westblade, L. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cushing, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rennert, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kriegel, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elemento, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Imielinski, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borczuk, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meydan, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schwar</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.08.434433</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Systemic Tissue and Cellular Disruption from SARS-CoV-2 Infection revealed in COVID-19 Autopsies and Spatial Omics Tissue Maps]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.08.434479v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transposon-induced inversions activate gene expression in Maize pericarp 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.08.434479v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Chromosomal inversions can have considerable biological and agronomic impacts including disrupted gene function, change in gene expression and inhibited recombination. Here we describe the molecular structure and functional impact of six inversions caused by Alternative Transpositions between p1 and p2 genes responsible for floral pigmentation in maize. In maize line p1-wwB54, the p2 gene is expressed in anther and silk but not in pericarp, making the kernels white. We identified inversions in this region caused by transposition of Ac and fractured Ac (fAc) transposable elements. These inversions change the position of a p1 enhancer and activate the expression of p2 in the kernel pericarp, resulting in red kernel color. We hypothesize that these inversions place the p2 gene promoter near a p1 gene enhancer, thereby activating p2 expression in kernel pericarp.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sharma, S. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zuo, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.08.434479</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transposon-induced inversions activate gene expression in Maize pericarp]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.09.434527v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Multiple resource limitations explain biomass-precipitation relationships in grasslands 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.09.434527v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Interannual variability in grassland primary production is strongly driven by precipitation, nutrient availability and herbivory, but there is no general consensus on the mechanisms linking these variables. If grassland biomass is limited by the single most limiting resource at a given time, then we expect that nutrient addition will not affect biomass production at arid sites. We conducted a distributed experiment manipulating nutrients and herbivores at 44 grassland sites in 8 regions around the world, spanning a broad range in aridity. We estimated the effects of 5-11 years of nutrient addition and herbivore exclusion treatments on precipitation sensitivity of biomass (proportional change in biomass relative to proportional change in rainfall among years), and the biomass in the driest year (to measure treatment effects when water was most limiting) at each site. Grazer exclusion did not interact with nutrients to influence driest year biomass or sensitivity. Nutrient addition increased driest year biomass by 74% and sensitivity by 0.12 (proportional units), and that effect did not change across the range of aridity spanned by our sites. Grazer exclusion did not interact with nutrients to influence sensitivity or driest year biomass. At almost half of our sites, the previous year's rainfall explained as much variation in biomass as current year precipitation. Overall, our distributed fertilization experiment detected co-limitation between nutrients and water governing grasslands, with biomass sensitivity to precipitation being limited by nutrient availability irrespective of site aridity and herbivory. Our findings refute the classical ideas that grassland plant performance is limited by the single most limiting resource at a site. This suggests that nutrient eutrophication will destabilize grassland ecosystems through increased sensitivity to precipitation variation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bharath, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adler, P. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fay, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seabloom, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hautier, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Biederman, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bugalho, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Caldeira, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eskelinen, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Knops, J. M. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McCulley, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morgan, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Power, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Risch, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schuetz, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stevens, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Timothy, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Virtanen, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borer, E. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.09.434527</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Multiple resource limitations explain biomass-precipitation relationships in grasslands]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.12.435071v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Crosstalk in oxygen homeostasis networks: SKN-1/NRF inhibits the HIF-1 hypoxia-inducible factor in Caenorhabditis elegans 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.12.435071v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
During development, homeostasis, and disease, organisms must balance responses that allow adaptation to low oxygen (hypoxia) with those that protect cells from oxidative stress. The evolutionarily conserved hypoxia-inducible factors are central to these processes, as they orchestrate transcriptional responses to oxygen deprivation. Here, we employ genetic strategies in C. elegans to identify stress-responsive genes and pathways that modulate the HIF-1 hypoxia-inducible factor and facilitate oxygen homeostasis. Through a genome-wide RNAi screen, we show that RNAi-mediated mitochondrial or proteasomal dysfunction increases the expression of hypoxia-responsive reporter Pnhr-57:GFP in C. elegans. Interestingly, only a subset of these effects requires hif-1. Of particular importance, we found that skn-1 RNAi increases the expression of hypoxia-responsive reporter Pnhr-57:GFP and elevates HIF-1 protein levels. The SKN-1/NRF transcription factor has been shown to promote oxidative stress resistance. We present evidence that the crosstalk between HIF-1 and SKN-1 is mediated by EGL-9, the prolyl hydroxylase that targets HIF-1 for oxygen-dependent degradation. Treatment that induces SKN-1, such as heat, increases expression of a Pegl-9:GFP reporter, and this effect requires skn-1 function and a putative SKN-1 binding site in egl-9 regulatory sequences. Collectively, these data support a model in which SKN-1 promotes egl-9 transcription, thereby inhibiting HIF-1. We propose that this interaction enables animals to adapt quickly to changes in cellular oxygenation and to better survive accompanying oxidative stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Feng, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhai, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shao, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Powell-Coffman, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.12.435071</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Crosstalk in oxygen homeostasis networks: SKN-1/NRF inhibits the HIF-1 hypoxia-inducible factor in Caenorhabditis elegans]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.16.435657v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The interplay of chromatin phase separation and lamina interactions in nuclear organisation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.16.435657v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The genetic material of eukaryotes is segregated into transcriptionally active euchromatin and silent heterochromatin compartments. The spatial arrangement of chromatin compartments evolves over the course of cellular life in a process that remains poorly understood. The latest nuclear imaging experiments reveal a number of dynamical signatures of chromatin which are reminiscent of active multi-phase liquids. This includes the observations of viscoelastic response, coherent motions, Ostwald ripening and coalescence of chromatin compartments. There is also growing evidence that liquid-liquid phase separation of protein and nucleic acid components is the underlying mechanism for the dynamical behavior of chromatin. In order to dissect the organizational and dynamical implications of chromatins liquid behavior, we have devised a phenomenological field-theoretic model of nucleus as a multi-phase condensate of liquid chromatin types. Employing the liquid chromatin model of Drosophila nucleus, we have carried out an extensive set of simulations with an objective to shed light on the dynamics and chromatin patterning observed in the latest nuclear imaging experiments. Our simulations reveal the emergence of experimentally detected mesoscale chromatin channels and spheroidal droplets which arise from the dynamic interplay of chromatin type to type interactions and intermingling of chromosomal territories. We also quantitatively reproduce coherent motions of chromatin domains observed in displacement correlation spectroscopy measurements which are explained within the framework of our model by phase separation of chromatin types operating within constrained intra-chromosomal and inter-chromosomal boundaries. Finally, we illuminate the role of heterochromatin-lamina interactions in the nuclear organization by showing that these interactions enhance the mobility of euchromatin and indirectly introduce correlated motions of heterochromatin droplets.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTThe latest super-resolution imaging experiments have revealed a surprisingly dynamic and stochastic nature of chromatin in eukaryotic nuclei which is reminiscent of multi-phase fluid behavior. As a result, the concepts from the theory of complex fluids such as phase separation, viscoelasticity, and droplet nucleation have found widespread utility in understanding salient features of nuclear organization. In order to understand and disentangle the complex interplay of forces that contribute to the emergent patterns of organization and dynamics, we have devised a phenomenological field-theoretic model of nucleus as a multi-phase condensate of liquid chromatin types. Armed with a mesoscopic model of nuclear chromatin, we have shed light on the distinct dynamical and structural contributions of chromatin type interactions intermingling of chromosomal territories and lamina binding. We also shed light on the dynamical heterogeneity and coherent motions of chromatin domains which are fully captured by an interplay of micro-phase separation of chromatin types and lamina binding.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Laghmach, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Di Pierro, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.16.435657</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The interplay of chromatin phase separation and lamina interactions in nuclear organisation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.25.437076v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Demonstration of local adaptation of maize landraces by reciprocal transplantation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.25.437076v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Populations are locally adapted when they exhibit higher fitness than foreign populations in their native habitat. Maize landrace adaptations to highland and lowland conditions are of interest to researchers and breeders. To determine the prevalence and strength of local adaptation in maize landraces, we performed a reciprocal transplant experiment across an elevational gradient in Mexico. We grew 120 landraces, grouped into four populations (Mexican Highland, Mexican Lowland, South American Highland, South American Lowland), in Mexican highland and lowland common gardens and collected phenotypes relevant to fitness, as well as reported highland-adaptive traits such as anthocyanin pigmentation and macrohair density. 67k DArTseq markers were generated from field specimens to allow comparison between phenotypic patterns and population genetic structure.

We found phenotypic patterns consistent with local adaptation, though these patterns differ between the Mexican and South American populations. While population genetic structure largely recapitulates drift during post-domestication dispersal, landrace phenotypes reflect adaptations to native elevation. Quantitative trait QST was greater than neutral FST for many traits, signaling divergent directional selection between pairs of populations. All populations exhibited higher fitness metric values when grown at their native elevation, and Mexican landraces had higher fitness than South American landraces when grown in our Mexican sites. Highland populations expressed generally higher anthocyanin pigmentation than lowland populations, and more so in the highland site than in the lowland site. Macrohair density was largely non-plastic, and Mexican landraces and highland landraces were generally more pilose. Analysis of{delta} 13C indicated that lowland populations may have lower WUE. Each population demonstrated garden-specific correlations between highland trait expression and fitness, with stronger positive correlations in the highland site.

These results give substance to the long-held presumption of local adaptation of New World maize landraces to elevation and other environmental variables across North and South America.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Janzen, G. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aguilar-Rangel, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cintora-Martinez, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Blöcher-Juarez, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gonzalez-Segovia, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Studer, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Runcie, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flint-Garcia, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rellan-Alvarez, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sawers, R. J. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.25.437076</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Demonstration of local adaptation of maize landraces by reciprocal transplantation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.26.437214v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Co-targeting strategy for precise, scarless gene editing with CRISPR/Cas9 and donor ssODNs in Chlamydomonas 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.26.437214v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Programmable site-specific nucleases, such as the CRISPR/Cas9 ribonucleoproteins (RNPs), have allowed creation of valuable knockout mutations and targeted gene modifications in Chlamydomonas. However, in walled strains, present methods for editing genes lacking a selectable phenotype involve co-transfection of RNPs and exogenous double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) encoding a selectable marker gene. Repair of the double-stranded DNA breaks induced by the ribonucleoproteins is usually accompanied by genomic insertion of exogenous dsDNA fragments, hindering the recovery of precise, scarless mutations in target genes of interest. In this study, we tested whether co-targeting two genes by electroporation of pairs of CRISPR/Cas9 RNPs and single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides (ssODNs) would facilitate the recovery of precise edits in a gene of interest (lacking a selectable phenotype) by selection for precise editing of another gene (creating a selectable marker) - in a process completely lacking exogenous dsDNA. We used PPX1 (encoding protoporphyrinogen IX oxidase) as the generated selectable marker, conferring resistance to oxyfluorfen, and identified precisely, scarless edited FTSY or WDTC1 genes in [~]1% of the oxyfluorfen resistant colonies. Analysis of the target site sequences in edited mutants suggested that ssODNs were used as templates for DNA synthesis during homology directed repair, a process prone to replicative errors. The Chlamydomonas acetolactate synthase gene could also be efficiently edited to serve as an alternative selectable marker. This transgene-free strategy may allow creation of individual strains containing precise mutations in multiple target genes, to study complex cellular processes, pathways or structures.

One sentence summaryCo-targeting two genes by co-electroporation of CRISPR/Cas9 RNPs and ssODN repair templates allows concomitant genome editing to create a selectable marker gene and to introduce precise modifications in another gene of interest.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cerutti, H. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Akella, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ma, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bacova, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harmer, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kolackova, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wen, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wright, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Spalding, M. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weeks, D. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.26.437214</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Co-targeting strategy for precise, scarless gene editing with CRISPR/Cas9 and donor ssODNs in Chlamydomonas]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.29.436703v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic Architecture of Kernel Compositional Variation in a Maize Diversity Panel 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.29.436703v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maize (Zea mays L.) is a multi-purpose row crop grown worldwide, which overtime has often been bred for increased yield at the detriment of lower composition grain quality. Some knowledge of the genetic factors that affect quality traits has been discovered through the study of classical maize mutants. However, much of the underlying genetic architecture controlling these traits and the interaction between these traits remains unknown. To better understand variation that exists for grain compositional traits in maize, we evaluated 501 diverse temperate maize inbred lines in five unique environments and predicted 16 compositional traits (e.g. carbohydrates, protein, starch) based on the output of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. Phenotypic analysis found substantial variation for compositional traits and the majority of variation was explained by genetic and environmental factors. Correlations and trade-offs among traits in different maize types (e.g. dent, sweetcorn, popcorn) were explored and significant differences and correlations were detected. In total, 22.9-71.1% of the phenotypic variation across these traits could be explained using 2,386,666 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers generated from whole genome resequencing data. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) was conducted using these same markers and found 70 statistically significant loci for 12 compositional traits. This study provides valuable insights in the phenotypic variation and genetic architecture underlying compositional traits that can be used in breeding programs for improving maize grain quality.

Core IdeasO_LIUnderstanding kernel compositional variation is important for food grade corn improvement.
C_LIO_LIGenetic and environmental factors account for most of the variation in compositional traits.
C_LIO_LIA broad range in trait heritabilities was observed across compositional traits.
C_LIO_LICompositional trade-offs will be important to consider when conducting multitrait breeding.
C_LIO_LICompositional traits are mostly controlled by a large number of small effect loci.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Renk, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilbert, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hattery, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Monnahan, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Waters, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eickholt, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flint-Garcia, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yandeau-Nelson, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-03-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.29.436703</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic Architecture of Kernel Compositional Variation in a Maize Diversity Panel]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-03-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.31.437946v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dynamic product-precursor relationships underlie cuticular lipid accumulation on maize silks 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.31.437946v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The hydrophobic cuticle is the first line of defense between aerial portions of a plant and the external environment. On maize silks, the cuticular cutin matrix is infused with cuticular lipids, consisting of a homologous series of very-long-chain fatty acids (VLCFAs), aldehydes, and hydrocarbons that serve as precursors, intermediates, and end-products of the elongation, reduction, and decarbonylation reactions of the hydrocarbon-producing pathway. To deconvolute the potentially confounding impacts of the silk microenvironment and silk development on the hydrocarbon-producing pathway, spatio-temporal cuticular lipid profiling was conducted on the agronomically important inbreds B73 and Mo17, and their reciprocal hybrids. Statistical interrogation via multivariate analyses of the metabolite abundances of the hydrocarbon-producing pathway demonstrate that the cellular VLCFA pool is positively correlated with the cuticular lipid metabolome, and this metabolome is primarily affected by the silk microenvironment and the plant genotype. Moreover, genotype has a major effect on the pathway, with increased cuticular hydrocarbon and concomitant reduction of cuticular VLCFA accumulation on B73 silks, suggesting that conversion of VLCFAs to hydrocarbons is more effective in B73 than Mo17. Statistical modeling of the ratios between cuticular hydrocarbons and cuticular VLCFAs reveals the complexity of the product-precursor ratio relationship, demonstrating a significant role of precursor chain length. Longer-chain VLCFAs are preferentially utilized as precursors for hydrocarbon biosynthesis. Collectively, these findings demonstrate maize silks as an effective and novel system for dissection of the complex dynamics of cuticular lipid accumulation in plants.

One-sentence SummaryThe product-precursor ratios in the cuticular hydrocarbon-producing pathway are impacted by fatty acid precursor chain length, plant genotype and the spatio-temporal dynamic gradients of maize silks.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chen, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alexander, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mahgoub, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Okazaki, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Higashi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Takano, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loneman, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dennison, T. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lopez, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Claussen, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peddicord, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saito, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lauter, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yandeau-Nelson, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.03.31.437946</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dynamic product-precursor relationships underlie cuticular lipid accumulation on maize silks]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.02.438107v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Reference transcriptomes of porcine peripheral immune cells created through bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.02.438107v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Pigs are a valuable human biomedical model and an important protein source supporting global food security. The transcriptomes of peripheral blood immune cells in pigs were defined at the bulk cell-type and single cell levels. First, eight cell types were isolated in bulk from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) by cell sorting, representing Myeloid, NK cells and specific populations of T and B cells. Transcriptomes for each bulk population of cells were generated by RNA-seq with 10,974 expressed genes detected. Pairwise comparisons between cell types revealed specific expression, while enrichment analysis identified 1,885 to 3,591 significantly enriched genes across all 8 cell types. Gene Ontology analysis for the top 25% of significantly enriched genes (SEG) showed high enrichment of biological processes related to the nature of each cell type. Comparison of gene expression indicated highly significant correlations between pig cells and corresponding human PBMC bulk RNA-seq data available in Haemopedia. Second, higher resolution of distinct cell populations was obtained by single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) of PBMC. Seven PBMC samples were partitioned and sequenced that produced 28,810 single cell transcriptomes distributed across 36 clusters and classified into 13 general cell types including plasmacytoid dendritic cells (DC), conventional DCs, monocytes, B cell, conventional CD4 and CD8 {beta} T cells, NK cells, and {gamma}{delta} T cells. Signature gene sets from the human Haemopedia data were assessed for relative enrichment in genes expressed in pig cells and integration of pig scRNA-seq with a public human scRNA-seq dataset provided further validation for similarity between human and pig data. The sorted porcine bulk RNAseq dataset informed classification of scRNA-seq PBMC populations; specifically, an integration of the datasets showed that the pig bulk RNAseq data helped define the CD4CD8 double-positive T cell populations in the scRNA-seq data. Overall, the data provides deep and well-validated transcriptomic data from sorted PBMC populations and the first single-cell transcriptomic data for porcine PBMCs. This resource will be invaluable for annotation of pig genes controlling immunogenetic traits as part of the porcine Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG) project, as well as further study of, and development of new reagents for, porcine immunology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Herrera-Uribe, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wiarda, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivasankaran, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Daharsh, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Byrne, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lunney, J. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loving, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuggle, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.02.438107</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Reference transcriptomes of porcine peripheral immune cells created through bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.04.438421v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Behavior of Neural Cells Post Manufacturing and After Prolonged Encapsulation within Conductive Graphene-Laden Alginate Microfibers 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.04.438421v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Engineering conductive 3D cell scaffoldings offer unique advantages towards the creation of physiologically relevant platforms with integrated real-time sensing capabilities. Toward this goal, rat dopaminergic neural cells were encapsulated into graphene-laden alginate microfibers using a microfluidic fiber fabrication approach, which is unmatched for creating continuous, highly tunable microfibers. Incorporating graphene increases the conductivity of the alginate microfibers 148%, creating a similar conductivity to native brain tissue. Graphene leads to an increase in the cross-sectional sizes and porosities of the fibers, while reducing the roughness of the fiber surface. The cell encapsulation procedure has an efficiency rate of 50%, and of those cells, approximately 30% remain for the entire 6-day observation period. To understand how encapsulation effects cell genetics, the genes IL-1{beta}, TH, TNF-, and TUBB-3 are analyzed, both after manufacturing and after encapsulation for six days. The manufacturing process and combination with alginate leads to an upregulation of TH, and the introduction of graphene further increases its levels; however, the inverse trend is true of TUBB-3. Long-term encapsulation shows continued upregulation of TH and of TNF-, and six-day exposure to graphene leads to the upregulation of TUBB-3 and IL-1{beta}, which indicates increased inflammation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>McNamara, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Niaraki Asli, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pemathilaka, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wrede, A. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montazami, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hashemi, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.04.438421</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Behavior of Neural Cells Post Manufacturing and After Prolonged Encapsulation within Conductive Graphene-Laden Alginate Microfibers]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.07.438762v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Interpretable Artificial Neural Networks incorporating Bayesian Alphabet Models for Genome-wide Prediction and Association Studies 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.07.438762v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In conventional linear models for whole-genome prediction and genome-wide association studies (GWAS), it is usually assumed that the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes is linear. Bayesian neural networks have been used to account for non-linearity such as complex genetic architectures. Here, we introduce a method named NN-Bayes, where "NN" stands for neural networks, and "Bayes" stands for Bayesian Alphabet models, including a collection of Bayesian regression models such as BayesA, BayesB, BayesC, Bayesian LASSO, and BayesR. NN-Bayes incorporates Bayesian Alphabet models into non-linear neural networks via hidden layers between SNPs and observed traits. Thus, NN-Bayes attempts to improve the performance of genome-wide prediction and GWAS by accommodating non-linear relationships between the hidden nodes and the observed trait, while maintaining genomic interpretability through the Bayesian regression models that connect the SNPs to the hidden nodes. For genomic interpretability, the posterior distribution of marker effects in NN-Bayes is inferred by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approaches and used for inference of association through posterior inclusion probabilities (PIPs) and window posterior probability of association (WPPA). In simulation studies with dominance and epistatic effects, performance of NN-Bayes was significantly better than conventional linear models for both GWAS and whole-genome prediction, and the differences on prediction accuracy were substantial in magnitude. In real data analyses, for the soy dataset, NN-Bayes achieved significantly higher prediction accuracies than conventional linear models, and results from other four different species showed that NN-Bayes had similar prediction performance to linear models, which is potentially due to the small sample size. Our NN-Bayes is optimized for high-dimensional genomic data and implemented in an open-source package called "JWAS". NN-Bayes can lead to greater use of Bayesian neural networks to account for non-linear relationships due to its interpretability and computational performance.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cheng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernando, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.07.438762</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Interpretable Artificial Neural Networks incorporating Bayesian Alphabet Models for Genome-wide Prediction and Association Studies]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.07.438828v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Portrait of a genus: the genetic diversity of Zea 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.07.438828v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maize is a globally valuable commodity and one of the most extensively studied genetic model organisms. However, we know surprisingly little about the extent and potential utility of the genetic variation found in the wild relatives of maize. Here, we characterize a high-density genomic variation map from ~700 genomes encompassing maize and all wild taxa of the genus Zea, identifying over 65 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), 8 million Insertion/Deletion (InDel) polymorphisms, and over one thousand novel inversions. The variation map reveals evidence of selection within taxa displaying novel adaptations such as perenniality and regrowth. We focus in detail on evidence of convergent adaptation in highland teosinte and temperate maize. This study not only indicates the key role of hormone related pathways in highland adaptation and flowering time related pathways in high latitude adaptation, but also identifies significant overlap in the genes underlying adaptations to both environments. To show how this data can identify useful genetic variants, we generated and characterized novel mutant alleles for two flowering time candidate genes. This work provides the most extensive sampling to date of the genetic diversity inherent in the genus Zea, resolving questions on evolution and identifying adaptive variants for direct use in modern breeding.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chen, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jin, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peng, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qing, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ye, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yan, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gui, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Deng, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jin, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jian, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernie, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warburton, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yan, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.07.438828</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Portrait of a genus: the genetic diversity of Zea]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.12.439507v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Estimating the age of poorly dated fossil specimens and deposits using a total-evidence approach and the fossilized birth-death process 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.12.439507v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bayesian total-evidence approaches under the fossilized birth-death model enable biologists to combine fossil and extant data while accounting for uncertainty in the ages of fossil specimens, in an integrative phylogenetic analysis. Fossil age uncertainty is a key feature of the fossil record as many empirical datasets may contain a mix of precisely dated and poorly dated fossil specimens or deposits. In this study, we explore whether reliable age estimates for fossil specimens can be obtained from Bayesian total-evidence phylogenetic analyses under the fossilized birth-death model. Through simulations based on the example of the Baltic amber deposit, we show that estimates of fossil ages obtained through such an analysis are accurate, particularly when the proportion of poorly dated specimens remains low and the majority of fossil specimens have precise dates. We confirm our results using an empirical dataset of living and fossil penguins by artificially increasing the age uncertainty around some fossil specimens and showing that the resulting age estimates overlap with the recorded age ranges. Our results are applicable to many empirical datasets where classical methods of establishing fossil ages have failed, such as the Baltic amber and the Gobi Desert deposits.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Barido-Sottani, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zyla, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heath, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.12.439507</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Estimating the age of poorly dated fossil specimens and deposits using a total-evidence approach and the fossilized birth-death process]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.13.437608v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identification of beneficial and detrimental bacteria that impact sorghum responses to drought using multi-scale and multi-system microbiome comparisons 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.13.437608v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundDrought is a major abiotic stress that limits agricultural productivity. Previous field-level experiments have demonstrated that drought decreases microbiome diversity in the root and rhizosphere and may lead to enrichment of specific groups of microbes, such as Actinobacteria. How these changes ultimately affect plant health is not well understood. In parallel, model systems have been used to tease apart the specific interactions between plants and single, or small groups of microbes. However, translating this work into crop species and achieving increased crop yields within noisy field settings remains a challenge. Thus, the next scientific leap forward in microbiome research must cross the great lab-to-field divide. Toward this end, we combined reductionist, transitional and ecological approaches, applied to the staple cereal crop sorghum to identify key beneficial and detrimental, root associated microbes that robustly affect drought stressed plant phenotypes.

ResultsFifty-three bacterial strains, originally characterized for association with Arabidopsis, were applied to sorghum seeds and their effect on root growth was monitored for seven days. Two Arthrobacter strains, members of the Actinobacteria phylum, caused root growth inhibition (RGI) in Arabidopsis and sorghum. In the context of synthetic communities, strains of Variovorax were able to protect both Arabidopsis and sorghum from the RGI caused by Arthrobacter. As a transitional system, we tested the synthetic communities through a 24-day high-throughput sorghum phenotyping assay and found that during drought stress, plants colonized by Arthrobacter were significantly smaller and had reduced leaf water content as compared to control plants. However, plants colonized by both Arthrobacter and Variovorax performed as well or better than control plants. In parallel, we performed a field trial wherein sorghum was evaluated across well-watered and drought conditions. Drought responsive microbes were identified, including an enrichment in Actinobacteria, consistent with previous findings. By incorporating data on soil properties into the microbiome analysis, we accounted for experimental noise with a newly developed method and were then able to observe that the abundance of Arthrobacter strains negatively correlated with plant growth. Having validated this approach, we cross-referenced datasets from the high-throughput phenotyping and field experiments and report a list of high confidence bacterial taxa that positively associated with plant growth under drought stress.

ConclusionsA three-tiered experimental system connected reductionist and ecological approaches and identified beneficial and deleterious bacterial strains for sorghum under drought stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Qi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Berry, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Veley, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Finkel, O. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salas-Gonzalez, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuhs, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jupe, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holcomb, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Glavina del Rio, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Creech, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tringe, S. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dangl, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schachtman, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bart, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.13.437608</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identification of beneficial and detrimental bacteria that impact sorghum responses to drought using multi-scale and multi-system microbiome comparisons]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.13.439608v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Clinical Efficacy of Prebiotics and Glycosaminoglycans versus Placebo In Dogs with Food Responsive Enteropathy Receiving a Hydrolyzed Diet: A Pilot Study 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.13.439608v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Induction of remission is easily achieved with dietary treatment in dogs diagnosed with Food Responsive Chronic Enteropathy (FRD). Administration of prebiotics and glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) may improve epithelial cell integrity and therefore be useful as adjunct treatment. This study evaluated whether the relapse rate of FRD dogs that are switched back to a normal diet can be influenced using supplemental treatment with prebiotics and GAGs.

A randomized, controlled clinical trial (RCCT) was performed in dogs diagnosed with FRD. Dogs were diagnosed based on clinical exclusion diagnosis, endoscopic biopsies showing predominantly lymphoplasmacytic infiltration, and response to dietary treatment. Dogs were randomized to be fed a combination of prebiotics and GAGs (group 1) or placebo (group 2) in addition to a hydrolyzed diet. At week 10, a second endoscopy was performed and dogs were switched back to normal diet. Relapse rate was monitored every 2 weeks after that until week 18.

Statistical analysis was performed for each outcome (Canine Chronic Enteropathy Clinical Activity Index (CCECAI), clinicopathological data, endoscopic scoring, mWSAVA histological scoring index (mWSAVA), and number of relapses following switch to normal diet) using a linear mixed effects model for group comparison. Time, group, and their interactions were included as a fixed effect, whereas each dog was treated as a random effect.

Of the 35 dogs enrolled into the clinical trial, 10 in each group reached the point of second endoscopy. A total of 13 dogs (n=8 in group 1 and n=5 in group 2) reached the trial endpoint of 18 weeks. After switching back to normal diet, none of the dogs in either group relapsed. No significant differences were found over time or between groups for CCECAI, endoscopy scoring and histological scoring. Although there was a clinical worsening in the placebo group after switching back to the original diet, this was not statistically significant (CCECAI p=0.58). Post-hoc power calculation revealed that 63 dogs per group would have been needed to detect statistically significant differences in CIBDAI between treatment groups. Standard dietary treatment induced rapid clinical response in all cases, however, additional supplementation with prebiotics and GAGs did not significantly improve clinical outcome within 4 months after switching back to normal diet. Since there are very few RCCT published in CE in dogs, this pilot study provides important power analyses for planning of further studies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Allenspach, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Glanemann, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seo, Y.-J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Priestnall, S. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garden, O. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kilburn, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rossoni-Serao, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Segarra, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.13.439608</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Clinical Efficacy of Prebiotics and Glycosaminoglycans versus Placebo In Dogs with Food Responsive Enteropathy Receiving a Hydrolyzed Diet: A Pilot Study]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.14.439460v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Males perceive honest information from female released sex pheromone in a moth 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.14.439460v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
There is accumulating evidence that male insects advertise their quality to conspecific females through pheromones. However, most studies of female released sex pheromone assume information transfer regarding merely the species of the female and her mating status. We show that more and precise information is conveyed through the female sex pheromone, positioning it as an honest sexual trait. We demonstrate that females in bad physical conditions (small, starved or old) lay significantly fewer eggs than females in good conditions (large, fed or young). The ratio of the sex pheromone blend in gland extracts of female pink bollworm moths accurately describes the female phenotypic condition whereas the pheromone amount in the glands fails to provide an honest signal of quality. Moreover, males use the female released pheromone blend to choose their mates and approach females that signal higher reproductive potential. In addition, surrogating the female effect, using synthetic pheromone blend that represents that of higher quality females (0.6:0.4 ZZ:ZE) more males were attracted to this blend than to the blend representing the population mean (0.5:0.5 ZZ:ZE). Both, female advertisement for males and the male choosiness, suggest that pheromones have evolved as sexual traits under directional, sexual selection.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Golov, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gonzalez-Karlsson, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Steinitz, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moncaz, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Halon, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Horowitz, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goldenberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gurka, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liberzon, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Soroker, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jurenka, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harari, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.14.439460</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Males perceive honest information from female released sex pheromone in a moth]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.16.439882v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The United States Swine Pathogen Database: integrating veterinary diagnostic laboratory sequence data to monitor emerging pathogens of swine 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.16.439882v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Veterinary diagnostic laboratories annually derive thousands of nucleotide sequences from clinical samples of swine pathogens such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), Senecavirus A, and swine enteric coronaviruses. In addition, next generation sequencing has resulted in the rapid production of full-length genomes. Presently, sequence data are released to diagnostic clients for the purposes of informing control measures, but are not publicly available as data may be associated with sensitive information. However, public sequence data can be used to objectively design field-relevant vaccines; determine when and how pathogens are spreading across the landscape; identify virus transmission hotspots; and are a critical component in genomic surveillance for pandemic preparedness. We have developed a centralized sequence database that integrates a selected set of previously private clinical data, using PRRSV data as an exemplar, alongside publicly available genomic information. We implemented the Tripal toolkit, using the open source Drupal content management system and the Chado database schema. Tripal consists of a collection of Drupal modules that are used to manage, visualize, and disseminate biological data stored within Chado. Hosting is provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 cloud instance with resource scaling. New sequences sourced from diagnostic labs contain at a minimum four data items: genomic information; date of collection; collection location (state or province level); and a unique identifier. Users can download annotated genomic sequences from the database using a customized search interface that incorporates data mined from published literature; search for similar sequences using BLAST-based tools; and explore annotated reference genomes. Additionally, because the bulk of data presently are PRRSV sequences, custom curation and annotation pipelines have determined PRRSV genotype (Type 1 or 2), the location of open reading frames and nonstructural proteins, generated amino acid sequences, the occurrence of putative frame shifts, and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) classification of GP5 genes. Genomic data from seven major swine pathogens have been curated and annotated. The resource provides researchers timely access to sequences discovered by veterinary diagnosticians, allowing for epidemiological and comparative virology studies. The result will be a better understanding on the emergence of novel swine viruses in the United States (US), and how these novel strains are disseminated in the US and abroad.

Database URLhttps://swinepathogendb.org
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Inderski, B. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diel, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hause, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Porter, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clement, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelson, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Christopher-Hennings, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harmon, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Main, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lager, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Faaberg, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.16.439882</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The United States Swine Pathogen Database: integrating veterinary diagnostic laboratory sequence data to monitor emerging pathogens of swine]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.440293v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A bacterial "shield and sword": A previously uncharacterized two-component system protects uropathogenic Escherichia coli from host-derived oxidative insults and promotes hemolysin-mediated host cell pyroptosis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.440293v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) deploys an array of virulence factors to successfully establish urinary tract infections. Coordinated expression of these various virulence factors is critical for UPECs overall fitness in the host. Two-component signaling systems (TCSs) are a major mechanism by which bacteria sense environmental cues and initiate adaptive responses. Here, we report a previously uncharacterized TCS encoded on a pathogenicity island in UPEC that directly activates the expression of a putative methionine sulfoxide reductase system (C3566/C3567) and a pore-forming -hemolysin in response to host-derived hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) exposure. The TCS increases UPEC resistance to H2O2 in vitro and survival in macrophages in tissue culture via C3566/C3567. Additionally, the TCS mediates -hemolysin-induced renal epithelial cell and macrophage death via a pyroptosis pathway. Taken together, our data suggest a paradigm in which this signal transduction system coordinates both bacterial pathogen defensive and offensive traits in the presence of host-derived signals.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cai, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cai, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.19.440293</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A bacterial "shield and sword": A previously uncharacterized two-component system protects uropathogenic Escherichia coli from host-derived oxidative insults and promotes hemolysin-mediated host cell pyroptosis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.20.440584v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Targeted next-generation sequencing of Candidate Regions Identified by GWAS Revealed SNPs Associated with IBD in GSDs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.20.440584v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Canine Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic multifactorial disease, resulting from complex interactions between the intestinal immune system, microbiota and environmental factors in genetically predisposed dogs. Previously, we identified several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and regions on chromosomes (Chr) 7, 9, 11 and 13 associated with IBD in German shepherd dogs (GSD) using GWAS and FST association analyses. Here, building on our previous results, we performed a targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) of a two Mb region on Chr 9 and 11 that included 14 of the newly identified candidate genes, in order to identify potential functional SNPs that could explain these association signals. Furthermore, correlations between genotype and treatment response were estimated. Results revealed several SNPs in the genes for canine EEF1A1, MDH2, IL3, IL4, IL13 and PDLIM, which, based on the known function of their corresponding proteins, further our insight into the pathogenesis of IBD in dogs. In addition, several pathways involved in innate and adaptive immunity and inflammatory responses (i.e. T helper cell differentiation, Th1 and Th2 activation pathway, communication between innate and adaptive immune cells and differential regulation of cytokine production in intestinal epithelial cells by IL-17A and IL-17F), were constructed involving the gene products in the candidate regions for IBD susceptibility. Interestingly, some of the identified SNPs were present in only one outcome group, suggesting that different genetic factors are involved in the pathogenesis of IBD in different treatment response groups. This also highlights potential genetic markers to predict the response in dogs treated for IBD.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Peiravan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salavati, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Psifidi, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kent, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Watson, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allenspach, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Werling, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.20.440584</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Targeted next-generation sequencing of Candidate Regions Identified by GWAS Revealed SNPs Associated with IBD in GSDs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.20.440608v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genome-centric analyses of seasonal phyllosphere microbiome activities in perennial crops 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.20.440608v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plants and microorganisms form beneficial associations. Understanding plant-microbe interactions will inform microbiome management to enhance crop productivity and resilience to stress. Here, we apply a genome-centric approach to identify key leaf microbiome members on field-grown switchgrass and miscanthus, and quantify their activities for switchgrass over two growing seasons. We integrate metagenome and metatranscriptome sequencing from 192 leaf samples collected over key time points in crop phenology. We curated 40 focal metagenome-assembled-genomes (MAGs) and conservatively focus analysis on transcript recruitment to medium and high-quality MAGs that were <10% contaminated and >50% complete. Classes represented by these MAGs (Actinomycetia, Alpha- and Gamma-Proteobacteria, and Bacteroidota) were active and had seasonal dynamics in key functions, including enrichments in transcripts for of short chain dehydrogenase, molybdopterin oxioreductase, and polyketide cyclase in the late season. The majority of MAGs had activated stress-associated pathways, including trehalose metabolism, indole acetic acid degradation, betaine biosynthesis, and reactive oxygen species degradation, suggesting direct engagement with the host environment. We also detected seasonally activated biosynthetic pathways for terpenes (carotenoid and isoprenoids), and for various non-ribosomal peptide pathways that were poorly annotated. Overall, this study overcame laboratory and bioinformatic challenges associated with field-based leaf metatranscriptome analysis to inform potential key activities of these phyllosphere populations. These activities collectively support that leaf-associated bacterial populations are seasonally dynamic, responsive to host cues and interactively engage in feedbacks with the plant.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Howe, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stopnisek, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dooley, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, F. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grady, K. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shade, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.20.440608</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genome-centric analyses of seasonal phyllosphere microbiome activities in perennial crops]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.21.440774v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Leveraging probability concepts for genotype by environment recommendation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.21.440774v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Statistical models that capture the phenotypic plasticity of a genotype across environments are crucial in plant breeding programs to potentially identify parents, generate offspring, and obtain highly productive genotypes for distinct environments. In this study, our aim is to leverage concepts of Bayesian models and probability methods of stability analysis to untangle genotype-by-environment interaction (GEI). The proposed method employs the posterior distribution obtained with the No-U-Turn sampler algorithm to get Monte Carlo estimates of adaptation and stability probabilities. We applied the proposed models in two empirical tropical datasets. Our findings provide a basis to enhance our ability to consider the uncertainty of cultivar recommendation for global or specific adaptation. We further demonstrate that probability methods of stability analysis in a Bayesian framework are a powerful tool for unraveling GEI given a defined intensity of selection that results in a more informed decision-making process towards cultivar recommendation in multi-environment trials.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dias, K. O. d. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>dos Santos, J. P. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krause, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Piepho, H.-P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guimaraes, L. J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pastina, M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garcia, A. A. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.21.440774</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Leveraging probability concepts for genotype by environment recommendation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.22.440883v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Inclusion of environmentally themed search terms improved Elastic Net regression nowcasts of regional Lyme disease rates 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.22.440883v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lyme disease is the most widely reported vector-borne disease in the United States. 95% of human cases are reported in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Human cases typically occur in the spring and summer months when an infected nymph Ixodid tick takes a blood meal. Current federal surveillance strategies report data on an annual basis, leading to nearly a year lag in national data reporting. These lags in reporting make it difficult for public health agencies to assess and plan for the current burden of Lyme disease. Implementation of a nowcasting model, using historical data to predict current trends, provides a means for public health agencies to evaluate current Lyme disease burden and make timely priority-based budgeting decisions. The objective of this study was to develop and compare the performance of nowcasting models using free data from Google Trends and Centers of Disease Control and Prevention surveillance reports for Lyme Disease. We developed two sets of elastic net models for five regions of the United States first using monthly proportional hit data from 21 disease symptoms and tick related terms and second using monthly proportional hit data from all terms identified via Google correlate plus 21 disease symptom and vector terms. Elastic net models using the larger term list were highly accurate (Root Mean Square Error: 0.74, Mean Absolute Error: 0.52, R2: 0.97) for four of the five regions of the United States. Including these more environmental terms improved accuracy 1.33-fold while reducing error 0.5-fold compared to predictions from models using disease symptom and vector terms alone. Models using Google data similar to this could help local and state public health agencies accurately monitor Lyme disease burden during times of reporting lag from federal public health reporting agencies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kontowicz, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Torner, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carrel, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baker, K. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Petersen, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.22.440883</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Inclusion of environmentally themed search terms improved Elastic Net regression nowcasts of regional Lyme disease rates]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.23.441024v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Great Deceiver: miR-2392's Hidden Role in Driving SARS-CoV-2 Infection 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.23.441024v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs involved in post-transcriptional gene regulation that have a major impact on many diseases and provides an exciting avenue towards antiviral therapeutics. From patient transcriptomic data, we have discovered a circulating miRNA, miR-2392, that is directly involved with SARS-CoV-2 machinery during host infection. Specifically, we show that miR-2392 is key in driving downstream suppression of mitochondrial gene expression, increasing inflammation, glycolysis, and hypoxia as well as promoting many symptoms associated with COVID-19 infection. We demonstrate miR-2392 is present in the blood and urine of COVID-19 positive patients, but not detected in COVID-19 negative patients. These findings indicate the potential for developing a novel, minimally invasive, COVID-19 detection method. Lastly, using in vitro human and in vivo hamster models, we have developed a novel miRNA-based antiviral therapeutic that targets miR-2392, significantly reduces SARS-CoV-2 viability in hamsters and may potentially inhibit a COVID-19 disease state in humans.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>McDonald, J. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Enguita, F. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bowen, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Griffin, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Priebe, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Emmett, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrath, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sajadi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, A. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clement, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dybas, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aykin-Burns, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guarnieri, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, L. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grabham, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baylin, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yousey, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pearson, A. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Corry, P. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saravia-Butler, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aunins, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nagpal, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meydan, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foox, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mozsary, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cerqueira, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zaksas, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Costes, S. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Galeano, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Paccanaro, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meinig, S. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hagan, R. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bowman, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>UNC COVID-19 Pathobiology Consortium,</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wolfgang, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Altinok, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sapoval, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Treangen</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.23.441024</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Great Deceiver: miR-2392's Hidden Role in Driving SARS-CoV-2 Infection]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.23.441164v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Brachypodium distachyon cold-acclimated plasma membrane proteome is primed for stress resistance 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.23.441164v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In order to survive sub-zero temperatures, some plants undergo cold acclimation where low, non-freezing temperatures and/or shortened day lengths allow cold hardening and survival during subsequent freeze events. Central to this response is the plasma membrane, where low-temperature is perceived and cellular homeostasis must be preserved by maintaining membrane integrity. Here, we present the first plasma membrane proteome of cold-acclimated Brachypodium distachyon, a model species for the study of monocot crops. A time course experiment investigated cold acclimation-induced changes in the proteome following two-phase partitioning plasma membrane enrichment and label-free quantification by nano-liquid chromatography mass spectrophotometry. Two days of cold acclimation were sufficient for membrane protection as well as an initial increase in sugar levels, and coincided with a significant change in the abundance of 154 proteins. Prolonged cold acclimation resulted in further increases in soluble sugars and abundance changes in more than 680 proteins, suggesting both a necessary early response to low-temperature treatment, as well as a sustained cold acclimation response elicited over several days. A meta-analysis revealed that the identified plasma membrane proteins have known roles in low-temperature tolerance, metabolism, transport, and pathogen defense as well as drought, osmotic stress and salt resistance suggesting crosstalk between stress responses, such that cold acclimation may prime plants for other abiotic and biotic stresses. The plasma membrane proteins identified here present keys to an understanding of cold tolerance in monocot crops and the hope of addressing economic losses associated with modern climate-mediated increases in frost events.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Juurakko, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bredow, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakayama, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Imai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kawamura, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>diCenzo, G. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Uemura, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walker, V. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.23.441164</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Brachypodium distachyon cold-acclimated plasma membrane proteome is primed for stress resistance]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.25.441366v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Standardized genome-wide function prediction enables comparative functional genomics in plants: a new application area for Gene Ontologies 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.25.441366v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundGenome-wide gene function annotations are useful for hypothesis generation and for prioritizing candidate genes potentially responsible for phenotypes of interest. We functionally annotated the genes of 18 crop plant genomes across 14 species using the GOMAP pipeline.

ResultsBy comparison to existing GO annotation datasets, GOMAP-generated datasets cover more genes, contain more GO terms, and produce datasets similar in quality (based on precision and recall metrics using existing gold standards as the basis for comparison). From there, we sought to determine whether the datasets across multiple species could be used together to carry out comparative functional genomics analyses in plants. To test the idea and as a proof of concept, we created dendrograms of functional relatedness based on terms assigned for all 18 genomes. These dendrograms were compared to well-established species-level evolutionary phylogenies to determine whether trees derived were in agreement with known evolutionary relationships, which they largely are. Where discrepancies were observed, we determined branch support based on jack-knifing then removed individual annotation sets by genome to identify the annotation sets causing unexpected relationships.

ConclusionsGOMAP-derived functional annotations used together across multiple species generally retain sufficient biological signal to recover known phylogenetic relationships based on genome-wide functional similarities, indicating that comparative functional genomics across species based on GO data hold promise for generating novel hypotheses about comparative gene function and traits.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fattel, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Psaroudakis, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yanarella, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chiteri, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dostalik, H. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Joshi, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Starr, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wimalanathan, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.25.441366</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Standardized genome-wide function prediction enables comparative functional genomics in plants: a new application area for Gene Ontologies]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.29.441834v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Increased signal to noise ratios within experimental field trials by regressing spatially distributed soil properties as principal components. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.29.441834v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Environmental variability poses a major challenge to any field study. Researchers attempt to mitigate this challenge through replication. Thus, the ability to detect experimental signals is determined by the degree of replication and the amount of environmental variation, noise, within the experimental system. A major source of noise in field studies comes from the natural heterogeneity of soil properties which create micro-treatments throughout the field. To make matters worse, the variation within different soil properties is often non-randomly distributed across a field. We explore this challenge through a sorghum field trial dataset with accompanying plant, microbiome and soil property data. Diverse sorghum genotypes and two watering regimes were applied in a split-plot design. We describe a process of identifying, estimating, and controlling for the effects of spatially distributed soil properties on plant traits and microbial communities using minimal degrees of freedom. Importantly, this process provides a tool with which sources of environmental variation in field data can be identified and removed, improving our ability to resolve effects of interest and to quantify subtle phenotypes.

IMPORTANCEData from field experiments are notoriously noisy. Proper field designs with high replication aid in mitigating this challenge, yet true biological correlations are still often masked by environmental variability. This work identifies soil property composition as a spatially distributed source of variance to three types of characteristics: plant phenotype, microbiome composition, and leaf traits. We show that once identified, spatial principal component regression was able to account for these effects so that more precise estimates of experimental factors were obtained. This generalizable method is applicable to diverse field experiments.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Berry, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sonawane, B. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sheflin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cousins, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Prenni, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schachtman, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bart, R. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-04-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.04.29.441834</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Increased signal to noise ratios within experimental field trials by regressing spatially distributed soil properties as principal components.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-04-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.442676v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
RF-Net 2: Fast Inference of Virus Reassortment and Hybridization Networks 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.05.442676v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationA phylogenetic network is a powerful model to represent entangled evolutionary histories with both divergent (speciation) and convergent (e.g., hybridization, reassortment, recombination) evolution. The standard approach to inference of hybridization networks is to (i) reconstruct rooted gene trees and (ii) leverage gene tree discordance for network inference. Recently, we introduced a method called RF-Net for accurate inference of virus reassortment and hybridization networks from input gene trees in the presence of errors commonly found in phylogenetic trees. While RF-Net demonstrated the ability to accurately infer networks with up to four reticulations from erroneous input gene trees, its application was limited by the number of reticulations it could handle in a reasonable amount of time. This limitation is particularly restrictive in the inference of the evolutionary history of segmented RNA viruses such as influenza A virus (IAV), where reassortment is one of the major mechanisms shaping the evolution of these pathogens.

ResultsHere we expand the functionality of RF-Net that makes it significantly more applicable in practice. Crucially, we introduce a fast extension to RF-Net, called Fast-RF-Net, that can handle large numbers of reticulations without sacrificing accuracy. Additionally, we develop automatic stopping criteria to select the appropriate number of reticulations heuristically and implement a feature for RF-Net to output error-corrected input gene trees. We then conduct a comprehensive study of the original method and its novel extensions and confirm their efficacy in practice using extensive simulation and empirical influenza A virus evolutionary analyses.

AvailabilityRF-Net 2 is available at https://github.com/flu-crew/rf-net-2.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Markin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wagle, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-05-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.05.05.442676</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[RF-Net 2: Fast Inference of Virus Reassortment and Hybridization Networks]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-05-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.06.442655v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Independent dynamics of slow, intermediate, and fast intracranial EEG spectral activities during human memory formation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.06.442655v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A wide spectrum of brain rhythms are engaged throughout the human cortex in cognitive functions. How the rhythms of various low and high frequencies are spatiotemporally coordinated across the human brain during memory processing is inconclusive. They can either be coordinated together across a wide range of the frequency spectrum or induced in specific bands. We used a large dataset of human intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) to parse the spatiotemporal dynamics of spectral activities induced during formation of verbal memories. Encoding of words for subsequent free recall activated slow theta, intermediate alpha and beta, and fast gamma frequency power in discrete cortical sites. A majority of the electrode sites recorded activity in only one of these frequencies, except for the visual cortex where spectral power was induced across multiple bands. Each frequency band showed characteristic dynamics of the induced power specific to cortical area and hemisphere. The power of the low, intermediate, and fast activities propagated in distinct spatiotemporal patterns across the visual, temporal and prefrontal cortical areas as the words were presented for encoding. Our results suggest anatomically and temporally distributed spectral activities in the formation of human memory.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Marks, V. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saboo, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Topcu, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thayib, T. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nejedly, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kremen, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Worrell, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kucewicz, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-05-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.05.06.442655</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Independent dynamics of slow, intermediate, and fast intracranial EEG spectral activities during human memory formation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-05-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.10.443470v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
RevGadgets: an R Package for visualizing Bayesian phylogenetic analyses from RevBayes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.10.443470v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
O_LIStatistical phylogenetic methods are the foundation for a wide range of evolutionary and epidemiological studies. However, as these methods grow increasingly complex, users often encounter significant challenges with summarizing, visualizing, and communicating their key results.
C_LIO_LIWe present RevGadgets, an R package for creating publication-quality figures from the results of a large variety of phylogenetic analyses performed in RevBayes (and other phylogenetic software packages).
C_LIO_LIWe demonstrate how to use RevGadgets through a set of vignettes that cover the most common use cases that researchers will encounter.
C_LIO_LIRevGadgets is an open-source, extensible package that will continue to evolve in parallel with RevBayes, helping researchers to make sense of and communicate the results of a diverse array of analyses.
C_LI

[Bayesian phylogenetics, data visualization, R, RevBayes]
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tribble, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Freyman, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lim, J. Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Landis, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barido-Sottani, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kopperud, B. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Höhna, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>May, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-05-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.05.10.443470</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[RevGadgets: an R Package for visualizing Bayesian phylogenetic analyses from RevBayes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-05-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.19.444817v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Micafungin-induced Cell Wall Damage Stimulates Microcycle Conidiation in Aspergillus nidulans 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.19.444817v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Fungal cell wall receptors relay messages about the state of the cell wall to the nucleus through the Cell Wall Integrity Signaling (CWIS) pathway. The ultimate role of the CWIS pathway is to coordinate repair of cell wall damage and to restore normal hyphal growth. Echinocandins such as micafungin represent a class of antifungals that trigger cell wall damage by affecting synthesis of {beta}-glucans, filamentous fungis response to these antifungals are fundamentally unknown. To obtain a better understanding of the dynamics of the CWIS response and its multiple effects, we have coupled dynamic transcriptome analysis with morphological studies of Aspergillus nidulans hyphae responding to micafungin. Our results reveal that expression of the master regulator of asexual development, BrlA, is induced by micafungin exposure. Further study showed that micafungin elicits microcycle conidiation in a BrlA-dependent manner, and that this response is abolished in the absence of MpkA. Our results suggest that microcycle conidiation may be a general response to cell wall perturbation which in some cases would enable fungi to tolerate or survive otherwise lethal damage.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Reese, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chelius, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riekhof, W. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marten, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-05-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.05.19.444817</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Micafungin-induced Cell Wall Damage Stimulates Microcycle Conidiation in Aspergillus nidulans]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-05-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.19.444884v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Predicting Moisture Content During Maize Nixtamalization Using Machine Learning with NIR Spectroscopy 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.19.444884v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lack of high throughput phenotyping systems for determining moisture content during the maize nixtamalization cooking process has led to difficulty in breeding for this trait. This study provides a high throughput, quantitative measure of kernel moisture content during nixtamalization based on NIR scanning of uncooked maize kernels. Machine learning was utilized to develop models based on the combination of NIR spectra and moisture content determined from a scaled-down benchtop cook method. A linear support vector machine (SVM) model with a Spearmans rank correlation coefficient of 0.852 between wet lab and predicted values was developed from 100 diverse temperate genotypes grown in replicate across two environments. This model was applied to NIR data from 501 diverse temperate genotypes grown in replicate in five environments. Analysis of variance revealed environment explained the highest percent of the variation (51.5%), followed by genotype (15.6%) and genotype-by-environment interaction (11.2%). A genome-wide association study identified 26 significant loci across five environments that explained between 5.04% and 16.01% (average = 10.41%). However, genome-wide markers explained 10.54% to 45.99% (average = 31.68%) of the variation, indicating the genetic architecture of this trait is likely complex and controlled by many loci of small effect. This study provides a high-throughput method to evaluate moisture content during nixtamalization that is feasible at the scale of a breeding program and provides important information about the factors contributing to variation of this trait for breeders and food companies to make future strategies to improve this important processing trait.

Key MessageMoisture content during nixtamalization can be accurately predicted from NIR spectroscopy when coupled with a support vector machine (SVM) model, is strongly modulated by the environment, and has a complex genetic architecture.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Burns, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Renk, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eickholt, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilbert, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hattery, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holmes, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Waters, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kalambur, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flint-Garcia, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yandeau-Nelson, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Annor, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-05-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.05.19.444884</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Predicting Moisture Content During Maize Nixtamalization Using Machine Learning with NIR Spectroscopy]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-05-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.25.445688v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Extraordinarily precise nematode sex ratios: Adaptive responses to vanishingly rare mating options 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.25.445688v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Sex ratio theory predicts both mean sex ratio and variance under a range of population structures. Here, we compare two genera of phoretic nematodes (Parasitodiplogaster and Ficophagus spp.) associated with twelve fig-pollinating wasp species in Panama. The host wasps exhibit classic Local Mate Competition: only inseminated females disperse from natal figs, and their offspring form mating pools that consist of scores of the adult offspring contributed by one or a few foundress mothers. In contrast, in both nematode genera, only sexually undifferentiated juveniles disperse, and their mating pools routinely consist of eight or fewer adults. Across all mating pool sizes, the sex ratios observed in both nematode genera are consistently female-biased (~0.34 males), which is markedly less female-biased than is often observed in the host wasps (~0.10 males). In further contrast with their hosts, variances in nematode sex ratios are also consistently precise (significantly less than binomial). The constraints associated with predictably small mating pools within highly subdivided populations appear to select for precise sex ratios that contribute both to the reproductive success of individual nematodes, and to the evolutionary persistence of nematode species. We suggest that some form of environmental sex determination underlies these precise sex ratios.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Van Goor, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Herre, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gomez, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nason, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-05-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.05.25.445688</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Extraordinarily precise nematode sex ratios: Adaptive responses to vanishingly rare mating options]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-05-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.26.445805v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Additive and epistatic effects influence spectral tuning in molluscan retinochrome opsin 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.26.445805v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The relationship between genotype and phenotype is nontrivial due to often complex molecular pathways that make it difficult to unambiguously relate phenotypes to specific genotypes. Photopigments, an opsin apoprotein bound to a light-absorbing chromophore, present an opportunity to directly relate the amino acid sequence to an absorbance peak phenotype ({lambda}max). We examined this relationship by conducting a series of site-directed mutagenesis experiments of retinochrome, a non-visual opsin, from two closely related species: the common bay scallop, Argopecten irradians, and the king scallop, Pecten maximus. Using protein folding models, we identified three amino acid sites of likely functional importance and expressed mutated retinochrome proteins in vitro. Our results show that the mutation of amino acids lining the opsin binding pocket are responsible for fine spectral tuning, or small changes in the {lambda}max of these light sensitive proteins Most mutations caused a blue shift regardless of the retinochrome background, with shifts ranging from a 12 nm blue shift to a 5 nm red shift from the wild-type {lambda}max. These mutations do not show an additive effect, but rather suggests the presence of epistatic interactions. This work highlights the importance of binding pocket shape in the evolution of spectral tuning and builds on our ability to relate genotypic changes to phenotypes in an emerging model for opsin functional analysis.

Author summarySite-directed mutagenesis determined that spectral tuning in retinochrome is not solely additive, but is influenced by intra-molecular epistasis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Smedley, G. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McElroy, K. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Serb, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-05-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.05.26.445805</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Additive and epistatic effects influence spectral tuning in molluscan retinochrome opsin]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-05-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.03.446924v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genome-wide approaches delineate the additive, epistatic, and pleiotropic nature of variants controlling fatty acid composition in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.). 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.03.446924v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The fatty acid composition of seed oil is a major determinant of the flavor, shelf-life, and nutritional quality of peanuts. Major QTLs controlling high oil content, high oleic content, and low linoleic content have been characterized in several seed oil crop species. Here we employ genome-wide association approaches on a recently genotyped collection of 787 plant introduction accessions in the USDA peanut core collection, plus selected improved cultivars, to discover markers associated with the natural variation in fatty acid composition, and to explain the genetic control of fatty acid composition in seed oils.

Overall, 251 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) had significant trait associations with the measured fatty acid components. Twelve SNPs were associated with two or three different traits. Of these loci with apparent pleiotropic effects, 10 were associated with both oleic (C18:1) and linoleic acid (C18:2) content at different positions in the genome. In all 10 cases, the favorable allele had an opposite effect - increasing and lowering the concentration, respectively, of oleic and linoleic acid. The other traits with pleiotropic variant control were palmitic (C16:0), behenic (C22:0), lignoceric (C24:0), gadoleic (C20:1), total saturated, and total unsaturated fatty acid content. One hundred (100) of the significantly associated SNPs were located within 1000 kbp of 55 genes with fatty acid biosynthesis functional annotations. These genes encoded, among others: ACCase carboxyl transferase subunits, and several fatty acid synthase II enzymes.

With the exception of gadoleic (C20:1) and lignoceric (C24:0) acid content, which occur at relatively low abundance in cultivated peanut, all traits had significant SNP interactions exceeding a stringent Bonferroni threshold ( = 1%). We detected 7,682 pairwise SNP interactions affecting the relative abundance of fatty acid components in the seed oil. Of these, 627 SNP pairs had at least one SNP within 1000 kbp of a gene with fatty acid biosynthesis functional annotation. We evaluated 168 candidate genes underlying these SNP interactions. Functional enrichment and protein-to-protein interactions supported significant interactions (p- value < 1.0E-16) among the genes evaluated. These results show the complex nature of the biology and genes underlying the variation in seed oil fatty acid composition and contribute to an improved genotype-to-phenotype map for fatty acid variation in peanut seed oil.

Key phrasesSNP Genotyping, Genome-wide Association Study (GWAS), GWAS of interacting SNPs (GWASi), Pleiotropy, Seed fatty acid composition, Oleic-Linoleic acid ratio.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Otyama, P. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chamberlin, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ozias-Akins, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Graham, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, E. K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MacDonald, G. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anglin, N. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-06-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.06.03.446924</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genome-wide approaches delineate the additive, epistatic, and pleiotropic nature of variants controlling fatty acid composition in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.).]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-06-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.08.444730v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Streptochaeta genome and the evolution of the grasses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.08.444730v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In this work, we sequenced and annotated the genome of Streptochaeta angustifolia, one of two genera in the grass subfamily Anomochlooideae, a lineage sister to all other grasses. The final assembly size is over 99% of the estimated genome size, capturing most of the gene space. Streptochaeta is similar to other grasses in the structure of its fruit (a caryopsis or grain) but has peculiar flowers and inflorescences that are distinct from those in the outgroups and in other grasses. To provide tools for investigations of floral structure, we analyzed two large families of transcription factors, AP2-like and R2R3 MYBs, that are known to control floral and spikelet development in rice and maize among other grasses. Many of these are also regulated by small RNAs. Structure of the gene trees showed that the well documented whole genome duplication at the origin of the grasses ({rho}) occurred before the divergence of the Anomochlooideae lineage from the lineage leading to the rest of the grasses (the spikelet clade) and thus that the common ancestor of all grasses probably had two copies of the developmental genes. However, Streptochaeta (and by inference other members of Anomochlooideae) has lost one copy of many genes. The peculiar floral morphology of Streptochaeta may thus have derived from an ancestral plant that was morphologically similar to the spikelet-bearing grasses. We further identify 114 loci producing microRNAs and 89 loci generating phased, secondary siRNAs, classes of small RNAs known to be influential in transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of several plant functions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Belanger, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, L. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meyers, B. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kellogg, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-06-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.06.08.444730</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Streptochaeta genome and the evolution of the grasses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-06-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.08.447629v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nuclear-cytoplasmic balance: whole genome duplications induce elevated organellar genome copy number 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.08.447629v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The plant genome is partitioned across three distinct subcellular compartments: the nucleus, mitochondria, and plastids. Successful coordination of gene expression among these organellar genomes and the nuclear genome is critical for plant function and fitness. Whole genome duplication events (WGDs) in the nucleus have played a major role in the diversification of land plants and are expected to perturb the relative copy number (stoichiometry) of nuclear, mitochondrial, and plastid genomes. Thus, elucidating the mechanisms whereby plant cells respond to the cytonuclear stoichiometric imbalance that follow WGDs represents an important yet underexplored question in understanding the evolutionary consequences of genome doubling. We used droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) to investigate the relationship between nuclear and organellar genome copy numbers in allopolyploids and their diploid progenitors in both wheat and Arabidopsis. Polyploids exhibit elevated organellar genome copy numbers per cell, largely preserving the cytonuclear stoichiometry observed in diploids despite the change in nuclear genome copy number. To investigate the timescale over which cytonuclear stoichiometry may respond to WGD, we also estimated organellar genome copy number in Arabidopsis synthetic autopolyploids and in a haploid-induced diploid line. We observed corresponding changes in organellar genome copy number in these laboratory-generated lines, indicating that at least some of the cellular response to cytonuclear stoichiometric imbalance is immediate following WGD. We conclude that increases in organellar genome copy numbers represent a common response to polyploidization, suggesting that maintenance of cytonuclear stoichiometry is an important component in establishing polyploid lineages.

Significance StatementWhole genome duplications (WGD) have the potential to alter the stoichiometric balance between nuclear and organellar genomes. We used two separate diploid-polyploid complexes to show that plant cells with WGD exhibit elevated mitochondrial and plastid genome copy numbers, both immediately in lab-generated lines and in natural polyploids.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fernandes Gyorfy, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Conover, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sloan, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-06-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.06.08.447629</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nuclear-cytoplasmic balance: whole genome duplications induce elevated organellar genome copy number]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-06-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.445746v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Does time matter in phylogeny? A perspective from the fossil record 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.445746v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The role of time (i.e. taxa ages) in phylogeny has been a source of intense debate within palaeontology for decades and has not yet been resolved fully. The fossilised birth-death range process is a model that explicitly accounts for information about species through time. It presents a fresh opportunity to examine the role of stratigraphic data in phylogenetic inference of fossil taxa. Here, we apply this model in a Bayesian framework to an exemplar dataset of well-dated conodonts from the Late Devonian. We compare the results to those obtained using traditional unconstrained tree inference. We show that the combined analysis of morphology and stratigraphic data under the FBD range process reduces overall phylogenetic uncertainty, compared to unconstrained tree inference. We find that previous phylogenetic hypotheses based on parsimony and stratophenetics are closer to trees generated under the FBD range process. However, the results also highlight that irrespective of the inclusion of age data, a large amount of topological uncertainty will remain. Bayesian inference provides the most intuitive way to represent the uncertainty inherent in fossil datasets and new flexible models increase opportunities to refine hypotheses in palaeobiology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Guenser, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warnock, R. C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Donoghue, P. C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jarochowska, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-06-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.06.11.445746</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Does time matter in phylogeny? A perspective from the fossil record]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-06-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.16.448676v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Gossypium anomalum genome as a resource for cotton improvement and evolutionary analysis of hybrid incompatibility 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.16.448676v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cotton is an important crop that has been the beneficiary of multiple genome sequencing efforts, including diverse representatives of wild species for germplasm development. Gossypium anomalum is a wild African diploid species that harbors stress-resistance and fiber-related traits with potential application to modern breeding efforts. In addition, this species is a natural source of cytoplasmic male sterility and a resource for understanding hybrid lethality in the genus. Here we report a high-quality de novo genome assembly for G. anomalum and characterize this genome relative to existing genome sequences in cotton. In addition, we use the synthetic allopolyploids 2(A2D1) and 2(A2D3) to discover regions in the G. anomalum genome potentially involved in hybrid lethality, a possibility enabled by introgression of regions homologous to the D3 (G. davidsonii) lethality loci into the synthetic 2(A2D3) allopolyploid.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Udall, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-06-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.06.16.448676</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Gossypium anomalum genome as a resource for cotton improvement and evolutionary analysis of hybrid incompatibility]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-06-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.18.448732v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Zebrafish Cre/lox regulated UFlip alleles generated by CRISPR/Cas targeted integration provide cell-type specific conditional gene inactivation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.18.448732v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The ability to regulate gene activity spatially and temporally is essential to investigate cell type specific gene function during development and in postembryonic processes and disease models. The Cre/lox system has been widely used for performing cell and tissue-specific conditional analysis of gene function in zebrafish, but simple and efficient methods for isolation of stable, Cre/lox regulated alleles are lacking. Here we applied our GeneWeld CRISPR/Cas9 short homology-directed targeted integration strategy to generate floxed conditional alleles that provide robust gene knockdown and strong loss of function phenotypes. A universal targeting vector, UFlip, with sites for cloning short 24-48 bp homology arms flanking a floxed mRFP gene trap plus secondary reporter cassette, was integrated into an intron in hdac1, rbbp4, and rb1. Active, gene off orientation hdac1-UFlip-Off and rb1-UFlip-Off integration alleles result in >99% reduction of gene expression in homozygotes and recapitulate known indel loss of function phenotypes. Passive, gene on orientation rbbp4-UFlip-On and rb1-UFlip-On integration alleles do not cause phenotypes in trans-heterozygous combination with an indel mutation. Cre recombinase injection leads to recombination at alternating pairs of loxP and lox2272 sites, inverting and locking the cassette into the active, gene off orientation, and the expected mutant phenotypes. In combination with our endogenous neural progenitor Cre drivers we demonstrate rbbp4-UFlip-On and rb1-UFlip-On gene inactivation phenotypes can be restricted to specific neural cell populations. Replacement of the UFlip mRFP primary reporter gene trap with a 2A-RFP in rbbp4-UFlip-Off, or 2A-KalTA4 in rb1-UFlip-Off, shows strong RFP expression in wild type or UAS:RFP injected embryos, respectively. Together these results validate a simplified approach for efficient isolation of highly mutagenic Cre/lox responsive conditional gene alleles to advance zebrafish Cre recombinase genetics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Almeida, M. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kambakam, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ming, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Welker, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wierson, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schultz-Rogers, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ekker, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Essner, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-06-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.06.18.448732</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Zebrafish Cre/lox regulated UFlip alleles generated by CRISPR/Cas targeted integration provide cell-type specific conditional gene inactivation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-06-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.25.450005v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Large structural variations in the haplotype-resolved African cassava genome. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.25.450005v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz, 2n=36) is a global food security crop. Cassava has a highly heterozygous genome, high genetic load, and genotype-dependent asynchronous flowering. It is typically propagated by stem cuttings and any genetic variation between haplotypes, including large structural variations, is preserved by such clonal propagation. Traditional genome assembly approaches generate a collapsed haplotype representation of the genome. In highly heterozygous plants, this results in artifacts and an oversimplification of heterozygous regions. We used a combination of Pacific Biosciences (PacBio), Illumina, and Hi-C to resolve each haplotype of the genome of a farmer-preferred cassava line, TME7 (Oko-iyawo). PacBio reads were assembled using the FALCON suite. Phase switch errors were corrected using FALCON-Phase and Hi-C read data. The ultra-long-range information from Hi-C sequencing was also used for scaffolding. Comparison of the two phases revealed more than 5,000 large haplotype-specific structural variants affecting over 8 Mb, including insertions and deletions spanning thousands of base pairs. The potential of these variants to affect allele specific expression was further explored. RNA-seq data from 11 different tissue types were mapped against the scaffolded haploid assembly and gene expression data are incorporated into our existing easy-to-use web-based interface to facilitate use by the broader plant science community. These two assemblies provide an excellent means to study the effects of heterozygosity, haplotype-specific structural variation, gene hemizygosity, and allele specific gene expression contributing to important agricultural traits and further our understanding of the genetics and domestication of cassava.

Significance statementThe cassava varieties grown by subsistence farmers in Africa largely differ from the inbred reference genome due to their highly heterozygous nature. We used multiple sequencing technologies to assemble and resolve both haplotypes in TME7, a farmer-preferred cassava line, enabling us to study the considerable haplotypic structural variation in this line.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mansfeld, B. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boyher, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Berry, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wilson, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Polydore, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Michael, T. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fahlgren, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bart, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-06-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.06.25.450005</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Large structural variations in the haplotype-resolved African cassava genome.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-06-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.02.450920v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Betacoronavirus-specific alternate splicing 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.02.450920v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Viruses can subvert a number of cellular processes in order to block innate antiviral responses, and many viruses interact with cellular splicing machinery. SARS-CoV-2 infection was shown to suppress global mRNA splicing, and at least 10 SARS-CoV-2 proteins bind specifically to one or more human RNAs. Here, we investigate 17 published experimental and clinical datasets related to SARS-CoV-2 infection as well as datasets from the betacoronaviruses SARS-CoV and MERS as well as Streptococcus pneumonia, HCV, Zika virus, Dengue virus, influenza H3N2, and RSV. We show that genes showing differential alternative splicing in SARS-CoV-2 have a similar functional profile to those of SARS-CoV and MERS and affect a diverse set of genes and biological functions, including many closely related to virus biology. Additionally, the differentially spliced transcripts of cells infected by coronaviruses were more likely to undergo intron-retention, contain a pseudouridine modification and a smaller number of exons than differentially spliced transcripts in the control groups. Viral load in clinical COVID-19 samples was correlated with isoform distribution of differentially spliced genes. A significantly higher number of ribosomal genes are affected by DAS and DGE in betacoronavirus samples, and the betacoronavirus differentially spliced genes are depleted for binding sites of RNA-binding proteins. Our results demonstrate characteristic patterns of differential splicing in cells infected by SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS, potentially modifying a broad range of cellular functions and affecting a diverse set of genes and biological functions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Karlebach, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aronow, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baylin, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Butler, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foox, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Levy, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meydan, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mozsary, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saravia-Butler, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mason, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beheshti, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robinson, P. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-07-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.07.02.450920</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Betacoronavirus-specific alternate splicing]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-07-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.09.451712v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Global patterns of subgenome evolution in organelle-targeted genes of sixallotetraploid angiosperms 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.09.451712v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Whole-genome duplications (WGDs), in which the number of nuclear genome copies is elevated as a result of autopolyploidy or allopolyploidy, are a prominent process of diversification in eukaryotes. The genetic and evolutionary forces that WGD imposes upon cytoplasmic genomes are not well understood, despite the central role that cytonuclear interactions play in eukaryotic function and fitness. Cellular respiration and photosynthesis depend upon successful interaction between the 3000+ nuclear-encoded proteins destined for the mitochondria or plastids and the gene products of cytoplasmic genomes in multi-subunit complexes such as OXPHOS, organellar ribosomes, Photosystems I and II, and Rubisco. Allopolyploids are thus faced with the critical task of coordinating interactions between nuclear and cytoplasmic genes that were inherited from different species. Because cytoplasmic genomes share a more recent history of common descent with the maternal nuclear subgenome than the paternal subgenome, evolutionary "mismatches" between the paternal subgenome and the cytoplasmic genomes in allopolyploids might lead to accelerated rates of evolution in the paternal homoeologs of allopolyploids, either through relaxed purifying selection or strong directional selection to rectify these mismatches. We tested this hypothesis in maternal vs. paternal copies of organelle-targeted genes in six allotetraploids: Brachypodium hybridum, Chenopodium quinoa, Coffea arabica, Gossypium hirsutum, Nicotiana tabacum, and Triticum dicoccoides. We report evidence that allopolyploid subgenomes exhibit unequal rates of protein-sequence evolution, but we did not observe global effects of cytonuclear incompatibilities on paternal homoeologs of organelle-targeted genes. Analyses of gene content revealed mixed evidence for whether organelle-targeted genes re-diploidize more rapidly than non-organelle-targeted genes. Together, these global analyses provide insights into the complex evolutionary dynamics of allopolyploids, showing that allopolyploid subgenomes have separate evolutionary trajectories despite sharing the same nucleus, generation time, and ecological context.

AUTHOR SUMMARY

Whole genome duplication, in which the size and content of the nuclear genome is instantly doubled, represents one of the most profound forms of mutational change. The consequences of duplication events are equally monumental, especially considering that almost all eukaryotes have undergone whole genome duplications during their evolutionary history. While myriad genetic, cellular, organismal, and ecological effects of whole genome duplications have been extensively documented, relatively little attention has been paid to the diminutive but essential "other" genomes present inside the cell, those of chloroplasts and mitochondria. In this study, we compared the evolutionary patterns of >340,000 genes from 23 species to test whether whole genome duplications are associated with genetic mismatches between the nuclear, mitochondrial, and chloroplast genomes. We discovered tremendous differences between duplicated copies of nuclear genomes; however, mitochondria-nuclear and chloroplast-nuclear mismatches do not appear to be common following whole genome duplications. Together these genomic data represent the most extensive analysis yet performed on how polyploids maintain the delicate and finely tuned balance between the nuclear, mitochondrial, and chloroplast genomes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Conover, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernandes Gyorfy, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sloan, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-07-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.07.09.451712</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Global patterns of subgenome evolution in organelle-targeted genes of sixallotetraploid angiosperms]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-07-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.15.452373v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Plumage balances camouflage and thermoregulation in Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.15.452373v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Animal coloration serves many biological functions and must therefore balance potentially competing selective pressures. For example, many animals have camouflage, in which coloration matches the visual background against which predators scan for prey. However, different colors reflect different amounts of solar radiation and may therefore have thermoregulatory implications as well. In this study, we examined geographic variation in dorsal patterning, color, and solar reflectance among Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) of the western United States. We found associations between dorsal plumage brightness, hue, and patterning relative to the soil conditions where specimens were collected. Specifically, brighter dorsal plumage corresponded to brighter soil, while redder, more saturated hues in dorsal plumage corresponded to redder soils. Furthermore, backs with more high-contrast patterning were more common among females and also associated with soil that had coarser soil fragments, suggesting that lark plumage has been selected to optimize background matching in different environments. We also found that larks exhibited higher solar reflectance in hotter and more arid environments, which lowers the water requirements for homeothermy. Taken together, these findings suggest that natural selection has balanced camouflage and thermoregulation in Horned Larks across a wide variety of soil types and abiotic conditions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mason, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riddell, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romero, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cicero, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bowie, R. C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-07-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.07.15.452373</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Plumage balances camouflage and thermoregulation in Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-07-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.454214v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An active RNA transport mechanism into plant vacuoles 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.454214v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
RNA degradation inside the plant vacuole by the ribonuclease RNS2 is essential for maintaining nucleotide concentrations and cellular homeostasis via the nucleotide salvage pathway. However, the mechanisms by which RNA is transported into the vacuole are not well understood. While selective macroautophagy may contribute to this transport, macroautophagy-independent transport pathways also exist. Here we demonstrate a mechanism for direct RNA transport into vacuoles that is active in purified vacuoles and is ATP hydrolysis-dependent. We identify the RNA helicase SKI2 as a factor required for this transport pathway, as ski2 mutant vacuoles are defective in transport. ski2 mutants have an increased autophagy phenotype that can be rescued by exogenous addition of inosine, consistent with a function in nucleotide salvage. This newly-described transport mechanism is therefore critical for RNA degradation, recycling and cytoplasmic nucleotide homeostasis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Floyd, B. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kazibwe, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morriss, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mugume, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, A.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ridout, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MacIntosh, G. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bassham, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-07-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.07.28.454214</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An active RNA transport mechanism into plant vacuoles]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-07-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.04.455181v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Limited variation between SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals in domain specificity and relative potency of the antibody response against the spike glycoprotein 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.04.455181v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is arranged as a trimer on the virus surface, composed of three S1 and three S2 subunits. Infected and vaccinated individuals generate antibodies against spike, which can neutralize the virus. Most antibodies target the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and N-terminal domain (NTD) of S1; however, antibodies against other regions of spike have also been isolated. The variation between infected individuals in domain specificity of the antibodies and in their relative neutralization efficacy is still poorly characterized. To this end, we tested serum and plasma samples from 85 COVID-19 convalescent subjects using 7 immunoassays that employ different domains, subunits and oligomeric forms of spike to capture the antibodies. Samples were also tested for their neutralization of pseudovirus containing SARS-CoV-2 spike and of replication-competent SARS-CoV-2. We observed strong correlations between the levels of NTD- and RBD-specific antibodies, with a fixed ratio of each type to all anti-spike antibodies. The relative potency of the response (defined as the measured neutralization efficacy relative to the total level of spike-targeting antibodies) also exhibited limited variation between subjects, and was not associated with the overall amount of anti-spike antibodies produced. Accordingly, the ability of immunoassays that use RBD, NTD and different forms of S1 or S1/S2 as capture antigens to estimate the neutralizing efficacy of convalescent samples was largely similar. These studies suggest that host-to-host variation in the polyclonal response elicited against SARS-CoV-2 spike is primarily limited to the quantity of antibodies generated rather than their domain specificity or relative neutralization potency.

IMPORTANCEInfection by SARS-CoV-2 elicits antibodies against various domains of the spike protein, including the RBD, NTD and S2. Different infected individuals generate vastly different amounts of anti-spike antibodies. By contrast, as we show here, there is a remarkable similarity in the properties of the antibodies produced. Different individuals generate the same proportions of antibodies against each domain of the spike protein. Furthermore, the relationship between the amount of anti-spike antibodies produced and their neutralization efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 is highly conserved. Therefore, the observed variation in the neutralizing activity of the antibody response in COVID-19 convalescent subjects is caused by differences in the amounts of antibodies rather than their recognition properties or relative antiviral activity. These findings suggest that COVID-19 vaccine strategies that focus on enhancing the overall level of the antibodies will likely elicit a more uniformly efficacious protective response.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Van Ert, H. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bohan, D. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rogers, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fili, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rojas Chavez, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qing, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dempewolf, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schwery, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sevcik, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ruggio, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boyt, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pentella, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gallagher, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jackson, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Merrill, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Knudson, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maury, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haim, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-08-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.08.04.455181</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Limited variation between SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals in domain specificity and relative potency of the antibody response against the spike glycoprotein]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-08-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.454618v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Revealing how variations in antibody repertoires correlate with vaccine responses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.454618v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
An important challenge in vaccine development is to figure out why a vaccine succeeds in some individuals and fails in others. Although antibody repertoires hold a key to answering this question, there have been very few personalized immunogenomics studies so far aimed at revealing how variations in immunoglobulin genes affect a vaccine response. We conducted an immunosequencing study of 204 calves vaccinated against bovine respiratory disease (BRD) with the goal to reveal variations in immunoglobulin genes and somatic hypermutations that impact the efficacy of vaccine response. Our study represents the largest longitudinal personalized immunogenomics study reported to date across all species, including humans. To analyze the generated dataset, we developed an algorithm for identifying variations of the immunoglobulin genes (as well as frequent somatic hypermutations) that affect various features of the antibody repertoire and titers of neutralizing antibodies. In contrast to relatively short human antibodies, cattle have a large fraction of ultralong antibodies that have opened new therapeutic opportunities. Our study revealed that ultralong antibodies are a key component of the immune response against the costliest disease of beef cattle in North America. The detected variants of the cattle immunoglobulin genes, which are implicated in the success/failure of the BRD vaccine, have the potential to direct the selection of individual cattle for ongoing breeding programs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Safonova, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shin, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reecy, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Watson, C. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, T. P. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pevzner, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-08-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.08.06.454618</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Revealing how variations in antibody repertoires correlate with vaccine responses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-08-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.455440v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Diversity of Antibiotic Resistance genes and Transfer Elements-Quantitative Monitoring (DARTE-QM): a method for detection of antimicrobial resistance in environmental samples 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.455440v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Effective monitoring of antibiotic resistance genes and their dissemination in environmental ecosystems has been hindered by the cost and efficiency of methods available for the task. We developed a method entitled the Diversity of Antibiotic Resistance genes and Transfer Elements-Quantitative Monitoring (DARTE-QM), a system implementing high-throughput sequencing to simultaneously sequence thousands of antibiotic resistant genes representing a full-spectrum of antibiotic resistance classes commonly seen in environmental systems. In this study, we demonstrated DARTE-QM by screening 662 antibiotic resistance genes within environmental samples originated from manure, soil, and animal feces, in addition to a mock-community used as a control to test performance. DARTE-QM offers a new approach to studying antibiotic resistance in environmental microbiomes, showing advantages in efficiency and the ability to scale for many samples. This method provides a means of data acquisition that will alleviate the obstacles that many researchers in this area currently face.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Smith, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Choi, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ricker, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hinsa-Leasure, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Soupir, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allen, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-08-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.08.06.455440</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Diversity of Antibiotic Resistance genes and Transfer Elements-Quantitative Monitoring (DARTE-QM): a method for detection of antimicrobial resistance in environmental samples]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-08-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.455469v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Recombinant NAGLU-IGF2 prevents physical and neurological disease and improves survival in Sanfilippo B syndrome 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.06.455469v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Recombinant human alpha-N-acetylglucosaminidase-insulin-like growth factor-2 (rhNAGLU-IGF2) is an investigational enzyme replacement therapy for Sanfilippo B, a lysosomal storage disease. Because recombinant human NAGLU (rhNAGLU) is poorly mannose 6-phosphorylated, we generated a fusion protein of NAGLU with IGF2 to permit its binding to the cation-independent mannose 6-phosphate receptor. We previously administered rhNAGLU-IGF2 intracerebroventricularly to Sanfilippo B mice, and demonstrated therapeutic restoration of NAGLU, normalization of lysosomal storage, and improvement in markers of neurodegeneration and inflammation. Here, we studied repeated intracerebroventricular rhNAGLU-IGF2 delivery in both murine and canine Sanfilippo B to determine potential effects on their behavioral phenotypes and survival. Treated mice showed improvement in disease markers such as heparan sulfate glycosaminoglycans, beta-hexosaminidase, microglial activation, and lysosomal-associated membrane protein-1. Sanfilippo B mice treated with rhNAGLU-IGF2 displayed partial normalization of their stretch attend postures, a defined fear pose in mice (p<0.001). We found an improved rotarod performance in Sanfilippo B mice treated with rhNAGLU-IGF2 compared to vehicle-treated Sanfilippo B mice (p=0.002). We also found a 61% increase in survival in Sanfilippo B mice treated with rhNAGLU-IGF2 (mean 53w, median 48w) compared to vehicle-treated Sanfilippo B mice (mean 33w, median 37w; p<0.001). In canine Sanfilippo B, we found that rhNAGLU-IGF2 administered into cerebrospinal fluid normalized HS and beta-hexosaminidase activity in gray and white matter brain regions. Proteomic analysis of cerebral cortex showed restoration of protein expression levels in pathways relevant to cognitive, synaptic, and lysosomal functions. These data suggest that treatment with rhNAGLU-IGF2 may improve the phenotype of Sanfilippo B disease.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Le, S. Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kan, S.-h.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nunez, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dearborn, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>LI, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snella, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jens, J. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Valentine, B. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelvagal, H. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sorensen, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cooper, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chou, T.-F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ellinwood, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sands, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dickson, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-08-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.08.06.455469</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Recombinant NAGLU-IGF2 prevents physical and neurological disease and improves survival in Sanfilippo B syndrome]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-08-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.457548v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CULTURE AND MAINTENANCE OF URINE-DERIVED, 3-DIMENSIONAL CANINE TRANSITIONAL CELL CARCINOMA ORGANOIDS 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.457548v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bladder cancer is the ninth most common malignancy in the world. Transitional cell carcinoma (TCC), also referred to as urothelial carcinoma (UC) is the most common form of bladder cancer, occurring in 90% of cases. In this study, we explore urine-derived, 3-dimensional, canine TCC organoids as a possible model to study bladder TCC ex vivo. After establishing the cell lines, we subjected the 3D cells to RNA in situ hybridization (RNA-ISH) and cell viability assays. Overall, 3D cell culture from urine samples of TCC diagnosed canines expressed RNA biomarkers in a similar manner to parent tumors via RNA-ISH and showed more sensitivity to cisplatin treatment when compared to 2D human TCC cells. With further experimentation, canine TCC organoids could become an ideal model to study TCC ex vivo.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Thenuwara, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schneider, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mosichuk, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gabriel, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zdyrski, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dao, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Iennarella-Servantez, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Colosimo, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahoo, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bourgois-Mochel, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Musser, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johannes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Palerme, J.-S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allenspach, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-08-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.08.24.457548</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CULTURE AND MAINTENANCE OF URINE-DERIVED, 3-DIMENSIONAL CANINE TRANSITIONAL CELL CARCINOMA ORGANOIDS]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-08-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.07.459327v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evidence for a selective link between cooperation and individual recognition 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.07.459327v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The ability to recognize and discriminate among others is a frequent assumption of models of the evolution of cooperative behavior. At the same time, cooperative behavior has been proposed as a selective agent favoring the evolution of individual recognition abilities. While theory predicts that recognition and cooperation may co-evolve, data linking recognition abilities and cooperative behavior with fitness or evidence of selection are elusive. Here, we provide evidence of a fitness link between individual recognition and cooperation in the paper wasp Polistes fuscatus. Nest founding females in northern populations frequently form cooperative multiple foundress nests and possess highly variable facial patterns that mediate individual recognition. We describe a dearth of cooperative nesting, low phenotypic diversity, and a lack of individual recognition in southern populations. In a common garden experiment, northern co-foundress associations successfully reared offspring while all cooperative southern groups failed to rear any offspring, suggesting a fitness link between individual recognition and successful cooperation. Consistent with a selective link between individual recognition and cooperation, we find that rates of cooperative co-nesting correlate with identity-signaling color pattern diversity across the species range. Moreover, genomic evidence of recent positive selection on cognition loci likely to mediate individual recognition is substantially stronger in northern compared to southern P. fuscatus populations. Collectively, these data suggest that individual recognition and cooperative nesting behavior have co-evolved in P. fuscatus because recognition helps mediate conflict among co-nesting foundresses. This work provides evidence of a specific cognitive phenotype under selection because of social interactions, supporting the idea that social behavior can be a key driver of cognitive evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tumulty, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Van Belleghem, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weller, H. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jernigan, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vincent, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Staudenraus, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Legan, A. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Polnaszek, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Uy, F. M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walton, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sheehan, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-09-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.09.07.459327</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evidence for a selective link between cooperation and individual recognition]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-09-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.08.459357v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Large dataset of octocoral mitochondrial genomes provides new insights into mt-mutS evolution and function 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.08.459357v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
All studied octocoral mitochondrial genomes contain a gene from the MutS family, whose members code for proteins involved in DNA mismatch repair, other types of DNA repair, meiotic recombination, and other functions. Although mutS homologues are found in all domains of life as well as viruses, octocoral mt-mutS is the only such gene encoded in an organellar genome. While the function of mtMutS is not known, its domain architecture, conserved sequence, and presence of some characteristic residues suggest its involvement in mitochondrial DNA repair. This inference is supported by exceptionally low rates of mt-sequence evolution observed in octocorals. Previous studies of mt-mutS have been limited by the small number of octocoral mt-genomes available. We utilized sequence-capture data from the recent Quattrini et al. study to assemble complete mitochondrial genomes for 97 species of octocorals. Combined with sequences publicly available in GenBank, this resulted in a dataset of 184 complete mitochondrial genomes, which we used to re-analyze the conservation and evolution of mt-mutS. We discovered the first case of mt-mutS loss among octocorals in one of the two Pseudoanthomastus sp. assembled from Quattrini et al. data. This species displayed accelerated rate and and changed patterns of nucleotide substitutions in mt-genome, which we argue provide additional evidence for the role of mtMutS in DNA repair. In addition, we found accelerated mt-sequence evolution in the presence of mt-mutS in several octocoral lineages. This accelerated evolution did not appear to be the result of relaxed selection pressure and did not entail changes in patterns of nucleotide substitutions. Overall, our results support previously reported patterns of conservation in mt-mutS and suggest that mtMutS is involved in DNA repair in octocoral mitochondria. They also indicate that the presence of mt-mutS contributes to, but does not fully explain, the low rates of sequence evolution in octocorals
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Muthye, V. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mackereth, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stewart, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lavrov, D. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-09-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.09.08.459357</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Large dataset of octocoral mitochondrial genomes provides new insights into mt-mutS evolution and function]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-09-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.08.459464v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SARS-CoV-2 expresses a microRNA-like small RNA able to selectively repress host genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.08.459464v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), continues to be a pressing health concern. In this study, we investigated the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on host microRNA (miRNA) populations in three human lung-derived cell lines, as well as in nasopharyngeal swabs from SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals. We did not detect any major and consistent differences in host miRNA levels after SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, we unexpectedly discovered a viral miRNA-like small RNA, named vmiR-5p (for viral miRNA), derived from the SARS-CoV-2 ORF7a transcript. Its abundance ranges from low to moderate as compared to host miRNAs. vmiR-5p functionally associates with Argonaute proteins -- core components of the RNA interference pathway -- leading to downregulation of host transcripts. One such host messenger RNA encodes Basic Leucine Zipper ATF-Like Transcription Factor 2 (BATF2), which is linked to interferon signaling. We demonstrate that vmiR-5p production relies on cellular machinery, yet is independent of Drosha protein, and is enhanced by the presence of a strong and evolutionarily conserved hairpin formed within the ORF7a sequence.

Significance statementWe discovered that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) expresses a small viral non-coding RNA, named vmiR-5p (for viral miRNA), derived from the ORF7a transcript. vmiR-5p associates with the cellular RNA interference machinery to regulate host transcripts likely via target silencing. The production of vmiR-5p relies on cellular machinery and the formation of a strong hairpin within ORF7a sequences. This newly-described vmiR-5p may contribute to SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis and could become a target for therapeutic intervention.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pawlica, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yario, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>White, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hui, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vinetz, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Steitz, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-09-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.09.08.459464</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SARS-CoV-2 expresses a microRNA-like small RNA able to selectively repress host genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-09-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.09.459637v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Not so local: the population genetics of convergent adaptation in maize and teosinte. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.09.459637v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
What is the genetic architecture of local adaptation and what is the geographic scale over which it operates? We investigated patterns of local and convergent adaptation in five sympatric population pairs of traditionally cultivated maize and its wild relative teosinte (Zea mays subsp. parviglumis). We found that signatures of local adaptation based on the inference of adaptive fixations and selective sweeps are frequently exclusive to individual populations, more so in teosinte compared to maize. However, for both maize and teosinte, selective sweeps are also frequently shared by several populations, and often between subspecies. We were further able to infer that selective sweeps were shared among populations most often via migration, though sharing via standing variation was also common. Our analyses suggest that teosinte has been a continued source of beneficial alleles for maize, even after domestication, and that maize populations have facilitated adaptation in teosinte by moving beneficial alleles across the landscape. Taken together, our results suggest local adaptation in maize and teosinte has an intermediate geographic scale, one that is larger than individual populations but smaller than the species range.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tittes, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lorant, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGinty, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doebley, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holland, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanchez-Gonzalez, J. d. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tenaillon, M. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-09-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.09.09.459637</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Not so local: the population genetics of convergent adaptation in maize and teosinte.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-09-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.15.460568v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A B73 x Palomero Toluqueo mapping population reveals local adaptation in Mexican highland maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.15.460568v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Generations of farmer selection have produced a unique collection of traditional maize varieties adapted to the environmental challenges of the central Mexican highlands. In addition to agronomic and cultural value, Mexican highland maize represents a good system for the study of local adaptation and acquisition of adaptive phenotypes under cultivation. In this study, we characterized a recombinant inbred line population derived from the cross of the B73 reference line and the Mexican highland maize variety Palomero Toluqueno. Evaluation over multiple years in lowland and highland field sites in Mexico identified genomic regions linked to yield components and putatively adaptive morphological traits. A region on chromosome 7 associated with ear weight showed antagonistic allelic effects in lowland and highland fields, suggesting a trade-off consistent with local adaptation. We identified several alleles of highland origin associated with characteristic highland traits, including reduced tassel branching, increased stem pigmentation and the presence of stem macrohairs. The oligogenic architecture of characteristic morphological traits supports their role in adaptation, suggesting they have arisen from consistent directional selection acting at distinct points across the genome. We discuss these results in the context of the origin of phenotypic novelty during selection, commenting on the role of de novo mutation and the acquisition of adaptive variation by gene flow from endemic wild relatives.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Perez-Limon, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cintora-Martinez, G. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aguilar-Rangel, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salazar-Vidal, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gonzalez-Segovia, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Blöcher-Juarez, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guerrero-Zavala, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barrales-Gamez, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carcano-Macias, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Costich, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nieto-Sotelo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martinez-De la Vega, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Simpson, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flint-Garcia, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diaz-Garcia, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rellan-Alvarez, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sawers, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-09-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.09.15.460568</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A B73 x Palomero Toluqueo mapping population reveals local adaptation in Mexican highland maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-09-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.22.461419v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Deleterious Mutations Accumulate Faster in Allopolyploid than Diploid Cotton (Gossypium) and Unequally Between Subgenomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.22.461419v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Whole genome duplication (polyploidization) is among the most dramatic mutational processes in nature, so understanding how natural selection differs in polyploids relative to diploids is an important goal. Population genetics theory predicts that recessive deleterious mutations accumulate faster in allopolyploids than diploids due to the masking effect of redundant gene copies, but this prediction is hitherto unconfirmed. Here, we use the cotton genus (Gossypium), which contains seven allopolyploids derived from a single polyploidization event 1-2 million years ago, to investigate deleterious mutation accumulation. We use two methods of identifying deleterious mutations at the nucleotide and amino acid level, along with whole-genome resequencing of 43 individuals spanning six allopolyploid species and their two diploid progenitors, to demonstrate that deleterious mutations accumulate faster in allopolyploids than in their diploid progenitors. We find that, unlike what would be expected under models of demographic changes alone, strongly deleterious mutations show the biggest difference between ploidy levels, and this effect diminishes for moderately and mildly deleterious mutations. We further show that the proportion of nonsynonymous mutations that are deleterious differs between the two co-resident subgenomes in the allopolyploids, suggesting that homoeologous masking acts unequally between subgenomes. Our results provide a genome-wide perspective on classic notions of the significance of gene duplication that likely are broadly applicable to allopolyploids, with implications for our understanding of the evolutionary fate of deleterious mutations. Finally, we note that some measures of selection (e.g. dN/dS,{pi} N/{pi}S) may be biased when species of different ploidy levels are compared.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Conover, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-09-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.09.22.461419</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Deleterious Mutations Accumulate Faster in Allopolyploid than Diploid Cotton (Gossypium) and Unequally Between Subgenomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-09-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.29.462466v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A model screening pipeline for bile acid converting anti-Clostridioides difficile bacteria reveals unique biotherapeutic potential of Peptacetobacter hiranonis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.29.462466v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Clostridioides difficile is an antibiotic-resistant bacterium that causes serious, toxin-mediated enteric disease in humans and animals. Gut dysbiosis and resultant alterations in the intestinal bile acid profile play an important role in the pathogenesis of C. difficile infection (CDI). Restoration of the gut microbiota and re-establishment of bacterial bile acid metabolism using fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has been established as a promising strategy against this disease, although this method has several limitations. Thus, a more defined and precise microbiota-based approach using bacteria that biotransform primary bile acids into secondary bile acids could effectively overcome these limitations and control CDI. Therefore, a screening pipeline was developed to isolate bile acid converting bacteria from fecal samples. Dogs were selected as a model CDI-resistant microbiota donor for this pipeline, which yielded a novel Peptacetobacter hiranonis strain that possesses unique anti-C. difficile properties, and both bile acid deconjugation and 7- dehydroxylating activities to perform bile acid conversion. The screening pipeline included a set of in vitro tests along with a precision in vivo gut colonization and bile acid conversion test using altered Schadler flora (ASF) colonized mice. In addition, this pipeline also provided essential information on the growth requirements for screening and cultivating the candidate bacterium, its survival in a CDI predisposing environment, and potential pathogenicity. The model pipeline documented here yielded multiple bile acid converting bacteria, including a P. hiranonis isolate with unique anti-C. difficile biotherapeutic potential, which can be further tested in subsequent preclinical and human clinical trials.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>A. Vinithakumari, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hernandez, B. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ghimire, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adams, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stokes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jepsen, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brezina, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahin, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tangudu, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andreasen, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phillips, G. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wannemuehler, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jergens, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Scaria, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sponseller, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mooyottu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-09-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.09.29.462466</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A model screening pipeline for bile acid converting anti-Clostridioides difficile bacteria reveals unique biotherapeutic potential of Peptacetobacter hiranonis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-09-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.01.462558v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The genome and lifestage-specific transcriptomes of a plant-parasitic nematode and its host reveal susceptibility genes involved in trans-kingdom synthesis of vitamin B. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.01.462558v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plant-parasitic nematodes are a major, and in some cases a dominant, threat to crop production in all agricultural systems. The relative scarcity of classical resistance genes highlights a pressing need to identify new ways to develop nematode-resistant germplasm. Here, we sequence and assemble a high-quality genome of the model cyst nematode Heterodera schachtii to provide a platform for the first system-wide dual analysis of host and parasite gene expression over time, covering all major stages of the interaction. This novel approach enabled the analysis of the hologenome of the infection site, to identify metabolic pathways that were incomplete in the parasite but complemented by the host. Using a combination of bioinformatic, genetic, and biochemical approaches, we show that the highly atypical completion of vitamin B5 biosynthesis by the parasitic animal, putatively enabled by a horizontal gene transfer from a bacterium, is critically important for parasitism. Knockout of either the plant-encoded or the now nematode-encoded steps in the pathway blocks parasitism. Our experiments establish a reference for cyst nematodes, use this platform to further our fundamental understanding of the evolution of plant-parasitism by nematodes, and show that understanding congruent differential expression of metabolic pathways represents a new way to find nematode susceptibility genes, and thereby, targets for future genome editing-mediated generation of nematode-resistant crops.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Siddique, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Radakovic, Z. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hiltl, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pellegrin, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beasley, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chitambo, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chopra, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Danchin, E. G. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grenier, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Habash, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hasan, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Helder, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hewezi, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holbein, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holterman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janakowski, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koutsovoulos, G. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kranse, O. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lozano-Torres, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Masonbrink, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mendy, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riemer, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sobczak, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sonawala, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sterken, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thorpe, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>van Steenbrugge, J. J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zahid, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grundler, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eves-van den Akker, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.01.462558</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The genome and lifestage-specific transcriptomes of a plant-parasitic nematode and its host reveal susceptibility genes involved in trans-kingdom synthesis of vitamin B.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.04.463062v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The maize gene maternal depression of r1 (mdr1) encodes a DNA glycosylase with maternal and paternal fertility functions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.04.463062v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Demethylation of transposons can activate expression of nearby genes and cause imprinted gene expression in endosperm, and it is hypothesized to lead to expression of transposon siRNAs that reinforce silencing in the next generation through transfer either into egg or embryo. Here we describe maternal derepression of r1 (mdr1), which encodes a DNA glycosylase with homology to Arabidopsis DEMETER and which is partially responsible for demethylation of thousands of regions in endosperm. Instead of promoting siRNA expression in endosperm, MDR1 activity inhibits it. Methylation of most repetitive DNA elements in endosperm is not significantly affected by MDR1, with an exception of Helitrons. While maternally-expressed imprinted genes preferentially overlap with MDR1 demethylated regions, the majority of genes that overlap demethylated regions are not imprinted. Double mutant megagametophytes lacking both MDR1 and its close homolog DNG102 result in early seed failure, and double mutant microgametophytes fail pre-fertilization. These data establish DNA demethylation by glycosylases as essential in maize endosperm and pollen and suggest that neither transposon repression nor genomic imprinting are its main function in endosperm.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gent, J. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swentowsky, K. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Higgins, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fu, F.-F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zeng, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, D. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dawe, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Springer, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.04.463062</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The maize gene maternal depression of r1 (mdr1) encodes a DNA glycosylase with maternal and paternal fertility functions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.05.463302v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Ligands with poly-fluorophenyl moieties promote a local structural rearrangement in the Spinach2 and Broccoli aptamers that increases ligand affinities 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.05.463302v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The interaction of nucleic acids with their molecular targets often involves structural reorganization that may traverse a complex folding landscape. With the more recent recognition that many RNAs, both coding and noncoding, may regulate cellular activities by interacting with target molecules, it becomes increasingly important to understand the means by which nucleic acids interact with their targets and how drugs might be developed that can influence critical folding transitions. We have extensively investigated the interaction of the Spinach2 and Broccoli aptamers with a library of small molecule ligands modified by various extensions from the imido nitrogen of DFHBI (3,5-difluoro-4-hydroxybenzylidene imidazolinone) that reach out from the Spinach2 ligand binding pocket. Studies of the interaction of these compounds with the aptamers revealed that poly-fluorophenyl-modified ligands initiate a slow change in aptamer affinity that takes an extended time (half-life of ~40 min) to achieve. The change in affinity appears to involve an initial disruption of the entrance to the ligand binding pocket followed by a gradual lockdown for which the most likely driving force is an interaction of the gateway adenine with a nearby 2OH group. These results suggest that poly-fluorophenyl modifications might increase the ability of small molecule drugs to disrupt local structure and promote RNA remodeling.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Anisuzzaman, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Geraskin, I. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ilgu, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bendickson, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kraus, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nilsen-Hamilton, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.05.463302</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Ligands with poly-fluorophenyl moieties promote a local structural rearrangement in the Spinach2 and Broccoli aptamers that increases ligand affinities]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.06.463412v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Cholesterol dynamics are essential for the growth and development of Plasmodium falciparum within the erythrocyte 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.06.463412v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cholesterol is the most abundant lipid in the erythrocyte. During its blood stage development, the malaria parasite establishes an active cholesterol gradient across the various membrane systems within the infected erythrocyte. Interestingly, some antimalarial compounds have recently been shown to disrupt cholesterol homeostasis in intraerythrocytic stages of Plasmodium falciparum. These studies point to the importance of cholesterol for parasite growth. Previously, reduction of cholesterol from the erythrocyte membrane by treatment with methyl-{beta}-cyclodextrin (M{beta}CD) was shown to inhibit parasite invasion and growth. In addition, M{beta}CD treatment of trophozoite stage P. falciparum was shown to result in parasite expulsion from the host cell. We have revisited these phenomena by using live video microscopy, ultrastructural analysis, and response to antimalarial compounds. By using time-lapse video microscopy of fluorescently tagged parasites, we show that M{beta}CD treatment for just 30 min causes dramatic expulsion of the trophozoite stage parasites. This forceful expulsion occurs within 10 sec. Remarkably, the plasma membrane of the host cell from which the parasite has been expelled does not appear to be compromised. The parasitophorous vacuolar membrane (PVM) continued to surround the extruded parasite, but the PVM appeared damaged. Treatment with antimalarial compounds targeting PfATP4 or PfNCR1 prevented M{beta}CD-mediated extrusion of the parasites, pointing to a potential role of cholesterol dynamics underlying the expulsion phenomena. We also confirmed the essential role of erythrocyte plasma membrane cholesterol for invasion and growth of P. falciparum. This defect can be partially complemented by cholesterol and desmosterol but not with epicholesterol, revealing stereospecificity underlying cholesterol function. Overall, our studies advance previous observations and reveal unusual cell biological features underlying cholesterol depletion of infected erythrocyte plasma membrane.

ImportanceMalaria remains a major challenge in much of the world. Symptoms of malaria are caused by the growth of parasites belonging to Plasmodium spp. inside the red blood cells (RBC), leading to their destruction. The parasite depends upon its host for much of its nutritional need. Cholesterol is a major lipid in the RBC plasma membrane, which is the only source of this lipid for malarial parasites. We have previously shown that certain new antimalarial compounds disrupt cholesterol homeostasis in P. falciparum. Here we use live time-lapse video microscopy to show dramatic expulsion of the parasite from the host RBC when the cholesterol content of the RBC is reduced. Remarkably, this expulsion is inhibited by the antimalarials that disrupt lipid homeostasis. We also show stereospecificity of cholesterol in supporting parasite growth inside RBC. Overall, these results point to a critical role of cholesterol in physiology of malaria parasites.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ahiya, A. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhatnagar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morrisey, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vaidya, A. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.06.463412</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Cholesterol dynamics are essential for the growth and development of Plasmodium falciparum within the erythrocyte]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.12.462022v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Frugivore gut passage increases seed germination: an updated meta-analysis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.12.462022v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Many plants rely on animal mutualists for reproduction. Quantifying how animal mutualists impact plant performance provides a foundation for modelling how change in animal communities affects the composition and functioning of plant communities. We performed a meta-analysis of 2539 experiments, 6 times more than the last comprehensive meta-analysis, examining how gut passage by frugivores influences seed germination. We simultaneously analyzed multiple predictor variables related to study methodology, location, and frugivore identity to disentangle methodological from ecological impacts on effect sizes. We found that gut passage by birds, fish, reptiles, bats, primates, and other mammals on average increased seed germination, but that the magnitude varied across vertebrate groups. The positive effects of gut passage were largely explained by the de-inhibitory effects of pulp removal rather than by the scarification of seed tissues. Some previous studies and meta-analyses that found no effect of gut passage only tested scarification or did not distinguish between these tests of scarification and pulp removal. We found that, for a typical fleshy-fruited plant species, the lack of gut passage reduces germination by 60%. From an evolutionary perspective, this indicates a large risk associated with reliance on animal mutualists that is balanced against the benefits of animal-mediated seed dispersal. From a conservation perspective, this highlights the potential for large demographic consequences of frugivore declines on plant populations. Our database and findings advance quantitative predictions for the role of fruit-frugivore interactions in shaping plant communities in the Anthropocene.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rogers, H. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cavazos, B. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gawel, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karnish, A. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ray, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rose, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thierry, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fricke, E. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.12.462022</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Frugivore gut passage increases seed germination: an updated meta-analysis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.20.465142v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dual domestication, diversity, and differential introgression in Old World cotton diploids 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.20.465142v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Domestication in the cotton genus is remarkable in that it has occurred independently four different times at two different ploidy levels. Relatively little is known about genome evolution and domestication in the cultivated diploid species Gossypium herbaceum and G. arboreum, because of the absence of wild representatives for the latter species, their ancient domestication, and their joint history of human-mediated dispersal and interspecific gene flow. Using in-depth resequencing of a broad sampling from both species, we confirm their independent domestication, as opposed to a progenitor-derivative relationship, showing that diversity (mean {pi} = 2.3x10-3) within species is similar, and that divergence between species is modest (weighted FST=0.4430). Individual accessions were homozygous for ancestral SNPs at over half of variable sites, while fixed, derived sites were at modest frequencies. Notably, two chromosomes with a paucity of fixed, derived sites (i.e., chromosomes 7 and 10) were also strongly implicated in introgression analyses. Collectively, these data demonstrate variable permeability to introgression among chromosomes, which we propose is due to divergent selection under domestication and/or the phenomenon of F2 breakdown in interspecific crosses. Our analyses provide insight into the evolutionary forces influencing diversity and divergence in the diploid cultivated species, and establish a foundation for understanding the contribution of introgression and/or strong parallel selection to the extensive morphological similarities shared between species.

Significance statementThe cotton genus (Gossypium) contains four different species that were independently domesticated at least 4,000 years ago. Relatively little is understood about diversity and evolution in the two diploid African-Asian sister-species G. herbaceum and G. arboreum, despite their historical importance in the region and contemporary cultivation, largely in the Indian subcontinent. Here we address questions regarding the relationship between the two species, their contemporary levels of diversity, and their patterns of interspecific gene flow accompanying their several millennia history of human-mediated dispersal and contact. We validate independent domestication of the two species and document the genomic distribution of interspecific genetic exchange.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thrash, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ramaraj, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Udall, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.20.465142</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dual domestication, diversity, and differential introgression in Old World cotton diploids]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.20.465182v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A tiger in the Upper Midwest: Surveillance and genetic data support the introduction and establishment of Aedes albopictus in Iowa, USA 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.20.465182v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Aedes albopictus is a competent vector of several arboviruses that has spread throughout the United States over the last three decades after it was initially detected in Texas in 1985. With the emergence of Zika virus in the Americas in 2015-2016 and an increased need to better understand the current distributions of Ae. albopictus in the US, we initiated surveillance efforts to determine the abundance of invasive Aedes species in Iowa. Here, we describe the resulting surveillance efforts from 2016-2020 in which we detect stable and persistent populations of Aedes albopictus in three Iowa counties. Based on temporal patterns in abundance and genetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA haplotypes between years, our data support that populations of Ae. albopictus are overwintering and have likely become established in the state. In addition, the localization of Ae. albopictus predominantly in areas of urbanization and noticeable absence in rural areas suggests that these ecological factors may represent potential barriers to their further spread and contribute to overwintering success. Together, these data document the establishment of Ae. albopictus in Iowa and their expansion into the Upper Midwest, where freezing winter temperatures were previously believed to limit their spread. With increasing globalization, urbanization, and rising temperatures associated with global warming, the range of invasive arthropod vectors, such as Ae. albopictus, is expected to only further expand, creating increased risks for vector-borne disease.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hall, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tokarz, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Field, E. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.20.465182</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A tiger in the Upper Midwest: Surveillance and genetic data support the introduction and establishment of Aedes albopictus in Iowa, USA]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.22.465382v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Clostridioides difficile infection increases circulating p-cresol levels and dysregulates brain dopamine metabolism: linking gut-brain axis to autism and other neurologic disorders? 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.22.465382v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Gastrointestinal illnesses are one of the most common comorbidities reported in patients with neurodevelopmental diseases, including autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Gut dysbiosis, overgrowth of C. difficile, and gut microbiota-associated alterations in central neurotransmission have been implicated in ASD, where the dopaminergic axis plays an important role in the disease pathogenesis. Human C. difficile strains produce a significant amount of the toxic metabolite p-cresol, an inhibitor of dopamine beta-hydroxylase (DBH), which catalyzes the conversion of dopamine (DA) to norepinephrine (NE). p-Cresol is known to precipitate and exacerbate autistic behavior in rodents by increasing DA levels and altering DA receptor sensitivity in brain regions relevant to ASD. Therefore, we hypothesized that C. difficile infection dysregulates dopaminergic metabolism by increasing p-cresol levels in the gut and systemic circulation, and by inhibiting brain DBH, ultimately leading to elevated DA in different brain regions. For testing this hypothesis, we induced antibiotic-associated C. difficile infection in mice and determined the gut and serum p-cresol levels, serum DBH activity, and dopamine and its metabolite levels in different brain regions relevant to ASD. The results showed that C. difficile infection causes a significant increase in striatal DA, accompanied by significantly altered levels of DA metabolites and NE in different brain regions (p < 0.05). In addition, significantly increased circulating p-cresol levels and reduced DBH activity were observed in C. difficile infected mice (p < 0.05). Therefore, the results from this study suggest a potential link between C. difficile infection and alterations in the dopaminergic axis implicated in the precipitation and aggravation of ASD.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>A. Vinithakumari, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Padhi, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>G. Hernandez, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Je-Han Lin, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dunkerson-Kurzhumov, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Showman, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Breitzman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stokes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sulaiman, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tangudu, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuttappan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muyyarikkandy, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phillips, G. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anantharam, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perera, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sponseller, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mooyottu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.22.465382</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Clostridioides difficile infection increases circulating p-cresol levels and dysregulates brain dopamine metabolism: linking gut-brain axis to autism and other neurologic disorders?]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.25.465681v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A method for identifying environmental stimuli and genes responsible for genotype-by-environment interactions from a large-scale multi-environment data set 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.25.465681v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
It has not been fully understood in real fields what environment stimuli cause the genotype-by-environment (G x E) interactions, when they occur, and what genes react to them. Large-scale multi-environment data sets are attractive data sources for these purposes because they potentially experienced various environmental conditions. Here we developed a data-driven approach termed Environmental Covariate Search Affecting Genetic Correlations (ECGC) to identify environmental stimuli and genes responsible for the G x E interactions from large-scale multi-environment data sets. ECGC was applied to a soybean (Glycine max) data set that consisted of 25,158 records collected at 52 environments. ECGC illustrated what meteorological factors shaped the G x E interactions in six traits including yield, flowering time, and protein content and when they were involved. For example, it illustrated the relevance of precipitation around sowing dates and hours of sunshine just before maturity to the interactions observed for yield. Moreover, genome-wide association mapping on the sensitivities to the identified stimuli discovered candidate and known genes responsible for the G x E interactions. Our results demonstrate the capability of data-driven approaches to bring novel insights on the G x E interactions observed in fields.

Key messageThe proposed method is able to identify environmental stimuli and genes responsible for the G x E interactions observed in multi-environmental trials. The method is based on similarity search between genetic correlation and environmental stimuli among environments.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Onogi, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sekine, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaga, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakano, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yamada, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ninomiya, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.25.465681</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A method for identifying environmental stimuli and genes responsible for genotype-by-environment interactions from a large-scale multi-environment data set]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.28.466385v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Response of total (DNA) and metabolically active (RNA) microbial communities in Miscanthus x giganteus cultivated soil to different nitrogen fertilization rates 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.28.466385v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Miscanthus x giganteus is a promising high-yielding perennial plant to meet growing bioenergy demands but the degree to which the soil microbiome affects its nitrogen cycling and subsequently, biomass yield remains unclear. In this study, we hypothesize that contributions of metabolically active soil microbial membership may be underestimated with DNA-based approaches. We assessed the response of the soil microbiome to nitrogen availability in terms of both DNA and RNA soil microbial communities from the Long-term Assessment of Miscanthus Productivity and Sustainability (LAMPS) field trial. DNA and RNA were extracted from 271 samples, and 16S SSU rRNA amplicon sequencing was performed to characterize microbial community structure. Significant differences were observed in the resulting soil microbiomes and were best explained by the sequencing library of origin, either DNA and RNA. Similar numbers of taxa were detected in DNA and RNA microbial communities, with more than 90% of taxa shared. However, the profile of dominant taxa within DNA and RNA differed, with varying proportions of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria and Firmicutes and Proteobacteria. Only RNA microbial communities showed seasonal responses to nitrogen fertilization, and these differences were associated with nitrogen-cycling bacteria. The relative abundance of bacteria associated with nitrogen cycling was 7-folds higher in RNA than in DNA, and genes associated with denitrifying bacteria were significantly enriched in RNA, suggesting that these bacteria may be underestimated with DNA-only approaches. Our findings indicate that RNA-based SSU characterization can be a significant and complementing resource for understanding the role of soil microbiomes in bioenergy crop production.

ImportanceMiscanthus x giganteus is becoming a cornerstone of bioeconomy cropping systems, but it remains unclear how the soil microbiome supplies nitrogen to this low-input crop. DNA-based techniques are used to provide community characterization but may miss important metabolically active taxa. By analyzing both DNA- and actively transcribed RNA-based microbial communities, we found that nitrogen cycling taxa in the soil microbiome may be underestimated using only DNA-based approaches. Accurately understanding the role of microbes and how they cycle nutrients is important for the development of sustainable bioenergy crops, and RNA-based approaches are recommended as a complement to DNA approaches to better understand the microbial, plant, and management interactions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Choi, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ma, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heaton, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-10-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.28.466385</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Response of total (DNA) and metabolically active (RNA) microbial communities in Miscanthus x giganteus cultivated soil to different nitrogen fertilization rates]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-10-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.31.466677v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Multiple spillovers and onward transmission of SARS-Cov-2 in free-living and captive White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.31.466677v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Many animal species are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and could potentially act as reservoirs, yet transmission of the virus in non-human free-living animals has not been documented. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), the predominant cervid in North America, are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, and experimentally infected fawns can transmit the virus. To test the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 may be circulating in deer, we tested 283 retropharyngeal lymph node (RPLN) samples collected from 151 free-living and 132 captive deer in Iowa from April 2020 through December of 2020 for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Ninety-four of the 283 deer (33.2%; 95% CI: 28, 38.9) samples were positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA as assessed by RT-PCR. Notably, between November 23, 2020 and January 10, 2021, 80 of 97 (82.5%; 95% CI 73.7, 88.8) RPLN samples had detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA by RT-PCR. Whole genome sequencing of the 94 positive RPLN samples identified 12 SARS-CoV-2 lineages, with B.1.2 (n = 51; 54.5%), and B.1.311 (n = 19; 20%) accounting for ~75% of all samples. The geographic distribution and nesting of clusters of deer and human lineages strongly suggest multiple zooanthroponotic spillover events and deer-to-deer transmission. The discovery of sylvatic and enzootic SARS-CoV-2 transmission in deer has important implications for the ecology and long-term persistence, as well as the potential for spillover to other animals and spillback into humans. These findings highlight an urgent need for a robust and proactive "One Health" approach to obtaining a better understanding of the ecology and evolution of SARS-CoV-2.

One-Sentence SummarySARS-CoV-2 was detected in one-third of sampled white-tailed deer in Iowa between September 2020 and January of 2021 that likely resulted from multiple human-to-deer spillover and deer-to-deer transmission events.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kuchipudi, S. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Surendran-Nair, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ruden, R. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yon, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nissly, R. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelli, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jayarao, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vandegrift, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maranas, C. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Levine, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Willgert, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Conlan, A. J. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Olsen, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Davis, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Musser, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hudson, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kapur, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-11-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.10.31.466677</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Multiple spillovers and onward transmission of SARS-Cov-2 in free-living and captive White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-11-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.02.466982v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An interolog-based barley interactome as an integration framework for immune signaling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.02.466982v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The barley MLA nucleotide-binding, leucine-rich-repeat (NLR) receptor and its orthologs confer recognition specificity to many cereal diseases, including powdery mildew, stem and stripe rust, Victoria blight, and rice blast. We used interolog inference to construct a barley protein interactome (HvInt) comprising 66133 edges and 7181 nodes, as a foundation to explore signaling networks associated with MLA. HvInt was compared to the experimentally validated Arabidopsis interactome of 11253 proteins and 73960 interactions, verifying that the two networks share scale-free properties, including a power-law distribution and small-world network. Then, by successive layering of defense-specific  omics datasets, HvInt was customized to model cellular response to powdery mildew infection. Integration of HvInt with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) enabled us to infer disease modules and responses associated with fungal penetration and haustorial development. Next, using HvInt and an infection-time-course transcriptome, we assembled resistant (R) and susceptible (S) subnetworks. The resulting differentially co-expressed (R-S) interactome is essential to barley immunity, facilitates the flow of signaling pathways and is linked to Mla through trans eQTL associations. Lastly, next-generation, yeast-two-hybrid screens identified fifteen novel MLA interactors, which were incorporated into HvInt, to predict receptor localization, and signaling response. These results link genomic, transcriptomic, and physical interactions during MLA-specified immunity.

AUTHOR SUMMARYPowdery mildew fungi infect more than 9,500 agronomic and horticultural plant species. In order to prevent economic loss due to diseases caused by pathogens, plant breeders incorporate resistance genes into varieties that are grown for food, feed, fuel and fiber. One of these resistance genes encodes the barley MLA immune receptor, an ancestral cereal protein that confers recognition to powdery mildew, stem and stripe rust, rice blast and Victoria blight. However, in order to function properly, these immune receptors must interact with additional proteins and protein complexes during the different stages of fungal infection and plant defense. We used a combination of computational- and laboratory-based methods to predict over 66,000 possible protein-protein interactions in barley. This network of proteins was then integrated with various defense-specific datasets to assemble the molecular building blocks associated with resistance to the powdery mildew pathogen, in addition to those proteins that interact with the MLA immune receptor. Our application of genome-scale, protein-protein interaction data provides a foundation to decipher the complex molecular components that control immune responses in crops.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Velasquez-Zapata, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elmore, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fuerst, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-11-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.11.02.466982</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An interolog-based barley interactome as an integration framework for immune signaling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-11-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.03.467115v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Blueprint for Phasing and Assembling the Genomes of Heterozygous Polyploids: Application to the Octoploid Genome of Strawberry 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.03.467115v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The challenge of allelic diversity for assembling haplotypes is exemplified in polyploid genomes containing homoeologous chromosomes of identical ancestry, and significant homologous variation within their ancestral subgenomes. Cultivated strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) and its wild progenitors are outbred octoploids (2n = 8x = 56) in which up to eight homologous and homoeologous alleles are preserved. This introduces significant risk of haplotype collapse, switching, and chimeric fusions during assembly. Using third generation HiFi sequences from PacBio, we assembled the genome of the day-neutral octoploid F. x ananassa hybrid  Royal Royce from the University of California. Our goal was to produce subgenome-and haplotype-resolved assemblies of all 56 chromosomes, accurately reconstructing the parental haploid chromosome complements. Previous work has demonstrated that partitioning sequences by parental phase supports direct assembly of haplotypes in heterozygous diploid species. We leveraged the accuracy of HiFi sequence data with pedigree-informed sequencing to partition long read sequences by phase, and reduce the downstream risk of subgenomic chimeras during assembly. We were able to utilize an octoploid strawberry recombination breakpoint map containing 3.6 M variants to identify and break chimeric junctions, and perform scaffolding of the phase-1 and phase-2 octoploid assemblies. The N50 contiguity of the phase-1 and phase-2 assemblies prior to scaffolding and gap-filling was 11 Mb. The final haploid assembly represented seven of 28 chromosomes in a single contiguous sequence, and averaged fewer than three gaps per pseudomolecule. Additionally, we re-annotated the octoploid genome to produce a custom F. x ananassa repeat library and improved set of gene models based on IsoSeq transcript data and an expansive RNA-seq expression atlas. Here we present  FaRR1, a gold-standard reference genome of F. x ananassa cultivar  Royal Royce to assist future genomic research and molecular breeding of allo-octoploid strawberry.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hardigan, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Feldmann, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pincot, D. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Famula, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vachev, M. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Madera, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zerbe, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mars, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peluso, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rank, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saski, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Acharya, C. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cole, G. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yocca, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Platts, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edger, P. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Knapp, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-11-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.11.03.467115</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Blueprint for Phasing and Assembling the Genomes of Heterozygous Polyploids: Application to the Octoploid Genome of Strawberry]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-11-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.05.467060v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
De novo assembly of 20 chickens reveals the undetectable phenomenon for thousands of core genes on sub-telomeric regions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.05.467060v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The gene numbers and evolutionary rates of birds were assumed to be much lower than that of mammals, which in sharp contrast to the huge species number and morphological diversity of birds. It is very necessary to construct a complete avian genome and analyze its evolution.We constructed a chicken pan-genome from 20 de novo genome assemblies with high sequencing depth, newly identified 1,335 protein-coding genes and 3,011 long noncoding RNAs. The majority of these novel genes were detected across most individuals of the examined transcriptomes but were accidentally measured in each of the DNA sequencing data regardless of Illumina or PacBio technology. Furthermore, different from previous pan-genome models, most of these novel genes were overrepresented on chromosomal sub-telomeric regions, surrounded with extremely high proportions of tandem repeats, and strongly blocked DNA sequencing. These hidden genes were proved to be shared by all chicken genomes, included many housekeeping genes, and enriched in immune pathways. Comparative genomics revealed the novel genes had three-fold elevated substitution rates than known ones, updating the evolutionary rates of birds. Our study provides a framework for constructing a better chicken genome, which will contribute towards the understanding of avian evolution and improvement of poultry breeding.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sun, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bian, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tian, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jia, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heller, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dai, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wen, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lan, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>SIDDIKI, A. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Suwannapoom, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nie, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-11-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.11.05.467060</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[De novo assembly of 20 chickens reveals the undetectable phenomenon for thousands of core genes on sub-telomeric regions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-11-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.17.468872v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A3D Database: Structure-based Protein Aggregation Predictions for the Human Proteome 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.17.468872v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationProtein aggregation is associated with highly debilitating human disorders and constitutes a major bottleneck for producing therapeutic proteins. Our knowledge of the human protein structures repertoire has dramatically increased with the recent development of the AlphaFold (AF) deep-learning method. This structural information can be used to understand better protein aggregation properties and the rational design of protein solubility. This article uses the Aggrescan3D (A3D) tool to compute the structure-based aggregation predictions for the human proteome and make the predictions available in a database form.

ResultsHere, we present the A3D Database, in which we analyze the AF-predicted human protein structures (for over 17 thousand non-membrane proteins) in terms of their aggregation properties using the A3D tool. Each entry of the A3D Database provides a detailed analysis of the structure-based aggregation propensity computed with A3D. The A3D Database implements simple but useful graphical tools for visualizing and interpreting protein structure datasets. We discuss case studies illustrating how the database could be used to analyze physiologically relevant proteins. Furthermore, the database enables testing the influence of user-selected mutations on protein solubility and stability, all integrated into a user-friendly interface.

Availability and implementationA3D Database is freely available at: http://biocomp.chem.uw.edu.pl/A3D2/hproteome
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Badaczewska-Dawid, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garcia-Pardo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuriata, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pujols, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ventura, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kmiecik, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-11-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.11.17.468872</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A3D Database: Structure-based Protein Aggregation Predictions for the Human Proteome]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-11-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.17.469008v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic and antigenic characterization of an expanding H3 influenza A virus clade in US swine visualized by Nextstrain 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.17.469008v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Defining factors that influence spatial and temporal patterns of influenza A virus (IAV) is essential to inform vaccine strain selection and strategies to reduce the spread of potentially zoonotic swine-origin IAV. The relative frequency of detection of the H3 phylogenetic clade 1990.4.a (colloquially known as C-IVA) in US swine declined to 7% in 2017, but increased to 32% in 2019. We conducted phylogenetic and phenotypic analyses to determine putative mechanisms associated with increased detection. We created an implementation of Nextstrain to visualize the emergence, spatial spread, and genetic evolution of H3 IAV-S, identifying two C-IVA clades that emerged in 2017 and cocirculated in multiple US states. Phylodynamic analysis of the HA gene documented low relative genetic diversity from 2017 to 2019, suggesting clonal expansion. The major H3 C-IVA clade contained an N156H amino acid substitution, but HI assays demonstrated no significant antigenic drift. The minor HA clade was paired with the NA clade N2-2002B prior to 2016, but acquired and maintained N2-2002A in 2016, resulting in a loss in antigenic cross-reactivity between N2-2002B and -2002A containing H3N2 strains. The major C-IVA clade viruses acquired a nucleoprotein (NP) of the H1N1pdm09 lineage through reassortment in replacement of the North American swine lineage NP. Instead of genetic or antigenic diversity within the C-IVA HA, our data suggest that population immunity to H3 2010.1, along with antigenic diversity of the NA and acquisition of the H1N1pdm09 NP gene likely explain the re-emergence and transmission of C-IVA H3N2 in swine.

ImportanceGenetically distinct clades of influenza A virus (IAV) in swine undermines efforts to control the disease. Swine producers commonly use vaccines, and vaccine strains are selected by identifying the most common hemagglutinin (HA) gene from viruses detected in a farm or a region. In 2019, we identified an increase in detection frequency of an H3 phylogenetic clade, C-IVA, which was previously circulating at much lower levels in U.S. swine. Our study identified genetic and antigenic factors contributing to its resurgence by linking comprehensive phylodynamic analyses with empirical wet-lab experiments and visualized these evolutionary analyses in a Nextstrain implementation. The contemporary C-IVA HA genes did not demonstrate an increase in genetic diversity nor significant antigenic changes. N2 genes did demonstrate antigenic diversity, and the expanding C-IVA clade acquired a nucleoprotein (NP) gene segment via reassortment. Virus phenotype and vaccination targeting prior dominant HA clades likely contributed to the clades success.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Neveau, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zeller, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaplan, B. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Souza, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vincent, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-11-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.11.17.469008</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic and antigenic characterization of an expanding H3 influenza A virus clade in US swine visualized by Nextstrain]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-11-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.23.469657v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Analysis of RNA sequence and structure in key genes of Mycobacterium ulcerans reveals conserved structural motifs and regions with apparent pressure to remain unstructured 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.23.469657v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Buruli Ulcer is a neglected tropical disease that results in disfiguring and potentially dangerous lesions in affected persons across a wide geographic area, which includes much of West Africa. The causative agent of Buruli Ulcer is Mycobacterium ulcerans, a relative of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis and leprosy. Few therapeutic options exist for the treatment of this disease beyond the main approach, surgical removal, which is frequently ineffective. In this study we analyze six genes in Mycobacterium ulcerans that have high potential of therapeutic targeting. We focus our analysis on a combined in silico and comparative sequence study of potential RNA secondary structure across these genes. The end result of this work was the comprehensive local RNA structural landscape across each of these significant genes. This revealed multiple sites of ordered and evolved RNA structure interspersed between sequences that either have no bias for structure or, indeed, appear to be ordered to be unstructured and (potentially) accessible. In addition to providing data that could be of interest to basic biology, our results provide guides for efforts aimed at targeting this pathogen at the RNA level. We explore this latter possibility through the in silico analysis of antisense oligonucleotides that could be used to target pathogen RNA.

Author SummaryBuruli Ulcer is a neglected tropical necrotizing skin disease endemic to West Africa and several other developing countries. The disease is known to be caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, but the mode of transmission is not well understood. Here, we present findings on the RNA secondary structural landscape of key genes found in its genome and virulence plasmid. We also suggest potential therapeutic strategies to treat this disease that leverage a better understanding of RNA secondary structure. In our analysis we have predicted regions within these genes that are potentially ordered by evolution to have unusual structural stability and likely functionality, as well as regions that lack stable structure and may be unordered for accessibility. These structured regions can act as potential targets of both antisense oligonucleotide and small molecule therapeutics, while the unstructured regions may be most advantageous for only antisense oligonucleotides. Both strategies have been proven to be effective in other bacterial and viral pathogens; therefore, adaptation to this neglected disease may prove beneficial to developing more effective and efficient treatment options. Through our analysis of the RNA secondary structure landscape of key genes in M. ulcerans, we hope to provide other researchers with new avenues for development of novel therapeutic strategies to treat this devastating and neglected disease.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rouse, W. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gart, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peysakhova, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-11-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.11.23.469657</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Analysis of RNA sequence and structure in key genes of Mycobacterium ulcerans reveals conserved structural motifs and regions with apparent pressure to remain unstructured]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-11-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.03.471027v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Deciphering the potential niche of novel black yeast fungal isolates in a biological soil crust based on genomes, phenotyping, and melanin regulation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.03.471027v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Black yeasts are polyextremotolerant fungi that contain high amounts of melanin in their cell wall and maintain a primarily yeast form. These fungi grow in xeric, nutrient deplete environments which implies that they require highly flexible metabolisms and have been suggested to contain the ability to form lichen-like mutualisms with nearby algae and bacteria. However, the exact ecological niche and interactions between these fungi and their surrounding community is not well understood. We have isolated two novel black yeasts from the genus Exophiala that were recovered from dryland biological soil crusts. Despite notable differences in colony and cellular morphology, both fungi appear to be members of the same species, which has been named Exophiala viscosa (i.e., E. viscosa JF 03-3 Goopy and E. viscosa JF 03-4F Slimy). A combination of whole genome sequencing, phenotypic experiments, and melanin regulation experiments have been performed on these isolates to fully characterize these fungi and help decipher their fundamental niches within the biological soil crust consortium. Our results reveal that E. viscosa is capable of utilizing a wide variety of carbon and nitrogen sources potentially derived from symbiotic microbes, can withstand many forms of abiotic stresses, and excrete melanin that can potentially provide UV resistance to the biological soil crust community. Besides the identification of a novel species within the genus Exophiala, our study also provides new insight into the regulation of melanin production in polyextremotolerant fungi.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Carr, E. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barton, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grambo, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Renfro, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sullivan, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuo, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pangilinan, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lipzen, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Keymanesh, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Savage, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barry, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grigoriev, I. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riekhof, W. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-12-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.12.03.471027</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Deciphering the potential niche of novel black yeast fungal isolates in a biological soil crust based on genomes, phenotyping, and melanin regulation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-12-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.471228v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Does extracellular DNA mask microbial responses to a pulse disturbance? 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.471228v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A major goal in microbial ecology is to predict how microbial communities will respond to global change. However, DNA-based sequencing that is intended to characterize live microbial communities includes extracellular DNA (exDNA) from non-viable cells. This could obscure relevant microbial responses, particularly to pulse disturbances which kill bacteria and have disproportionate effects on ecosystems. Here, we characterize bacterial communities before and after a drying-rewetting pulse disturbance, using an improved method for exDNA exclusion. We find that exDNA removal is important for detecting subtle yet significant changes in microbial abundance, diversity, and community composition across the disturbance. However, inclusion of exDNA did not obscure results to a large extent, only sometimes altering statistical significance but rarely changing the direction of the response or general conclusions about bacterial disturbance dynamics. Although there may be instances where exDNA removal is essential for accurate representation of microbial communities, our study suggests these scenarios will be difficult to predict a priori. Overall, we found no evidence that certain time points across the distrubance were more affected by exDNA inclusion, nor did the size or composition of exDNA pools accurately predict when exDNA would alter significance levels. However, exDNA dynamics did vary strongly across the two soil types tested.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kittredge, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dougherty, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Glanville, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Evans, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-12-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.12.04.471228</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Does extracellular DNA mask microbial responses to a pulse disturbance?]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-12-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471472v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phosphorylation dynamics in a flg22 induced, heterotrimeric G protein dependent signaling network in Arabidopsis thaliana reveals a candidate PP2A phosphatase involved in AtRGS1 trafficking 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471472v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
flg22 is a 22-amino peptide released from bacterial flagellin, a Microbe-Associated Molecular Pattern (MAMP) that is recognized by the plant cell as a signal indicating that bacteria are present. On its own, flg22 initiates a rapid increase in cytoplasmic calcium, extracellular reactive oxygen species, and activation of a Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) cascade, all of which are activated within 15 minutes after the cell perceives flg22. Here we show a massive change in protein abundance and phosphorylation state of the Arabidopsis root cell proteome within this 15-minute duration in wildtype and a mutant deficient in G-protein coupled signaling. Integration of phosphoproteome with protein-protein interactome data followed by network topology analyses discovered that many of the flg22-induced phosphoproteome changes fall on proteins that comprise the G protein interactome and on the most highly populated hubs of the immunity network. Approximately 95% of the phosphorylation changes in the G-protein interactome depend on a functional heterotrimeric G protein complex, some occur on proteins that interact directly with components of G-coupled signal transduction. One of these is ATB, a substrate-recognition sub-unit of the PP2A Ser/Thr phosphatase and an interactor to Arabidopsis thaliana REGULATOR OF G SIGNALING 1 protein (AtRGS1), a 7-transmembrane spanning modulator of the nucleotide-binding state of the core G protein complex. AtRGS1 is phosphorylated by BAK1, a component of the flg22 receptor, to initiate AtRGS1 endocytosis. A null mutation of ATB confers high basal endocytosis of AtRGS1, suggesting sustained phosphorylated status. Loss of ATB confers traits associated with loss of AtRGS1. Because the basal level of AtRGS1 is lower in the atb null mutant in a proteasome-dependent manner, we propose that phosphorylation-dependent endocytosis of AtRGS1 is part of a mechanism to degrade AtRGS1 which then sustains activation of the G protein complex. Thus, the role of ATB is now established as a central component of phosphorylation-dependent regulation of system dynamics in innate immunity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Watkins, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jones, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Urano, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mishra, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mukhtar, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Oliveira, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brachova, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seifert, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mitchell, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reis, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-12-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.12.06.471472</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phosphorylation dynamics in a flg22 induced, heterotrimeric G protein dependent signaling network in Arabidopsis thaliana reveals a candidate PP2A phosphatase involved in AtRGS1 trafficking]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-12-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.07.471565v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phosphorylation dynamics in a flg22-induced, G-protein dependent network in Arabidopsis thaliana 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.07.471565v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
This manuscript has been withdrawn following erroneous duplicate posting. The appropriate version is available at 10.1101/2021.12.06.471472.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Watkins, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Oliveira, C. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mishra, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brachova, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siefert, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mitchell, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>dos Reis, P. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Urano, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mukhtar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jones, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2021-12-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2021.12.07.471565</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phosphorylation dynamics in a flg22-induced, G-protein dependent network in Arabidopsis thaliana]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2021-12-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.04.474935v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
ABRIDGE: An ultra-compression software for SAM alignment files 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.04.474935v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Advancement in technology has enabled sequencing machines to produce vast amounts of genetic data, causing an increase in storage demands. Most genomic software utilizes read alignments for several purposes including transcriptome assembly and gene count estimation. Herein we present, ABRIDGE, a state-of-the-art compressor for SAM alignment files offering users both lossless and lossy compression options. This reference-based file compressor achieves the best compression ratio among all compression software ensuring lower space demand and faster file transmission. Central to the software is a novel algorithm that retains non-redundant information. This new approach has allowed ABRIDGE to achieve a compression 16% higher than the second-best compressor for RNA-Seq reads and over 35% for DNA-Seq reads. ABRIDGE also offers users the option to randomly access location without having to decompress the entire file. ABRIDGE is distributed under MIT license and can be obtained from GitHub (https://github.com/sagnikbanerjee15/Abridge) and docker hub. We anticipate that the user community will adopt ABRIDGE within their existing pipeline encouraging further research in this domain.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-01-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.01.04.474935</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[ABRIDGE: An ultra-compression software for SAM alignment files]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-01-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.06.475252v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Acetyl-CoA mediated autoacetylation of fatty acid synthase in de novo lipogenesis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.06.475252v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
De novo lipogenesis (DNL) is a highly regulated metabolic process, which is known to be activated through transcriptional regulation of lipogenic genes, including fatty acid synthase (FASN). Unexpectedly, we find that the expression of FASN protein remains unchanged during Drosophila larval development when lipogenesis is hyperactive. Instead, acetylation modification of FASN is highly upregulated in fast-growing larvae. We further show that lysine K813 is highly acetylated in developing larvae, and its acetylation is required for upregulated FASN activity, body fat accumulation, and normal development. Intriguingly, K813 is rapidly autoacetylated by acetyl-CoA in a dosage-dependent manner, independent of known acetyltransferases. Furthermore, the autoacetylation of K813 is mediated by a conserved P-loop-like motif (N-xx-G-x-A). In summary, this work uncovers a novel role of acetyl-CoA-mediated autoacetylation of FASN in developmental lipogenesis and reveals a self-regulatory system that controls metabolic homeostasis by linking acetyl-CoA, lysine acetylation, and DNL.

Graphical Abstract

O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=139 SRC="FIGDIR/small/475252v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
View larger version (30K):
org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@db2042org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@22dde8org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@116b3a5org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@16c2dc9_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG C_FIG HighlightsO_LIAcetylation modification of FASN, but not protein expression, positively correlates with de novo lipogenesis during Drosophila larval development
C_LIO_LISite-specific acetylation at K813 residue enhances FASN enzymatic activity
C_LIO_LIK813 residue is autoacetylated by acetyl-CoA, independent of KATs
C_LIO_LIA novel N-xx-G-x-A motif is required for autoacetylation of K813
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Miao, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-01-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.01.06.475252</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Acetyl-CoA mediated autoacetylation of fatty acid synthase in de novo lipogenesis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-01-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.07.475427v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Interspecies transfer of syntenic RAMOSA1 orthologs and promoter cis sequences impacts maize inflorescence architecture 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.07.475427v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Grass inflorescences support floral structures that each bear a single grain, where variation in branch architecture directly impacts yield. The maize RAMOSA1 (ZmRA1) transcription factor acts as a key regulator of inflorescence development by imposing branch meristem determinacy. Here, we show RA1 transcripts accumulate in boundary domains adjacent to spikelet meristems in Sorghum bicolor (Sb) and Setaria viridis (Sv) inflorescences similar as in the developing maize tassel and ear. To evaluate functional conservation of syntenic RA1 orthologs and promoter cis sequences in maize, sorghum and setaria, we utilized interspecies gene transfer and assayed genetic complementation in a common inbred background by quantifying recovery of normal branching in highly ramified ra1-R mutants. A ZmRA1 transgene that includes endogenous upstream and downstream flanking sequences recovered normal tassel and ear branching in ra1-R. Interspecies expression of two transgene variants of the SbRA1 locus, modeled as the entire endogenous tandem duplication or just the non-frameshifted downstream copy, complemented ra1-R branching defects and induced novel fasciation and branch patterns. The SvRA1 locus lacks conserved, upstream noncoding cis sequences found in maize and sorghum; interspecies expression of an SvRA1 transgene did not or only partially recovered normal inflorescence forms. Driving expression of the SvRA1 coding region by the ZmRA1 upstream region, however, recovered normal inflorescence morphology in ra1-R. These data leveraging interspecies gene transfer suggest that cis-encoded temporal regulation of RA1 expression is a key factor in modulating branch meristem determinacy that ultimately impacts grass inflorescence architecture.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Strable, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Unger-Wallace, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aragon-Raygoza, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Briggs, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vollbrecht, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-01-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.01.07.475427</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Interspecies transfer of syntenic RAMOSA1 orthologs and promoter cis sequences impacts maize inflorescence architecture]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-01-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.09.475571v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Porcine intestinal innate lymphoid cells and lymphocyte spatial context revealed through single-cell RNA sequencing 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.09.475571v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Intestinal lymphocytes are crucial members of the mucosal immune system with impact over outcomes of intestinal health versus dysbiosis. Resolving intestinal lymphocyte complexity and function is a challenge, as the intestine provides cellular snapshots of a diverse spectrum of immune states. In pigs, intestinal lymphocytes are poorly described relative to humans or traditional model species. Enhanced understanding of porcine intestinal lymphocytes will promote food security and improve utility of pigs as a biomedical model for intestinal research. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was performed to provide transcriptomic profiles of lymphocytes in porcine ileum, with 31,983 cells annotated into 26 cell types. Deeper interrogation revealed previously undescribed cells in porcine intestine, including SELLhi{gamma}{delta} T cells, group 1 and group 3 innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), and four subsets of B cells. Single-cell transcriptomes in ileum were compared to those in porcine blood, and subsets of activated lymphocytes were detected in ileum but not periphery. Comparison to scRNA-seq human and murine ileum data revealed a general consensus of ileal lymphocytes across species. Lymphocyte spatial context in porcine ileum was conferred through differential tissue dissection prior to scRNA-seq. Antibody-secreting cells, B cells, follicular CD4 {beta} T cells, and cycling T/ILCs were enriched in ileum with Peyers patches, while non-cycling{gamma}{delta} T, CD8 {beta} T, and group 1 ILCs were enriched in ileum without Peyers patches. scRNA-seq findings were leveraged to develop advanced toolsets for further identification of ILCs in porcine ileum via flow cytometry and in situ staining. Porcine ileal ILCs identified via scRNA-seq did not transcriptionally mirror peripheral porcine ILCs (corresponding to natural killer cells) but instead had gene signatures indicative of tissue- and activation-specific functions, indicating potentially similar roles to intestinal ILCs identified in humans. Overall, the data serve as a highly-resolved transcriptomic atlas of the porcine intestinal immune landscape and will be useful in further understanding intestinal immune cell function.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wiarda, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Trachsel, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivasankaran, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuggle, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loving, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-01-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.01.09.475571</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Porcine intestinal innate lymphoid cells and lymphocyte spatial context revealed through single-cell RNA sequencing]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-01-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.12.476114v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Semi-field evaluations of three botanically derived repellents against the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis (Acari: Ixodidae) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.12.476114v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Three compounds derived from botanicals sources, ethyl perillyl carbonate, geranyl isovalerate, and citronellyl cyclobutane carboxylate, were tested for repellent activity against Ixodes scapularis Say in a semi-field trial. Tick drags were treated with the compounds or with N, N-diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET) at high (0.25mg/cm2) or low (0.15mg/cm2) concentrations. Negative controls included untreated drags and drags treated with acetone, the carrier for all repellents. Freshly treated drags (within 20 minutes) were used to collect I. scapularis ticks at a county park in Wisconsin. To assess effectiveness, we measured tick encounter rates, detachment rate, and time to detachment. None of the repellent treatments resulted in significantly fewer encounters compared to both control treatments. However, the percentage of ticks that detached within 3 min was significantly higher on drags treated with repellents compared to controls. DEET was the most effective, repelling 69.7 - 87% of ticks by 3 min, but the effectiveness of the three test compounds was still high, ranging from 42% to 87% of ticks detaching by 3 min. For time to detachment, there were no significant differences between DEET and the three test compounds. We conclude that these botanically-derived repellents were effective against I. scapularis in a semi-field trial and could be viable alternatives to DEET.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lee, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wong, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coats, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Paskewitz, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-01-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.01.12.476114</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Semi-field evaluations of three botanically derived repellents against the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis (Acari: Ixodidae)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-01-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.18.476799v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Cold Tolerance is Governed by Diverse Genetic Mechanisms Including Those Regulated by NB-LRR-type Receptor Proteins in Arabidopsis. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.18.476799v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cold stress adversely affects the growth and development of plants and limits the geographical distribution of crop plants. Accumulation of spontaneous mutations shapes the adaptation of plant species to diverse climatic conditions. Genome-wide association study of the phenotypic variation gathered by a newly designed phenomic platform with that of the single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) loci across the genomes of 417 Arabidopsis natural variants collected from various geographical regions revealed 33 candidate genes for cold tolerance. Investigation of at least two independent mutants for 29 of these genes identified 16 cold tolerance genes controlling diverse genetic mechanisms. This study identified five genes encoding novel leucine-rich repeat domain-containing proteins, including three nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat (NBS-LRR) proteins. Among the 16 identified cold tolerance genes, ADS2 and ACD6 are the only two cold tolerance genes identified earlier. The comparatively little overlap between the genes identified in this genome-wide association study of natural variants with those discovered previously through forward and reverse genetic approaches suggests that cold tolerance is a complex physiological process governed by a large number of genetic mechanisms.

Short SummaryCold stress adversely affects the growth and development of plants and limits the geographical distribution of crop plants. Genome-wide association study of the phenotypic variation of Arabidopsis natural variants with that of the single nucleotide polymorphic loci followed by T-DNA insertion mutant analyses of 29 candidate genes led to assigning cold tolerance function for the first time to 14 genes including three nucleotide-binding sites leucine repeat region (NB-LRR) protein genes. The comparatively little overlap between the genes identified in this study with those discovered previously suggests that cold tolerance is governed by a complex network of multiple genetic mechanisms.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sahoo, D. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hegde, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhattacharyya, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-01-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.01.18.476799</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Cold Tolerance is Governed by Diverse Genetic Mechanisms Including Those Regulated by NB-LRR-type Receptor Proteins in Arabidopsis.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-01-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.28.478239v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Tardigrade community microbiomes in North American orchards include putative endosymbionts and plant pathogens 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.28.478239v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The microbiome of tardigrades, a phylum of microscopic animals best known for their ability to survive extreme conditions, is poorly studied worldwide and completely unknown in North America. An improved understanding of tardigrade-associated bacteria is particularly important because tardigrades have been shown to act as vectors of the plant pathogen Xanthomonas campestris in the laboratory. However, the potential role of tardigrades as reservoirs and vectors of phytopathogens has not been investigated further. This study analyzed the microbiota of tardigrades from six apple orchards in central Iowa, USA, and is the first analysis of the microbiota of North American tardigrades. It is also the first ever study of the tardigrade microbiome in an agricultural setting. We utilized 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to characterize the tardigrade community microbiome across four contrasts: location, substrate type (moss or lichen), collection year, and tardigrades versus their substrate. Alpha diversity of the tardigrade community microbiome differed significantly by location and year of collection but not by substrate type. Our work also corroborated earlier findings, demonstrating that tardigrades harbor a distinct microbiota from their environment. We also identified tardigrade-associated taxa that belong to genera known to contain phytopathogens (Pseudomonas, Ralstonia, and the Pantoea/Erwinia complex). Finally, we observed members of the genera Rickettsia and Wolbachia in the tardigrade microbiome; because these are obligate intracellular genera, we consider these taxa to be putative endosymbionts of tardigrades. These results suggest the presence of putative endosymbionts and phytopathogens in the microbiota of wild tardigrades in North America.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tibbs-Cortes, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tibbs-Cortes, B. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz-Esser, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-01-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.01.28.478239</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Tardigrade community microbiomes in North American orchards include putative endosymbionts and plant pathogens]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-01-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.31.478521v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A New Classification Method Based on Dynamic Ensemble Selection and its Application to Predict Variance Patterns in HIV-1 Env 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.31.478521v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Therapeutics that target the envelope glycoproteins (Envs) of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) effectively reduce virus levels in patients. However, due to mutations, new Env variants are frequently generated, which may be resistant to the treatments. The appearance of such sequence variance at any Env position is seemingly random. A better understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of variance across Env may lead to the development of new therapeutic strategies. We hypothesized that, at any time point in a patient, positions with sequence variance are clustered on the three-dimensional structure of Env. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether variance at any Env position can be predicted by the variance measured at adjacent positions. Sequences from 300 HIV-infected patients were applied to a new algorithm we developed. The k-best classifiers (KBC) method is a dynamic ensemble selection technique that identifies the best classifier(s) within the neighborhood of a new observation. It applies bootstrap resampling to generate out-of-bag samples that are used with the resampled set to evaluate each classifier. For many positions of Env, primarily in the CD4-binding site, KBC accurately predicted variance based on the variance at their adjacent positions. KBC improved performance compared to the initial learners, static ensemble, and other baseline models. KBC also outperformed other algorithms for predicting variance at multi-position footprints of therapeutics on Env. These understandings can be applied to refine models that predict future changes in HIV-1 Env. More generally, we propose KBC as a new high-performance dynamic ensemble selection technique.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fili, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kort, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Trettin, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haim, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.01.31.478521</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A New Classification Method Based on Dynamic Ensemble Selection and its Application to Predict Variance Patterns in HIV-1 Env]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.478697v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Patterns of Volatility Across the Spike Protein Accurately Predict the Emergence of Mutations within SARS-CoV-2 Lineages 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.478697v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mutations in the spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 allow the virus to probe the sequence space in search of higher-fitness states. New sublineages of SARS-CoV-2 variants-of-concern (VOCs) continuously emerge with such mutations. Interestingly, the sites of mutation in these sublineages vary between the VOCs. Whether such differences reflect the random nature of mutation appearance or distinct evolutionary spaces of spike in the VOCs is unclear. Here we show that each position of spike has a lineage-specific likelihood for mutations to appear and dominate descendent sublineages. This likelihood can be accurately estimated from the lineage-specific mutational profile of spike at a protein-wide level. The mutability environment of each position, including adjacent sites on the protein structure and neighboring sites on the network of comutability, accurately forecast changes in descendent sublineages. Mapping of imminent changes within the VOCs can contribute to the design of immunogens and therapeutics that address future forms of SARS-CoV-2.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rojas Chavez, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fili, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rahman, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bicar, I. G. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Das, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, G. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haim, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.01.478697</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Patterns of Volatility Across the Spike Protein Accurately Predict the Emergence of Mutations within SARS-CoV-2 Lineages]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.478706v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Temporal and spatial auxin responsive networks in maize primary roots 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.478706v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Auxin is a key regulator of root morphogenesis across angiosperms. To better understand auxin regulated networks underlying maize root development we have characterized auxin responsive transcription across two time points (30 and 120 minutes) and four regions of the primary root: the meristematic zone, elongation zone, cortex, and stele. Hundreds of auxin-regulated genes involved in diverse biological processes were quantified in these different root regions. In general, most auxin regulated genes are region unique and are predominantly observed in differentiated tissues compared to the root meristem. Auxin gene regulatory networks (GRNs) were reconstructed with these data to identify key transcription factors that may underlie auxin responses in maize roots. Additionally, Auxin Response Factor (ARF) subnetworks were generated to identify target genes which exhibit tissue or temporal specificity in response to auxin. These networks describe novel molecular connections underlying maize root development and provide a foundation for functional genomic studies in a key crop.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>McReynolds, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dash, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Draves, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lang, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.01.478706</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Temporal and spatial auxin responsive networks in maize primary roots]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.478707v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
New Functions Identified for HIV gp120 with the New ProtSub Sequence Matching 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.478707v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The reduced cost of sequencing is leading to an explosive growth in the number of available sequences across diverse genomes, and for individual patients. Inferring meaningful functions of individual genes/proteins is lagging, which hinders the deeper understanding of biological function and evolution. Traditionally, protein function has been determined by time consuming experimental methods or by sequence matching that often does not agree with the experimental findings. We have significantly improved protein sequence matching, by accounting for inter-dependent amino acid substitutions observed within densely packed protein structures, which yields additional substitutions beyond those usually seen, with good matches to additional proteins, some having new functions, not identified by conventional sequence matching. In the current study, we have applied this approach to predict novel functions for the proteins from HIV. These newly found functional annotations are then manually reviewed and many are validated from the literature, here for the HIV envelope protein gp120. These new functions are both more specific as well as some being entirely novel functions. We also show statistically that on average our new functional annotations are more informative than those given by conventional substitution matrices such as BLOSUM62. These results suggest that the new ProtSub protein sequence matching that incorporates structural information generally yields better identifications of related proteins, which can have broader and often gains in identifying more specific functions
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Litterer, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shome, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jia, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jernigan, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.01.478707</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[New Functions Identified for HIV gp120 with the New ProtSub Sequence Matching]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.08.479594v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Expression and secretion of circular RNAs in the parasitic nematode, Ascaris suum 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.08.479594v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a recently identified RNA species with emerging functional roles as microRNA (miRNA) and protein sponges, regulators of gene transcription and translation, and as modulators of fundamental biological processes including immunoregulation. circRNAs have been found in a variety of species including plants, animals, and model genetic organisms such as the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Relevant to this study, circRNAs have recently been described in the parasitic nematode, Haemonchus contortus, suggesting they may have functionally important roles in parasites. Given this involvement in regulating biological processes, a better understanding of their role in parasites could be leveraged for future control efforts. Here, we report the use of next-generation sequencing to identify 1,997 distinct circRNAs expressed in adult female stages of the gastrointestinal parasitic nematode, Ascaris suum. We describe spatial expression in the ovaries and body wall muscle, and also report circRNA presence in extracellular vesicles (EVs) secreted by the parasite into the external environment. Further, we used an in-silico approach to predict that a subset of Ascaris circRNAs bind both endogenous parasite miRNAs as well as human host miRNAs, suggesting they could be functional as both exogenous and endogenous miRNA sponges to alter gene expression. There was not a strong correlation between Ascaris circRNA length endogenous miRNA interactions, indicating Ascaris circRNAs are enriched for Ascaris miRNA binding sites, but that human miRNAs were predicted form a more thermodynamically stable bond with Ascaris circRNAs. These results suggest that secreted circRNAs could be interacting with host miRNAs at the host-parasite interface and influencing host gene transcription. Lastly, although we previously found that therapeutically relevant concentrations of the anthelmintic drug ivermectin inhibited EV release from parasitic nematodes, we did not observe a direct effect on Ascaris circRNAs expression or secretion.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Minkler, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loghry, H. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sondjaja, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimber, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.08.479594</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Expression and secretion of circular RNAs in the parasitic nematode, Ascaris suum]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.10.480011v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
polishCLR: a Nextflow workflow for polishing PacBio CLR genome assemblies 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.10.480011v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Long-read sequencing has revolutionized genome assembly, yielding highly contiguous, chromosome-level contigs. However, assemblies from some third generation long read technologies, such as Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) Continuous Long Reads (CLR), have a high error rate. Such errors can be corrected with short reads through a process called polishing. Although best practices for polishing non-model de novo genome assemblies were recently described by the Vertebrate Genome Project (VGP) Assembly community, there is a need for a publicly available, reproducible workflow that can be easily implemented and run on a conventional high performance computing environment. Here, we describe polishCLR (https://github.com/isugifNF/polishCLR), a reproducible Nextflow workflow that implements best practices for polishing assemblies made from CLR data. PolishCLR can be initiated from several input options that extend best practices to suboptimal cases. It also provides re-entry points throughout several key processes including identifying duplicate haplotypes in purge_dups, allowing a break for scaffolding if data are available, and throughout multiple rounds of polishing and evaluation with Arrow and FreeBayes. PolishCLR is containerized and publicly available for the greater assembly community as a tool to complete assemblies from existing, error-prone long-read data.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stahlke, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chudalayandi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rosen, B. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Childers, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Severin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.10.480011</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[polishCLR: a Nextflow workflow for polishing PacBio CLR genome assemblies]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.15.480542v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Cold-inducible promoter-driven knockdown of Brachypodium antifreeze proteins confers freeze sensitivity 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.15.480542v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The model forage crop, Brachypodium distachyon, has a family of ice recrystallization inhibition (BdIRI) genes, which encode antifreeze proteins that function by adsorbing to ice crystals and inhibiting their growth. The genes were previously targeted for knockdown using a constitutive CaMV 35S promoter and the resulting transgenic Brachypodium showed reduced antifreeze activity and a greater susceptibility to freezing. However, the transgenic plants also showed developmental defects with shortened stem lengths and were almost completely sterile, raising the possibility that their reduced freeze tolerance could be attributed to developmental deficits. A cold-induced promoter from rice (prOsMYB1R35) has now been substituted for the constitutive promoter to generate temporal miRNA-mediated Brachypodium antifreeze protein knockdowns. Although transgenic lines showed no apparent pleiotropic developmental defects, they demonstrated reduced antifreeze activity as assessed by assays for ice-recrystallization inhibition, thermal hysteresis, electrolyte leakage, leaf infrared thermography, and leaf damage after infection with an ice nucleating phytopathogen. Strikingly, the number of cold-acclimated transgenic plants that survived freezing at -8 {degrees}C was reduced by half or killed entirely, depending on the line, compared to cold-acclimated wild type plants. Although these proteins have been studied for almost 60 years, this is the first unequivocal demonstration in any organism of the utility of antifreeze protein function and their contribution to freeze protection, independent of obvious developmental defects. These proteins are thus of potential interest in a wide range of biotechnological applications from accessible cryopreservation, to frozen product additives, to the engineering of transgenic crops with enhanced freezing tolerance.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Juurakko, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bredow, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>diCenzo, G. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walker, V. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.15.480542</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Cold-inducible promoter-driven knockdown of Brachypodium antifreeze proteins confers freeze sensitivity]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.19.481089v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Targeted Down Regulation Of Core Mitochondrial Genes During SARS-CoV-2 Infection 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.19.481089v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Defects in mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) have been reported in COVID-19 patients, but the timing and organs affected vary among reports. Here, we reveal the dynamics of COVID-19 through transcription profiles in nasopharyngeal and autopsy samples from patients and infected rodent models. While mitochondrial bioenergetics is repressed in the viral nasopharyngeal portal of entry, it is up regulated in autopsy lung tissues from deceased patients. In most disease stages and organs, discrete OXPHOS functions are blocked by the virus, and this is countered by the host broadly up regulating unblocked OXPHOS functions. No such rebound is seen in autopsy heart, results in severe repression of genes across all OXPHOS modules. Hence, targeted enhancement of mitochondrial gene expression may mitigate the pathogenesis of COVID-19.

One-Sentence SummaryCovid-19 is associated with targeted inhibition of mitochondrial gene transcription.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Guarnieri, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dybas, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fazelinia, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frere, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Albrecht, Y. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Murdock, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Angelin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, L. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weiss, S. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Best, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lott, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cope, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zaksas, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saravia-Butler, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meydan, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foox, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mozsary, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kidane, Y. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Priebe, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Emmett, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meller, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bram, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>tenOever, B. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heise, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moorman, N. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Madden, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taft-Benz, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, E. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanders, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dickmander, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baxter, V. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baylin, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moraes-vieira, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mason, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schisler, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schwartz, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beheshti, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wallace,</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.19.481089</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Targeted Down Regulation Of Core Mitochondrial Genes During SARS-CoV-2 Infection]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.20.481188v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Use of sugarcane mosaic virus for virus-induced gene silencing in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.20.481188v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Previously, sugarcane mosaic virus (SCMV) was developed as a vector for transient expression of heterologous genes in Zea mays (maize). Here we show that SCMV can also be applied for virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) of endogenous maize genes. Comparison of sense and antisense VIGS constructs targeting maize PDS (phytoene desaturase) showed that antisense constructs resulted in a greater reduction in gene expression. In a time course of gene expression after infection with VIGS constructs targeting PDS, Les22 (Lesion mimic 22), and Ij1 (Iodent japonica1), efficient expression silencing was observed two, three, and four weeks after infection with SCMV. However, at week five, expression of Les22 and Ij1 was no longer significantly reduced compared to control plants. The defense signaling molecule jasmonate-isoleucine (JA-Ile) can be inactivated by 12C-hydroxylation and hydrolysis, and knockout of these genes leads to increased herbivore resistance. JA-Ile hydroxylases and hydrolases have been investigated in Arabidopsis, rice, and Nicotiana attenuata. To determine whether the maize homologs of these genes function in plant defense, we silenced expression of ZmCYP94B1 (predicted JA-Ile hydroxylase) and ZmJIH1 (predicted JA-Ile hydrolase) by VIGS with SCMV. Although ZmCYP94B1 and ZmJIH1gene expression silencing increased resistance to Spodoptera frugiperda (fall armyworm), Schistocerca americana (American birdwing grasshopper), and Rhopalosiphum maidis (corn leaf aphid), there was no additive effect from silencing the expression of both genes. Further work will be required to determine the more precise functions of these enzymes in regulating maize defenses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chung, S. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jander, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.20.481188</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Use of sugarcane mosaic virus for virus-induced gene silencing in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.21.481334v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Brassinosteroids modulate autophagy through phosphorylation of RAPTOR1B by the GSK3-like kinase BIN2 in Arabidopsis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.21.481334v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Macroautophagy/autophagy is a conserved recycling process that maintains cellular homeostasis during environmental stress. Autophagy is negatively regulated by TARGET OF RAPAMYCIN (TOR), a nutrient-regulated protein kinase that in plants is activated by several phytohormones, leading to increased growth. However, the detailed molecular mechanisms by which TOR integrates autophagy and hormone-signaling are poorly understood. Here, we show that TOR modulates brassinosteroid (BR)-regulated plant growth and stress-response pathways. Active TOR was required for full BR-induced growth in Arabidopsis thaliana. Autophagy was constitutively up-regulated upon blocking BR biosynthesis or signaling, and down-regulated by increasing the activity of the BR pathway. BRASSINOSTEROID-INSENSITIVE 2 (BIN2) kinase, a GSK3-like kinase functioning as a negative regulator in BR signaling, directly phosphorylated Regulatory-Associated Protein of TOR 1B (RAPTOR1B), a substrate-recruiting subunit in the TOR complex, at a conserved serine residue within a typical BIN2 phosphorylation motif. Mutation of RAPTOR1B serine 916 to alanine, to block phosphorylation by BIN2, repressed autophagy and increased phosphorylation of the TOR substrate autophagy-related protein 13a (ATG13a). By contrast, this mutation had only a limited effect on growth. We present a model in which RAPTOR1B is phosphorylated and inhibited by BIN2 when BRs are absent, activating the autophagy pathway. When BRs signal and inhibit BIN2, RAPTOR1B is thus less inhibited by BIN2 phosphorylation. This leads to increased TOR activity and ATG13a phosphorylation, and decreased autophagy activity. Our studies define a new mechanism by which coordination between BR and TOR signaling pathways helps to maintain the balance between plant growth and stress responses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Liao, C.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nolan, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bassham, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-02-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.02.21.481334</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Brassinosteroids modulate autophagy through phosphorylation of RAPTOR1B by the GSK3-like kinase BIN2 in Arabidopsis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-02-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.04.482688v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Discovery of small molecule inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum apicoplast DNA polymerase 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.04.482688v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Malaria is caused by infection with protozoan parasites of the Plasmodium genus, which is part of the phylum Apicomplexa. Most organisms in this phylum contain a relic plastid called the apicoplast. The apicoplast genome is replicated by a single DNA polymerase (apPOL), which is an attractive target for anti-malarial drugs. We screened small-molecule libraries (206,504 compounds) using a fluorescence-based high-throughput DNA polymerase assay. Dose/response analysis and counter-screening identified 186 specific apPOL inhibitors. Toxicity screening against human HepaRG human cells removed 84 compounds and the remaining were subjected to parasite killing assays using chloroquine resistant P. falciparum parasites. Nine compounds were potent inhibitors of parasite growth and may serve as lead compounds in efforts to discover novel malaria drugs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kaur, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nieto, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McDonald, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Honzatko, R. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelson, S. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.04.482688</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Discovery of small molecule inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum apicoplast DNA polymerase]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.07.483284v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Promising Antimalarials targeting Apicoplast DNA Polymerase from Plasmodium falciparum 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.07.483284v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Malaria is caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which contains an essential non-photosynthetic plastid called the apicoplast. A single DNA polymerase, apPOL, is targeted to the apicoplast, where it replicates and repairs the genome. apPOL has no direct orthologs in mammals and is considered a promising drug target for the treatment and/or prevention of malaria. We previously reported screening the Malaria Box to identify MMV666123 as an inhibitor of apPOL. Herein we extend our studies and report structure-activity relationships for MMV666123 and identify key structural motifs necessary for inhibition. Although attempts to crystallize apPOL with the inhibitor were not fruitful, kinetic analysis and crystal structure determinations of WT and mutant apo-enzymes, facilitated model building and provided insights into the putative inhibitor binding site. Our results validate apPOL as an antimalarial target and provide an avenue for the design of high potency, specific inhibitors of apPOL and other A-family DNA polymerases.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cheda, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nieto, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaur, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kerns, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Honzatko, R. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelson, S. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.07.483284</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Promising Antimalarials targeting Apicoplast DNA Polymerase from Plasmodium falciparum]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.08.483531v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A happy accident: a novel turfgrass reference genome 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.08.483531v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Poa pratensis, commonly known as Kentucky bluegrass, is a popular cool-season grass species used as turf in lawns and recreation areas globally. Despite its substantial economic value, a reference genome had not previously been assembled due to the genomes relatively large size and biological complexity that includes apomixis, polyploidy, and interspecific hybridization. We report here a fortuitous de novo assembly and annotation of a P. pratensis genome. Instead of sequencing the genome of a C4 grass, we accidentally sampled and sequenced tissue from a weedy P. pratensis whose stolon was intertwined with that of the C4 grass. The draft assembly consists of 6.09 Gbp with an N50 scaffold length of 65.1 Mbp, and a total of 118 scaffolds, generated using PacBio long reads and Bionano optical map technology. We annotated 256K gene models and found 58% of the genome to be composed of transposable elements. To demonstrate the applicability of the reference genome, we evaluated population structure and estimated genetic diversity in P. pratensis collected from three North American prairies, two in Manitoba, Canada and one in Colorado, USA. Our results support previous studies that found high genetic diversity and population structure within the species. The reference genome and annotation will be an important resource for turfgrass breeding and study of bluegrasses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Phillips, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>AuBuchon-Elder, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckler, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gillespie, L. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Llaca, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romay, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Soreng, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kellogg, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.08.483531</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A happy accident: a novel turfgrass reference genome]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.09.483669v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Fabrication of Conductive Hollow Microfibers for Encapsulation of Astrocyte Cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.09.483669v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The manufacturing of 3D cell scaffoldings provides advantages for modeling diseases and injuries by physiologically relevant platforms. A triple-flow microfluidic device was developed to rapidly fabricate alginate/graphene hollow microfibers based on the gelation of alginate induced with CaCl2. This five-channel pattern actualized continuous mild fabrication of hollow fibers under an optimized flowing rate ratio of 300: 200: 100 L.min-1. The polymer solution was 2.5% alginate in 0.1% graphene, and a 30% polyethylene glycol solution was used as the sheath and core solutions. The morphology and physical properties of microstructures were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, electrochemical, and surface area analyzers. Subsequently, these conductive microfibers biocompatibility was studied by encapsulating mouse astrocyte cells within these scaffolds. The cells could successfully survive both the manufacturing process and prolonged encapsulation for up to 8 days. These unique 3D hollow scaffolds could significantly enhance the available surface area for nutrient transport to the cells. In addition, these conductive hollow scaffolds illustrated unique advantages such as 0.728 cm3.gr-1 porosity and twice more electrical conductivity in comparison to alginate scaffolds. The results confirm the potential of these scaffolds as a microenvironment that supports cell growth.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Alimoradi, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nasirian, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aykar, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McNamara, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Niaraki-Asli, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montazami, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Makowski, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hashemi, N. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.09.483669</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Fabrication of Conductive Hollow Microfibers for Encapsulation of Astrocyte Cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.10.483761v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Comparison of sampling methods for small oxbow wetland fish communities 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.10.483761v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Throughout the world, wetlands have experienced degradation and declines in areal coverage. Fortunately, recognition of the value of wetlands has generated interest in preserving and restoring them. Post-restoration monitoring is necessary to analyze success or failure, thereby informing subsequent management decisions. Restoration of oxbow wetlands has become the focus of targeted restoration efforts to promote recovery of biodiversity and sensitive species, and to enhance ecosystem services. The fish communities of oxbows have been the subject of many monitoring studies. However, an optimal method for monitoring the fish communities of oxbows has not been described, thereby limiting our capacity to effectively manage these ecosystems. We compared four sampling methodologies (backpack electrofishing, fyke netting, minnow trapping, and seining) for fish community data collection with a primary objective of determining an optimal method for sampling fish communities in small oxbow wetlands. Seining and fyke netting were determined to be optimal methods for sampling oxbow fish communities. Backpack electrofishing and minnow trapping produced lower total catch and taxonomic richness values than seining and fyke netting. Although seining and fyke netting produced similar taxonomic diversity and abundance values, qualitative analysis revealed that seining caused greater habitat disturbance and potential stress to fish. Therefore, consideration must be given to how species present (especially sensitive species) within the wetland could be impacted by sampling disturbance when choosing between seining and fyke netting.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Osterhaus, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leberg, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pierce, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stewart, T. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McCombs, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.10.483761</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Comparison of sampling methods for small oxbow wetland fish communities]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.10.483778v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Protein Language Model Performs Efficient Homology Detection 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.10.483778v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationThere are now 225 million sequences in the UniProtKB database, as of January 2022 and 451 million protein sequences in the NCBI non-redundant database. This huge sequence data is ripe for analysis and can be extremely informative about biological function when analyzed with the appropriate methods. Evolutionary information such as the relationship among protein sequences is key to performing sequence analyses. Since sequence matching is one of the primary ways that annotations are found, higher-quality sequence matches yield a larger number of identified homologs. Thus, there is an essential need for a faster and more accurate homolog detection method to process the huge amount of rapidly growing biological sequences.

MethodRecently, we have seen major improvements in various predictive computational tasks such as structure prediction from the ever-improving artificial intelligence methods. One such approach has been to use language models to represent proteins numerically in a representation matrix (embeddings) while retaining context-dependent biochemical, biophysical, and evolutionary information. Computational transformer architectures that utilize attention neural networks can generate these context-aware numerical representations in an unsupervised fashion. One such use for these protein embeddings is remote homolog detection. In this work, we utilize protein language models and then apply discrete cosine transforms to extract the essential part of these embeddings, resulting in a significantly smaller fixed-size matrix for each sequence. This allows us to numerically and efficiently calculate the distance between all pairs of proteins resulting in homolog detection.

ResultsOur Protein LAnguage model Search Tool (PLAST) is significantly faster, with linear runtimes in the number of sequences within the query database. With only one CPU core, it can scan a million sequences in less than a second. It essentially removes the noise in the sequence data and leads to significant improvements. PLAST is more accurate in the benchmarks tested from the PFAM, SCOP, and CATH databases than other approaches. When benchmarked with the PFAM database, the increase in the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) 3.1% when compared with NCBI-BLAST. The number of remote homologs that are detectable now is significantly larger and pushes sequence matches deeply into the usual twilight zone. Compared with the state-of-the-art profile-based homology search tools like CSBLAST, the increase was still 2.0%. PLAST can find remote homologs for a significant number of proteins that had been thought to be unique due to homolog detection failure. These homologs that are found usually have less than 20% sequence identity making them indistinguishable from noise with most other sequence matching methods.

ConclusionPLAST is an accurate and fast homolog detection tool essential for easy and rapid progress to utilize the vast amount of data generated by next-generation sequencing methods. Quantization of sequence embeddings into highly-compressed noise-free representations with the use of direct cosine transforms allows for the efficient and accurate detection of normal homologs and remote ones that are un-detectable by other sequence similarity methods. The PLAST web server is accessible from https://mesihk.github.io/plast.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kilinc, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jia, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jernigan, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.10.483778</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Protein Language Model Performs Efficient Homology Detection]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.10.483839v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Variation in cytonuclear expression accommodation among allopolyploid plants 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.10.483839v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cytonuclear coevolution is a common feature among plants, which coordinates gene expression and protein products between the nucleus and organelles. Consequently, lineage-specific differences may result in incompatibilities between the nucleus and cytoplasm in hybrid taxa. Allopolyploidy is also a common phenomenon in plant evolution. The hybrid nature of allopolyploids may result in cytonuclear incompatibilities, but the massive nuclear redundancy created during polyploidy affords additional avenues for resolving cytonuclear conflict (i.e., cytonuclear accommodation). Here we evaluate expression changes in organelle-targeted nuclear genes for six allopolyploid lineages that represent four genera (i.e., Arabidopsis, Arachis, Chenopodium, and Gossypium) and encompass a range in polyploid ages. Because incompatibilities between the nucleus and cytoplasm could potentially result in biases toward the maternal homoeolog and/or maternal expression level, we evaluate patterns of homoeolog usage, expression bias, and expression level dominance in cytonuclear genes relative to the background of non-cytonuclear expression changes and to the diploid parents. Although we find subsets of cytonuclear genes in most lineages that match our expectations of maternal preference, these observations are not consistent among either allopolyploids or categories of organelle-targeted genes. Our results indicate that cytonuclear expression accommodation may be a subtle and/or variable phenomenon that does not capture the full range of mechanisms by which allopolyploid plants resolve nuclear-cytoplasmic incompatibilities.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Forsythe, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Conover, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>DeTar, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chavarro, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leal-Bertioli, S. C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sloan, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.10.483839</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Variation in cytonuclear expression accommodation among allopolyploid plants]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.11.484017v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Integration of multi-omics data reveals interplay between brassinosteroid and TORC signaling in Arabidopsis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.11.484017v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Brassinosteroids (BR) and Target of Rapamycin Complex (TORC) are two major actors coordinating plant growth and stress responses. BRs function through a signaling pathway to extensively regulate gene expression and TORC is known to regulate translation and autophagy. Recent studies revealed that these two pathways crosstalk, but a system-wide view of their interplay is still missing. Thus, we quantified the level of 23,975 transcripts, 11,183 proteins, and 27,887 phosphorylation sites in wild-type Arabidopsis and in mutants with altered levels of either BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE 2 (BIN2) or REGULATORY ASSOCIATED PROTEIN OF TOR 1B (RAPTOR1B), two key players in BR and TORC signaling, respectively. We found that perturbation of BIN2 or RAPTOR1B levels affects a common set of gene-products involved in growth and stress responses. Furthermore, we used the multi-omic data to reconstruct an integrated signaling network. We screened 41 candidate genes identified from the reconstructed network and found that loss of function mutants of many of these proteins led to an altered BR response and/or modulated autophagy activity. Altogether, these results establish a predictive network that defines different layers of molecular interactions between BR-or TORC-regulated growth and autophagy.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liao, C.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nolan, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elmore, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bassham, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.11.484017</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Integration of multi-omics data reveals interplay between brassinosteroid and TORC signaling in Arabidopsis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.12.484027v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Organellar transcripts dominate the cellular mRNA pool across plants of varying ploidy levels 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.12.484027v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mitochondrial and plastid functions depend on coordinated expression of proteins encoded by genomic compartments that have radical differences in copy number of organellar and nuclear genomes. In polyploids, doubling of the nuclear genome may add challenges to maintaining balanced expression of proteins involved in cytonuclear interactions. Here, we use ribo-depleted RNA-seq to analyze transcript abundance for nuclear and organellar genomes in leaf tissue from four different polyploid angiosperms and their close diploid relatives. We find that, even though plastid genomes contain <1% of the number of genes in the nuclear genome, they generate the majority (69.9-82.3%) of mRNA transcripts in the cell. Mitochondrial genes are responsible for a much smaller percentage (1.3-3.7%) of the leaf mRNA pool but still produce much higher transcript abundances per gene compared to nuclear genome. Nuclear genes encoding proteins that functionally interact with mitochondrial or plastid gene products exhibit mRNA expression levels that are consistently more than ten-fold lower than their organellar counterparts, indicating an extreme cytonuclear imbalance at the RNA level despite the predominance of equimolar interactions at the protein level. Nevertheless, interacting nuclear and organellar genes show strongly correlated transcript abundances across functional categories, suggesting that the observed mRNA stoichiometric imbalance does not preclude coordination of cytonuclear expression. Finally, we show that nuclear genome doubling does not alter the cytonuclear expression ratios observed in diploid relatives in consistent or systematic ways, indicating that successful polyploid plants are able to compensate for cytonuclear perturbations associated with nuclear genome doubling.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Forsythe, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Conover, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chavarro, M. C. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leal-Bertioli, S. C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sloan, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.12.484027</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Organellar transcripts dominate the cellular mRNA pool across plants of varying ploidy levels]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.18.484966v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Near telomere-to-telomere nuclear phased chromosomes of the dikaryotic wheat fungus Rhizoctonia cerealis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.18.484966v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Rhizoctonia cerealis (Rce), which causes sharp eyespot, is one of the most destructive wheat pathogens. However, the genetic and molecular virulence mechanisms of Rce have not been elucidated. As a dikaryotic organism, the haplotype phasing of this fungus has not been completed so far. We applied a haplotype phasing algorithm to generate a high-quality near telomere-to-telomere nuclear-phased genome sequence of Rce strain R0301. Sixteen pairs of chromosomes were assigned to the A and B genomes with a total size of 83 Mb. Based on a dual-time course RNA-seq, 25308 genes were predicted. Genes for steroid biosynthesis and starch and sucrose metabolism were significantly enriched, together with many genes encoding carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) and secreted effector proteins, which should be involved in infection of wheat plants. Population genomic analysis of 31 isolates collected in China during the last forty years suggests that this population has not undergone substantial differentiation over time.

ImportanceThe finished genome reference is the basis of revealing pathogens biology base. Many efforts have been made to produce the chromosome-scale assembly of fungi. However, the reference of many pathogenic fungi is highly fragmented, which prevents the analysis of genome structure variation, evolution and import pathogenicity genes. Here, we assembly the only chromosome-scale haplotype-phased reference of dikaryotic fungus so far. This assembly achieves the gold standard based on many evaluation software, which indicates that the pipeline developed in this study can be applied to assemble references for other dikaryotic organisms. This work can also promote the research on the globes destructive wheat pathogens, sharp eyespot, caused by R. cerealis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zeng, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cao, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Figueroa, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qin, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dodds, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.18.484966</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Near telomere-to-telomere nuclear phased chromosomes of the dikaryotic wheat fungus Rhizoctonia cerealis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.485410v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The genomics and physiology of abiotic stressors associated with global elevation gradients in Arabidopsis thaliana 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.485410v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Phenotypic and genetic diversity in Arabidopsis thaliana may be associated with adaptation along its wide elevational range. We took a multi-regional view of elevational adaptation and in a diverse panel of ecotypes measured plant responses to high elevation stressors: low partial CO2 pressure, high light, and night freezing. We conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and found evidence of contrasting locally adaptive clines between regions. Western Mediterranean ecotypes showed low {delta}13C/early flowering at low elevations to high {delta}13C/late flowering at high elevations, while Asian ecotypes showed the opposite pattern. We mapped different candidate genes for each region, and trait-associated SNPs often showed elevational clines likely maintained by selection. Antioxidants and pigmentation showed regional differentiation but rarely elevational clines. GWAS for antioxidants identified an ascorbate transporter PHT4;4 (AT4G00370), which we show alters non-photochemical quenching kinetics under high light and may be involved in local adaptation to Moroccan mountains. The low-antioxidant PHT4;4 GWAS allele was associated with lower PHT4;4 expression and this haplotype was characterized by binding sites of a transcription factor family, DOF, involved in light response. Our results highlight how physiological and genomic elevational clines in different regions can be unique, underlining the complexity of local adaptation in widely distributed species.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gamba, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lorts, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haile, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahay, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lopez, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xia, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kulesza, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elango, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kerby, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yifru, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bulafu, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wondimu, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Glowacka, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lasky, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.22.485410</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The genomics and physiology of abiotic stressors associated with global elevation gradients in Arabidopsis thaliana]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.26.485903v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The interplay between lncRNAs, RNA-binding proteins and viral genome during SARS-CoV-2 infection reveals strong connections with regulatory events involved in RNA metabolism and immune response. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.26.485903v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Viral infections are complex processes based on an intricate network of molecular interactions. The infectious agent hijacks components of the cellular machinery for its profit, circumventing the natural defense mechanisms triggered by the infected cell. The successful completion of the replicative viral cycle within a cell depends on the function of viral components versus the cellular defenses. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are important cellular modulators, either promoting or preventing the progression of viral infections. Among these ncRNAs, the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) family is especially relevant due to their intrinsic functional properties and ubiquitous biological roles. Specific lncRNAs have been recently characterized as modulators of the cellular response during infection of human host cells by single stranded RNA viruses. However, the role of host lncRNAs in the infection by human RNA coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2 remains uncharacterized. In the present work, we have performed a transcriptomic study of a cohort of patients with different SARS-CoV-2 viral load. Our results revealed the existence of a SARS-CoV-2 infection-dependent pattern of transcriptional up-regulation in which specific lncRNAs are an integral component. To determine the role of these lncRNAs, we performed a functional correlation analysis complemented with the study of the validated interactions between lncRNAs and RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). This combination of in silico functional association studies and experimental evidence allowed us to identify a lncRNA signature composed of six elements - NRIR, BISPR, MIR155HG, FMR1-IT1, USP30-AS1, and U62317.2 - associated with the regulation of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We propose a competition mechanism between the viral RNA genome and the regulatory lncRNAs in the sequestering of specific RBPs that modulates the interferon response and the regulation of RNA surveillance by nonsense-mediated decay (NMD).



O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=182 SRC="FIGDIR/small/485903v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
View larger version (46K):
org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@4368c9org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1948201org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@e31fd9org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1400805_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG C_FIG Graphical abstractModel of interactions among lncRNA and cognate RNA-binding proteins in SARS-CoV-2 infection. According to our model, the viral genome can establish direct interactions with three core proteins (DDX3X, UPF1 and IGF2BP2) involved in mRNA metabolism and regulation of the interferon response, which are also components of a SARS-CoV-2 lncRNA-centered regulatory network. The competition between viral RNA and lncRNAs could act as a counteracting factor for the normal function of homeostatic lncRNA-centered regulatory networks, contributing to viral progression and replication. Black arrows depict physical interactions between network components; red arrows represent functional relationships.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Enguita, F. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leitao, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McDonald, J. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zaksas, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Das, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Galeano, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Syrkin Wurtele, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saravia-Butler, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baylin, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meller, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Porterfield, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wallace, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schisler, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mason, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beheshti, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-03-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.03.26.485903</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The interplay between lncRNAs, RNA-binding proteins and viral genome during SARS-CoV-2 infection reveals strong connections with regulatory events involved in RNA metabolism and immune response.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-03-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.01.486706v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Combining GWAS and TWAS to identify candidate causal genes for tocochromanol levels in maize grain 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.01.486706v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Tocochromanols (tocopherols and tocotrienols, collectively vitamin E) are lipid-soluble antioxidants important for both plant fitness and human health. The main dietary sources of vitamin E are seed oils that often accumulate high levels of tocopherol isoforms with lower vitamin E activity. The tocochromanol biosynthetic pathway is conserved across plant species but an integrated view of the genes and mechanisms underlying natural variation of tocochromanol levels in seed of most cereal crops remains limited. To address this issue, we utilized the high mapping resolution of the maize Ames panel of [~]1,500 inbred lines scored with 12.2 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms to generate metabolomic (mature grain tocochromanols) and transcriptomic (developing grain) data sets for genetic mapping. By combining results from genome- and transcriptome-wide association studies, we identified a total of 13 candidate causal gene loci, including five that had not been previously associated with maize grain tocochromanols: four biosynthetic genes (arodeH2 paralog, dxs1, vte5, and vte7) and a plastid S-adenosyl methionine transporter (samt1). Expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) mapping of these 13 gene loci revealed that they are predominantly regulated by cis-eQTL. Through a joint statistical analysis, we implicated cis-acting variants as responsible for co-localized eQTL and GWAS association signals. Our multi-omics approach provided increased statistical power and mapping resolution to enable a detailed characterization of the genetic and regulatory architecture underlying tocochromanol accumulation in maize grain and provided insights for ongoing biofortification efforts to breed and/or engineer vitamin E and antioxidant levels in maize and other cereals.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wu, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tanaka, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wood, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tibbs-Cortes, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Magallanes-Lundback, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bornowski, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamilton, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vaillancourt, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diepenbrock, C. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Deason, N. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schoenbaum, G. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buell, C. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>DellaPenna, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gore, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-04-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.04.01.486706</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Combining GWAS and TWAS to identify candidate causal genes for tocochromanol levels in maize grain]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-04-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.04.487085v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transmission of human influenza A virus in pigs selects for adaptive mutations on the HA gene 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.04.487085v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Influenza A viruses (IAV) cause respiratory diseases in many host species, including humans and pigs. The spillover of IAV between swine and humans has been a concern for both public health and the swine industry. With the emergence of the triple reassortant internal gene (TRIG) constellation, establishment of human-origin IAVs in pigs has become more common, leading to increased viral diversity. However, little is known about the adaptation processes that are needed for a human-origin IAV to transmit and become established in pigs. We generated a reassortant IAV containing surface gene segments from a human IAV strain and internal gene segments from the 2009 pandemic and TRIG IAV lineages and demonstrated that it can replicate and transmit in pigs. Sequencing and variant calling analysis identified a mutant that emerged during replication in pigs, which was mapped to a region near the receptor binding site of the hemagglutinin (HA). The variant was present in all contact pigs and replicated more efficiently in differentiated swine tracheal cells compared to the virus containing the wildtype human-origin HA. These results show that variants are selected quickly after replication of human-origin HA in pigs, leading to improved fitness in the swine host, likely contributing to transmission.

ImportanceInfluenza A viruses (IAV) cause respiratory disease in several species, including humans and pigs. The bidirectional transmission of IAV between humans and pigs plays a significant role in the generation of novel viral strains, greatly impacting viral epidemiology. However, little is known about the evolutionary processes that allow human IAV to become established in pigs. In this study, we generated reassortant viruses containing human seasonal HA and NA on different constellations of internal genes and tested their ability to replicate and transmit in pigs. We demonstrated that a virus containing a common internal gene constellation currently found in U.S. swine was able to transmit efficiently via the respiratory route. We identified a specific amino acid mutation that was fixed in the respiratory contact pigs that was associated with improved replication in primary swine tracheal epithelial cells, suggesting it was crucial for the transmissibility of the human virus in pigs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mo, J.-s.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Abente, E. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sutton, T. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferreri, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Geiger, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perez, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vincent, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rajao, D. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-04-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.04.04.487085</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transmission of human influenza A virus in pigs selects for adaptive mutations on the HA gene]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-04-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/209510v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Energy demand and the context-dependent effects of genetic interactions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/209510v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Genetic effects are often context dependent, with the same genotype differentially affecting phenotypes across environments, life stages, and sexes. We used an environmental manipulation designed to increase energy demand during development to investigate energy demand as a general physiological explanation for context-dependent effects of mutations, particularly for those mutations that affect metabolism. We found that increasing the photoperiod during which Drosophila larvae are active during development phenocopies a temperature-dependent developmental delay in a mitochondrial-nuclear genotype with disrupted metabolism. This result indicates that the context-dependent fitness effects of this genotype are not specific to the effects of temperature and may generally result from variation in energy demand. The effects of this genotype also differ across life stages and between the sexes. The mitochondrial-nuclear genetic interaction disrupts metabolic rate in growing larvae, but not in adults, and compromises female, but not male, reproductive fitness. These patterns are consistent with a model where context-dependent genotype-phenotype relationships may generally arise from differences in energy demand experienced by individuals across environments, life stages, and sexes.nnIMPACT SUMMARYGenetic effects on traits are often context dependent, such that a genotype that improves fitness under one context may have no effect or even a deleterious effect in another context. The external environment is a common context that affects the degree to which a genotype determines a phenotype, but the internal environment of an organism (e.g., its genetic background, sex or life stage) also provides an important context that may modify the phenotypic expression of a genotype. Here we combine new data on the phenotypic effects of a well-characterized genetic interaction between the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes of the fruit fly Drosophila with prior observations to support a model of energy demand as a general explanation for context-dependent genetic effects, particularly for mutations that affect metabolism. We show that the magnitude of fitness effects of this genetic interaction correlates positively with the degree of energy demand among developmental treatments that accelerate growth rate, across developmental stages that differ in the cost of growth, and between sexes with potentially different costs of reproduction. These internal and external contexts create variable demands on energy metabolism that will impact the efficacy of natural selection acting on metabolic mutations in populations.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hoekstra, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Julick, C. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mika, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montooth, K. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-10-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/209510</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Energy demand and the context-dependent effects of genetic interactions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-10-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/211532v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Quantitative proteomic analysis of auxin signaling during seedling development 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/211532v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Auxin induces rapid gene expression changes throughout plant development. How these transcriptional responses relate to changes in protein abundance is not well characterized. We have identified auxin regulated proteins in whole seedlings, roots and hypocotyls and at three different time points (30 min, 120 min and 3 hours) using an iTRAQ (isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification) based quantitative proteomics approach. These profiling experiments detected 4,701 proteins from seedling tissue, 6,740 proteins from root tissue and 3,925 proteins from hypocotyl tissue. Comparisons between the differentially expressed proteins data sets showed little overlap, suggesting that auxin proteomes exhibit both temporal and spatial specificity. Numerous proteins showed significant changes in abundance following auxin treatment independent of changes in cognate transcript abundance. This includes several well characterized proteins with various roles in auxin pathways, suggesting that complex gene regulation mechanisms follow auxin signaling events. Specifically, regulation of translation may play a role as inferred from MapMan categorization analyses and protein interaction networks comprised of auxin regulated proteins. Additionally, functional categorization of auxin regulated proteins indicates rapid and complex metabolic changes occur in both roots and hypocotyls in response to auxin which are not apparent from transcriptome analyses. Altogether these data describe novel auxin-regulated proteomes and are an excellent resource for identifying new downstream signaling components related to auxin-mediated plant growth and development.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shen, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chapman, E. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Briggs, S. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Estelle, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-10-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/211532</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Quantitative proteomic analysis of auxin signaling during seedling development]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-10-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/212092v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An analytical framework to understand regulatory novelty accompanying allopolyploidization 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/212092v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Allopolyploidy is a prevalent process in plants, having important physiological, ecological, and evolutionary consequences. Massive, genome-wide transcriptomic rewiring in response to genomic merger and doubling has been demonstrated in many allopolyploid systems, encompassing a diversity of phenomena, including homoeolog expression bias, genome dominance, expression-level dominance, and revamping of co-expression networks. Here we present an analytical framework to reconcile these patterns of regulatory novelty as governed by distinct sets of intra- and inter-subgenome cis-trans relationships. This approach is a novel extension of classic allele-specific expression analysis to incorporate and distinguish the separate effects of parental regulatory interactions as well as further complications at the allopolyploid level. We demonstrated that the cis-trans framework devised not only offers new perspective on disentangling genetic from epigenetic and higher-order effects that impact gene expression, but also provides the conceptual basis and tools to unify recently presented models for both genome-wide expression dominance and biased fractionation in allopolyploids.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-11-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/212092</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An analytical framework to understand regulatory novelty accompanying allopolyploidization]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-11-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/212886v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Ancestral Reconstruction of Gene Blocks using an Event-Based Method 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/212886v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Complexity is a fundamental attribute of life. Complex systems are made of parts that together perform functions that a single component, or subsets containing individual components, cannot. Examples of complex molecular systems include protein structures such as the F1Fo-ATPase, the ribosome, or the flagellar motor: each one of these structures requires most or all of its components to function properly. Given the ubiquity of complex systems in the biosphere, understanding the evolution of complexity is central to biology. At the molecular level, operons are a classic example of a complex system. An operons genes are co-transcribed under the control of a single promoter to a polycistronic mRNA molecule, and the operons gene products often form molecular complexes or metabolic pathways. With the large number of complete bacterial genomes available, we now have the opportunity to explore the evolution of these complex entities, by identifying possible intermediate states of operons. In this work, we developed a maximum parsimony algorithm to reconstruct ancestral operon states, and show a simple vertical evolution model of how operons may evolve from the individual component genes. We describe several ancestral states that are plausible functional intermediate forms leading to the full operon. We also offer Reconstruction of Ancestral Gene blocks Using Events or ROAGUE as a software tool for those interested in exploring gene block and operon evolution.nnThe software accompanying this paper is available under GPLv3 license in: https://github.com/nguyenngochuy91/Ancestral-Blocks-Reconstruction.nnAll figures in this paper are available in enlarged downloadable form from:https://github.com/nguyenngochuy91/Ancestral-Blocks-Reconstruction/tree/master/images
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, H. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jain, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-11-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/212886</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Ancestral Reconstruction of Gene Blocks using an Event-Based Method]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-11-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/222836v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Maize GO Annotation - Methods, Evaluation, and Review (maize-GAMER) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/222836v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1We created a new high-coverage, robust, and reproducible functional annotation of maize protein coding genes based on Gene Ontology (GO) term assignments. Whereas the existing Phytozome and Gramene maize GO annotation sets only cover 41% and 56% of maize protein coding genes, respectively, this study provides annotations for 100% of the genes. We also compared the quality of our newly-derived annotations with the existing Gramene and Phytozome functional annotation sets by comparing all three to a manually annotated gold standard set of 1,619 genes where annotations were primarily inferred from direct assay or mutant phenotype. Evaluations based on the gold standard indicate that our new annotation set is measurably more accurate than those from Phytozome and Gramene. To derive this new high-coverage, high-confidence annotation set we used sequence-similarity and protein-domain-presence methods as well as mixed-method pipelines that developed for the Critical Assessment of Function Annotation (CAFA) challenge. Our project to improve maize annotations is called maize-GAMER (GO Annotation Method, Evaluation, and Review) and the newly-derived annotations are accessible via MaizeGDB (http://download.maizegdb.org/maize-GAMER) and CyVerse (B73 RefGen_v3 5b+ at doi: doi.org/10.7946/P2S62P and B73 RefGen_v4 Zm00001d.2 at doi: doi.org/10.7946/P2M925).
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wimalanathan, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-11-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/222836</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Maize GO Annotation - Methods, Evaluation, and Review (maize-GAMER)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-11-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/227504v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
MetaRiPPquest: A Peptidogenomics Approach for the Discovery of Ribosomally Synthesized and Post-translationally Modified Peptides 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/227504v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) are an important class of natural products that include many antibiotics and a variety of other bioactive compounds. While recent breakthroughs in RiPP discovery raised the challenge of developing new algorithms for their analysis, peptidogenomic-based identification of RiPPs by combining genome/metagenome mining with analysis of tandem mass spectra remains an open problem. We present here MetaRiPPquest, a software tool for addressing this challenge that is compatible with large-scale screening platforms for natural product discovery. After searching millions of spectra in the Global Natural Products Social (GNPS) molecular networking infrastructure against just six genomic and metagenomic datasets, MetaRiPPquest identified 27 known and discovered 5 novel RiPP natural products.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mohimani, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gurevich, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alexander, K. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Naman, C. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leao, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Glukhov, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luzzatto Knaan, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vargas, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nothias, L.-F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, N. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanders, J. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Benitez, R. A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thompson, L. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamid, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morton, J. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mikheenko, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shlemov, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Korobeynikov, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Knight, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Venkateswaran, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gerwick, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gerwick, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorrestein, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pevzner, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-12-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/227504</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[MetaRiPPquest: A Peptidogenomics Approach for the Discovery of Ribosomally Synthesized and Post-translationally Modified Peptides]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-12-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/237370v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Broad spectrum proteomics analysis of the inferior Colliculus following acute hydrogen sulfide exposure 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/237370v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Acute exposure to high concentrations of H2S causes severe brain injury and long-term neurological disorders. The mechanisms of H2S-induced neurodegeneration are not known. To better understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of H2S-induced neurodegeneration we used a broad-spectrum proteomic analysis approach to search for key molecules in H2S-induced neurotoxicity. Mice were subjected to acute whole body exposure of up to750 ppm of H2S. The H2S-treated group showed behavioral motor deficits and developed severe lesions in the inferior colliculus (IC), part of the brainstem. The IC was microdissected for proteomic analysis. Tandem mass tags (TMT) liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)-based quantitative proteomics was applied for protein identification and quantitation. LC-MS/MS was able to identify 598, 562, and 546 altered proteomic changes for day 1 (2 h post H2S exposure), day 2, and day 4 of H2S exposure, respectively. Mass spectrometry data were analyzed by Perseus 1.5.5.3 statistical analysis, and gene ontology heat map clustering. Quantitative real-time PCR was used to confirm some of the H2S-dependent proteomics changes. Taken together, acute exposure to H2S induced behavioral motor deficits along with progressive neurodegeneration including disruption of several biological processes in the IC such as cellular morphology, energy metabolism, and calcium signaling. The obtained broad-spectrum proteomics data may provide important clues to elucidate mechanisms of H2S-induced neurotoxicity.nnHighlightsO_LIMice exposed to H2S recapitulated H2S-induced neurotoxicity manifested in humans.nC_LIO_LIThe IC in the mouse brain is the most sensitive to H2S-induced neurodegeneration.nC_LIO_LIProteomic expressions of key proteins were validated at transcription level.nC_LIO_LISeveral biological pathways were dysregulated by H2S exposure.nC_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kim, D.-S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anantharam, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hoffman, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meade, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grobe, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gearhart, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitley, E. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mahama, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rumbeiha, W. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-12-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/237370</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Broad spectrum proteomics analysis of the inferior Colliculus following acute hydrogen sulfide exposure]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-12-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/238832v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
FarmCPUpp: Efficient Large-Scale GWAS 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/238832v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are computationally demanding analyses that use large sample sizes and dense marker sets to discover associations between quantitative trait variation and genetic variants. FarmCPU is a powerful new method for performing GWAS. However, its performance is hampered by details of its implementation and its reliance on the R programming language. In this paper we present an efficient implementation of FarmCPU, called FarmCPUpp, that retains the R user interface but improves memory management and speed through the use of C++ code and parallel computing.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kusmec, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2017-12-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/238832</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[FarmCPUpp: Efficient Large-Scale GWAS]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2017-12-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/255505v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identifying Antimicrobial Peptides using Word Embedding with Deep Recurrent Neural Networks 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/255505v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Antibiotic resistance constitutes a major public health crisis, and finding new sources of antimicrobial drugs is crucial to solving it. Bacteriocins, which are bacterially-produced antimicrobial peptide products, are candidates for broadening the available choices of an-timicrobials. However, the discovery of new bacteriocins by genomic mining is hampered by their sequences low complexity and high variance, which frustrates sequence similarity-based searches. Here we use word embeddings of protein sequences to represent bacteriocins, and apply a word embedding method that accounts for amino acid order in protein sequences,to predict novel bacteriocins from protein sequences without using sequence similarity. Our method predicts, with a high probability, six yet unknown putative bacteriocins in Lactobacil-lus. Generalized, the representation of sequences with word embeddings preserving sequence order information can be applied to protein classification problems for which sequence simi-larity cannot be used.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hamid, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-01-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/255505</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identifying Antimicrobial Peptides using Word Embedding with Deep Recurrent Neural Networks]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-01-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/265918v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Crowdsourcing Image Analysis for Plant Phenomics to Generate Ground Truth Data for Machine Learning 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/265918v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The accuracy of machine learning tasks critically depends on high quality ground truth data. Therefore, in many cases, producing good ground truth data typically involves trained professionals; however, this can be costly in time, effort, and money. Here we explore the use of crowdsourcing to generate a large number of training data of good quality. We explore an image analysis task involving the segmentation of corn tassels from images taken in a field setting. We investigate the accuracy, speed and other quality metrics when this task is performed by students for academic credit, Amazon MTurk workers, and Master Amazon MTurk workers. We conclude that the Amazon MTurk and Master Mturk workers perform significantly better than the for-credit students, but with no significant difference between the two MTurk worker types. Furthermore, the quality of the segmentation produced by Amazon MTurk workers rivals that of an expert worker. We provide best practices to assess the quality of ground truth data, and to compare data quality produced by different sources. We conclude that properly managed crowdsourcing can be used to establish large volumes of viable ground truth data at a low cost and high quality, especially in the context of high throughput plant phenotyping. We also provide several metrics for assessing the quality of the generated datasets.nnAuthor SummaryFood security is a growing global concern. Farmers, plant breeders, and geneticists are hastening to address the challenges presented to agriculture by climate change, dwindling arable land, and population growth. Scientists in the field of plant phenomics are using satellite and drone images to understand how crops respond to a changing environment and to combine genetics and environmental measures to maximize crop growth efficiency. However, the terabytes of image data require new computational methods to extract useful information. Machine learning algorithms are effective in recognizing select parts of images, but they require high quality data curated by people to train them, a process that can be laborious and costly. We examined how well crowdsourcing works in providing training data for plant phenomics, specifically, segmenting a corn tassel - the male flower of the corn plant - from the often-cluttered images of a cornfield. We provided images to students, and to Amazon MTurkers, the latter being an on-demand workforce brokered by Amazon.com and paid on a task-by-task basis. We report on best practices in crowdsourcing image labeling for phenomics, and compare the different groups on measures such as fatigue and accuracy over time. We find that crowdsourcing is a good way of generating quality labeled data, rivaling that of experts.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Siegel, Z. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zarecor, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Campbell, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nettleton, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganapathysubramanian, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelly, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-02-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/265918</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Crowdsourcing Image Analysis for Plant Phenomics to Generate Ground Truth Data for Machine Learning]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-02-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/268904v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SeqStruct : A New Amino Acid Similarity Matrix Based on Sequence Correlations and Structural Contacts Yields Sequence-Structure Congruence 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/268904v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Protein sequence matching does not properly account for some well-known features of protein structures: surface residues being more variable than core residues, the high packing densities in globular proteins, and does not yield good matches of sequences of many proteins known to be close structural relatives. There are now abundant protein sequences and structures to enable major improvements to sequence matching. Here, we utilize structural frameworks to mount the observed correlated sequences to identify the most important correlated parts. The rationale is that protein structures provide the important physical framework for improving sequence matching. Combining the sequence and structure data in this way leads to a simple amino acid substitution matrix that can be readily incorporated into any sequence matching. This enables the incorporation of allosteric information into sequence matching and transforms it effectively from a 1-D to a 3-D procedure. The results from testing in over 3,000 sequence matches demonstrate a 37% gain in sequence similarity and a loss of 26% of the gaps when compared with the use of BLOSUM62. And, importantly there are major gains in the specificity of sequence matching across diverse proteins. Specifically, all known cases where protein structures match but sequences do not match well are resolved.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jia, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jernigan, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-02-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/268904</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SeqStruct : A New Amino Acid Similarity Matrix Based on Sequence Correlations and Structural Contacts Yields Sequence-Structure Congruence]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-02-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/272179v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Ribo-tag translatomic profiling of Drosophila oenocyte reveals down-regulation of peroxisome and mitochondria biogenesis under aging and oxidative stress 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/272179v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundAging is accompanied with loss of tissue homeostasis and accumulation of cellular damages. As one of the important metabolic centers, aged liver shows altered lipid metabolism, impaired detoxification pathway, increased inflammation and oxidative stress response. However, the mechanisms for these age-related changes still remain unclear. In fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, liver-like functions are controlled by two distinct tissues, fat body and oenocytes. Although the role of fat body in aging regulation has been well studied, little is known about how oenocytes age and what are their roles in aging regulation. To address these questions, we used cell-type-specific ribosome profiling (RiboTag) to study the impacts of aging and oxidative stress on oenocyte translatome in Drosophila.nnResultsWe show that aging and oxidant paraquat significantly increased the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in adult oenocytes of Drosophila, and aged oenocytes exhibited reduced sensitivity to paraquat treatment. Through RiboTag sequencing, we identified 3324 and 949 differentially expressed genes in oenocytes under aging and paraquat treatment, respectively. Aging and paraquat exhibit both shared and distinct regulations on oenocyte translatome. Among all age-regulated genes, mitochondrial, proteasome, peroxisome, fatty acid metabolism, and cytochrome P450 pathways were down-regulated, whereas DNA replication and glutathione metabolic pathways were up-regulated. Interestingly, most of the peroxisomal genes were down-regulated in aged oenocytes, including peroxisomal biogenesis factors and beta-oxidation genes. Further analysis of the oenocyte translatome showed that oenocytes highly expressed genes involving in liver-like processes (e.g., ketogenesis). Many age-related transcriptional changes in oenocytes are similar to aging liver, including up-regulation of Ras/MAPK signaling pathway and down-regulation of peroxisome and fatty acid metabolism.nnConclusionsOur oenocyte-specific translatome analysis identified many genes and pathways that are shared between Drosophila oenocytes and mammalian liver, highlighting the molecular and functional similarities between the two tissues. Many of these genes are altered in both aged oenocytes and aged liver, suggesting a conserved molecular mechanism underlying oenocyte and liver aging. Thus, our translatome analysis will contribute significantly to the understanding of oenocyte biology, and its role in lipid metabolism, stress response and aging regulation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Huang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-02-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/272179</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Ribo-tag translatomic profiling of Drosophila oenocyte reveals down-regulation of peroxisome and mitochondria biogenesis under aging and oxidative stress]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-02-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/272708v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evidence for a unique DNA-dependent RNA polymerase in cereal crops 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/272708v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Gene duplication is an important driver for the evolution of new genes and protein functions. Duplication of DNA-dependent RNA polymerase (Pol) II subunits within plants led to the emergence of RNA Pol IV and V complexes, each of which possess unique functions necessary for RNA-directed DNA Methylation. Comprehensive identification of Pol V subunit orthologs across the monocot radiation revealed a duplication of the largest two subunits within the grasses (Poaceae), including critical cereal crops. These paralogous Pol subunits display sequence conservation within catalytic domains, but their carboxy terminal domains differ in length and character of the Ago-binding platform, suggesting unique functional interactions. Phylogenetic analysis of the catalytic region indicates positive selection on one paralog following duplication, consistent with retention via neofunctionalization. Positive selection on residue pairs that are predicted to interact between subunits suggests that paralogous subunits have evolved specific assembly partners. Additional Pol subunits as well as Pol-interacting proteins also possess grass-specific paralogs, supporting the hypothesis that a novel Pol complex with distinct function has evolved in the grass family, Poaceae.nnO_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=120 SRC="FIGDIR/small/272708_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">nView larger version (32K):norg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@13d3515org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@16831d5org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@19f99b8org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1253e70_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG Graphical Abstract C_FIG Significance statementThe grass family is critically important for humans, as this group contains cereal grains such as rice, wheat, and corn that form the bulk of the human diet. Here we provide evidence that grasses have evolved a unique polymerase complex of unknown function, suggesting a novel mechanism of gene regulation in the grass lineage. In addition to implications for the biology of grasses, this system offers an opportunity to understand how evolution shapes multi-subunit complexes through duplication of individual components.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Trujillo, J. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beilstein, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mosher, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-02-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/272708</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evidence for a unique DNA-dependent RNA polymerase in cereal crops]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-02-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/273656v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Assessment and refinement of sample preparation methods for deep and quantitative plant proteome profiling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/273656v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A major challenge in the field of proteomics is obtaining high quality peptides for comprehensive proteome profiling by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry for many organisms. Here we evaluate and modify a range of sample preparation methods using photosynthetically active Arabidopsis leaf tissues from several developmental timepoints. We find that inclusion of FASP-based on filter digestion improves all protein extraction methods tested. Ultimately, we show that a detergent-free urea-FASP approach enables deep and robust quantification of leaf proteomes. For example, from 4-day-old leaf tissue we profiled up to 11,690 proteins from a single sample replicate. This method should be broadly applicable to researchers working on difficult to process samples from a range of plant and non-plant organisms.nnAbbreviations
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, P. Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-02-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/273656</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Assessment and refinement of sample preparation methods for deep and quantitative plant proteome profiling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-02-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/291187v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Toward Precision Molecular Surgery: Robust, Selective Induction of Microhomology-mediated End Joining in vivo 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/291187v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
One key problem in precision genome editing is the resultant unpredictable plurality of sequence outcomes at the site of targeted DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). This is due to the typical activation of the versatile Non-homologous End Joining (NHEJ) pathway. Such unpredictability limits the utility of somatic gene editing for applications including gene therapy and functional genomics. For germline editing work, the accurate reproduction of identical alleles using NHEJ is a labor intensive process. In this study, we propose inducing Microhomology-mediated End Joining (MMEJ) as a viable solution for improving somatic sequence homogeneity in vivo, capable of generating a single predictable allele at high rates (56% ~ 86% of the entire mutant allele pool). Using a combined dataset from zebrafish (Danio rerio) in vivo and human HeLa cell in vitro as a training dataset, we identified specific contextual sequence determinants surrounding genomic DSBs for robust MMEJ pathway activation. We then applied our observation and prospectively designed MMEJ-inducing sgRNAs against a variety of proof-of-principle genes and demonstrated a high level of mutant allele homogeneity at these loci. F0 mutant zebrafish embryos and larvae generated with these gRNAs faithfully recapitulated previously reported, recessive loss-of-function phenotypes. We also provide a novel algorithm MENTHU (http://genesculpt.org/menthu/) for improved prediction of candidate MMEJ loci, suitable for both targeted and genome-wide applications. We believe that this MMEJ-centric approach will have a broad impact on genome engineering and its applications. For example, whereas somatic mosaicism hinders efficient recreation of a knockout mutant allele at base pair resolution via the standard NHEJ-based approach, we demonstrate that F0 founders transmitted the identical MMEJ allele of interest at high rates. Most importantly, the ability to directly dictate the reading frame of an endogenous target will have important implications for gene therapy applications in human genetic diseases.nnAuthor SummaryNew gene editing tools precisely break DNA at pre-defined genomic locations, but cells repair these lesions using diverse pathways that often lead to unpredictable outcomes in the resulting DNA sequences. This sequence diversity in gene editing outcomes represents an important obstacle to the application of this technology for human therapies. Using a vertebrate animal as a model system, we provide strong evidence that we can overcome this obstacle by selectively directing DNA repair of double-stranded breaks through a lesser-described pathway termed Microhomology-mediated End Joining (MMEJ). Unlike other, better-understood pathways, MMEJ uses recurring short sequence patterns surrounding the site of DNA breakage. This enables the prediction of repair outcomes with improved accuracy. Importantly, we also show that preferential activation of MMEJ is compatible with effective gene editing. Finally, we provide a simple algorithm and software for designing DNA-breaking reagents that have high chance of activating the MMEJ pathway. We believe that the MMEJ-centric approach to be broadly applicable for a variety of gene editing applications both within the laboratory and for human therapies.nnAuthor ContributionHA contributed in Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Funding Acquisition, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing - Original draft preparation, and Writing - Review and Editing. TLE contributed in Data Curation, Investigation, Writing - Original draft preparation, and Writing - Review and Editing. GMG contributed in Software, Validation, and Writing. CMM contributed in Software Validation, and Writing. AVD contributed in Investigation, Methodology, Validation, and Writing - Review and Editing. KJS contributed in Investigation and Writing - Review and Editing. ACM contributed in Conceptualization, Data Curation, Investigation, and Writing - Review and Editing. DD contributed in Funding Acquisition, Resources, and Writing - Review and Editing. KJC contributed in Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Resources, Supervision, and Writing - Review and Editing. SCE contributed in Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Project Administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing - Review and Editing.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ata, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ekstrom, T. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martinez-Galvez, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mann, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dvornikov, A. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schaefbauer, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ma, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dobbs, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ekker, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-03-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/291187</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Toward Precision Molecular Surgery: Robust, Selective Induction of Microhomology-mediated End Joining in vivo]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-03-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/307777v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Shared Data Science Infrastructure for Genomics Data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/307777v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundCreating a computational infrastructure to analyze the wealth of information contained in data repositories that scales well is difficult due to significant barriers in organizing, extracting and analyzing relevant data. Shared Data Science Infrastructures like Boa can be used to more efficiently process and parse data contained in large data repositories. The main features of Boa are inspired from existing languages for data intensive computing and can easily integrate data from biological data repositories.nnResultsHere, we present an implementation of Boa for Genomic research (BoaG) on a relatively small data repository: RefSeqs 97,716 annotation (GFF) and assembly (FASTA) files and metadata. We used BoaG to query the entire RefSeq dataset and gain insight into the RefSeq genome assemblies and gene model annotations and show that assembly quality using the same assembler varies depending on species.nnConclusionsIn order to keep pace with our ability to produce biological data, innovative methods are required. The Shared Data Science Infrastructure, BoaG, can provide greater access to researchers to efficiently explore data in ways previously not possible for anyone but the most well funded research groups. We demonstrate the efficiency of BoaG to explore the RefSeq database of genome assemblies and annotations to identify interesting features of gene annotation as a proof of concept for much larger datasets.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bagheri, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muppirala, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Severin, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rajan, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-04-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/307777</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Shared Data Science Infrastructure for Genomics Data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-04-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/314740v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Novel antimicrobial peptide discovery using machine learning and biophysical selection of minimal bacteriocin domains 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/314740v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bacteriocins are ribosomally produced antimicrobial peptides that represent an untapped source of promising antibiotic alternatives. However, inherent challenges in isolation and identification of natural bacteriocins in substantial yield have limited their potential use as viable antimicrobial compounds. In this study, we have developed an overall pipeline for bacteriocin-derived compound design and testing that combines sequence-free prediction of bacteriocins using a machine-learning algorithm and a simple biophysical trait filter to generate minimal 20 amino acid peptide candidates that can be readily synthesized and evaluated for activity. We generated 28,895 total 20-mer peptides and scored them for charge, -helicity, and hydrophobic moment, allowing us to identify putative peptide sequences with the highest potential for interaction and activity against bacterial membranes. Of those, we selected sixteen sequences for synthesis and further study, and evaluated their antimicrobial, cytotoxicity, and hemolytic activities. We show that bacteriocin-based peptides with the overall highest scores for our biophysical parameters exhibited significant antimicrobial activity against E. coli and P. aeruginosa. Our combined method incorporates machine learning and biophysical-based minimal region determination, to create an original approach to rapidly discover novel bacteriocin candidates amenable to rapid synthesis and evaluation for therapeutic use.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fields, F. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Freed, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carothers, K. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamid, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hammers, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross, J. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kalwajtys, V. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gonzalez, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hildreth, A. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, S. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-05-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/314740</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Novel antimicrobial peptide discovery using machine learning and biophysical selection of minimal bacteriocin domains]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-05-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/318386v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic Dissection of Haploid Male Fertility in Maize (Zea mays L.) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/318386v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Haploid genome doubling is a key limiting step of haploid breeding in maize. Spontaneous restoration of haploid male fertility (HMF) provides a method by which costs can be saved and which does not require the use of toxic chemicals, in contrast to the artificial doubling process. To reveal the genetic basis of HMF, haploids were obtained from the offspring of 285 F2:3 families, derived from the cross Zheng58x K22. The F2:3 families were used as female donor and YHI-1 as the male inducer line. The rates of HMF from each family line were evaluated at two field sites over two planting seasons. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) for HMF were identified using a genetic linkage map containing 157 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. QTL for HMF displayed incomplete dominance. Transgressive segregation of haploids from F2:3 families was observed relative to haploids derived from the two parents of the mapping population. A total of nine QTL were detected, which were distributed on chromosomes 1, 3, 4, 7, and 8. Three QTL, qHMF3b, qHMF7a, and qHMF7b were detected in both locations, respectively. In our mapping population, HMF was controlled by three major QTL. These QTL could be useful to predict the ability of spontaneous haploid genome doubling in related breeding materials, and to accelerate the haploid breeding process by introgression or aggregation of those QTL.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>lübberstedt, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-05-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/318386</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic Dissection of Haploid Male Fertility in Maize (Zea mays L.)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-05-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/331561v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Integrating genotype and weather variables for soybean yield prediction using deep learning 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/331561v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Realized performance of complex traits is dependent on both genetic and environmental factors, which can be difficult to dissect due to the requirement for multiple replications of many genotypes in diverse environmental conditions. To mediate these problems, we present a machine learning framework in soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) to analyze historical performance records from Uniform Soybean Tests (UST) in North America, with an aim to dissect and predict genotype response in multiple envrionments leveraging pedigree and genomic relatedness measures along with weekly weather parameters. The ML framework of Long Short Term Memory - Recurrent Neural Networks works by isolating key weather events and genetic interactions which affect yield, seed oil, seed protein and maturity enabling prediction of genotypic responses in unseen environments. This approach presents an exciting avenue for genotype x environment studies and enables prediction based systems. Our approaches can be applied in plant breeding programs with multi-environment and multi-genotype data, to identify superior genotypes through selection for commercial release as well as for determining ideal locations for efficient performance testing.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shook, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gangopadhyay, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganapathysubramanian, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-05-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/331561</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Integrating genotype and weather variables for soybean yield prediction using deep learning]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-05-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/340950v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identifying Mechanisms of Regulation to Model Carbon Flux During Heat Stress And Generate Testable Hypotheses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/340950v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Understanding biological response to stimuli requires identifying mechanisms that coordinate changes across pathways. One of the promises of multi-omics studies is achieving this level of insight by simultaneously identifying different levels of regulation. However, computational approaches to integrate multiple types of data are lacking. An effective systems biology approach would be one that uses statistical methods to detect signatures of relevant network motifs and then builds metabolic circuits from these components to model shifting regulatory dynamics. For example, transcriptome and metabolome data complement one another in terms of their ability to describe shifts in physiology. Here, we extend a previously described method used to identify single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) associated with metabolic changes (Gieger et al., 2008). We apply this strategy to link changes in sulfur, amino acid and lipid production under heat stress by relating ratios of compounds to potential precursors and regulators. This approach provides integration of multi-omics data to link previously described, discrete units of regulation into functional pathways and hypothesizes novel biology relevant to the heat stress response.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hubbard, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jastrebski, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lamont, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmidt, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-06-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/340950</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identifying Mechanisms of Regulation to Model Carbon Flux During Heat Stress And Generate Testable Hypotheses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-06-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/341115v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The role of homology and orthology in the phylogenomic analysis of metazoan gene content 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/341115v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Resolving animal (Metazoa) relationships is crucial to our understanding of, for example, the origin of their key traits such as muscles, guts and nerves. However, a broadly accepted metazoan consensus phylogeny has yet to emerge. In part this is because the genomes of deeply-diverging and fast-evolving lineages may undergo significant gene turnover, reducing the number of orthologs shared with related phyla. This can limit the usefulness of traditional phylogenetic methods that rely on alignments of orthologous sequences. Phylogenetic analysis of gene content has the potential to circumvent this orthology requirement, with binary presence/absence of homologous gene families representing a source of phylogenetically informative characters. Applying binary substitution models to the gene content of 26 complete animal genomes, we demonstrate that patterns of gene conservation differ markedly depending on whether gene families are defined by orthology or homology, i.e., whether paralogs are excluded or included. We conclude that the placement of deeply-diverging lineages, like ctenophores, may exceed the limit of resolution afforded by methods based on comparisons of orthologous protein supermatrices, and novel approaches are required to fully capture the evolutionary signal from genes within genomes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pett, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adamski, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adamska, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Francis, W. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eitel, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pisani, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woerheide, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-06-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/341115</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The role of homology and orthology in the phylogenomic analysis of metazoan gene content]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-06-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/354548v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Development of reduced gluten wheat enabled by determination of the genetic basis of the lys3a low hordein barley mutant 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/354548v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Celiac disease is the most common food-induced enteropathy in humans with a prevalence of approximately 1% world-wide [1]. It is induced by digestion-resistant, proline- and glutamine-rich seed storage proteins, collectively referred to as "gluten," found in wheat. Related prolamins are present in barley and rye. Both celiac disease and a related condition called non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) are increasing in incidence [2] [3]. This has prompted efforts to identify methods of lowering gluten in wheat, one of the most important cereal crops. Here we used BSR-seq (Bulked Segregant RNA-seq) and map-based cloning to identify the genetic lesion underlying a recessive, low prolamin mutation (lys3a) in diploid barley. We confirmed the mutant identity by complementing the lys3a mutant with a transgenic copy of the wild type barley gene and then used TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes) [4] to identify induced SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) in the three homoeologs of the corresponding wheat gene. Combining inactivating mutations in the three sub-genomes of hexaploid bread wheat in a single wheat line lowered gliadin and low molecular weight glutenin accumulation by 50-60% and increased free and protein-bound lysine by 33%. This is the first report of the combination of mutations in homoeologs of a single gene that reduces gluten in wheat.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Moehs, C. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Austill, W. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holm, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Large, T. A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loeffler, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mullenberg, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Skinner, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>van Boxtel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGuire, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-06-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/354548</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Development of reduced gluten wheat enabled by determination of the genetic basis of the lys3a low hordein barley mutant]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-06-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/360164v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
phylostratr: A framework for phylostratigraphy 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/360164v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationThe goal of phylostratigraphy is to infer the evolutionary origin of each gene in an organism. Currently, there are no general pipelines for this task. We present an R package, phylostratr, to fill this gap, making high-quality phylostratigraphic analysis accessible to non-specialists.nnResultsPhylostratigraphic analysis entails searching for homologs within increasingly broad clades. The highest clade that contains all homologs of a gene is that genes phylostratum. We have created a general R-based framework, phylostratr, for estimating the phylostratum of every gene in a species. The program can fully automate an analysis: select species for a balanced representation of each strata, retrieve the sequences from UniProt, build BLAST databases, run BLAST, infer homologs for each gene against each subject species, determine phylostrata, and return summaries and diagnostics. phylostratr allows extensive customization. A user may: modify the automatically-generated clade tree or use their own tree; provide custom sequences in place of those automatically retrieved from UniProt; replace BLAST with an alternative algorithm; or tailor the method and sensitivity of the homology inference classifier. phylostratr also offers proteome quality assessments, false-positive diagnostics, and checks for missing organelle genomes. We show the utility of phylostratr through case studies in Arabidopsis thaliana and Saccharomyces cerevisiae.nnAvailabilityphylostratr source code and vignettes are available on GitHub at https://github.com/arendsee/phylostratrnnContactevewurtele@gmail.com
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Arendsee, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-07-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/360164</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[phylostratr: A framework for phylostratigraphy]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-07-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/371484v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Plasmodium falciparum Niemann-Pick Type C1-Related Protein is a Druggable Target Required for Parasite Membrane Homeostasis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/371484v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plasmodium parasites possess a protein with homology to Niemann-Pick Type C1 proteins (Plasmodium falciparum Niemann-Pick Type C1-Related protein, PfNCR1). We isolated parasites with resistance-conferring mutations in PfNCR1 during selections with three diverse small-molecule antimalarial compounds and show that the mutations are causative for compound resistance. PfNCR1 protein knockdown results in severely attenuated growth and confers hypersensitivity to the compounds. Compound treatment or protein knockdown leads to increased sensitivity of the parasite plasma membrane (PPM) to the amphipathic glycoside saponin and engenders digestive vacuoles (DVs) that are small and malformed. Immuno-electron microscopy and split-GFP experiments localize PfNCR1 to the PPM. Our experiments show that PfNCR1 activity is critically important for the composition of the PPM and is required for DV biogenesis, suggesting PfNCR1 as a novel antimalarial drug target.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Istvan, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Das, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhatnagar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Owen, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>LLinas, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganesan, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Niles, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Winzeler, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vaidya, A. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goldberg, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-07-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/371484</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Plasmodium falciparum Niemann-Pick Type C1-Related Protein is a Druggable Target Required for Parasite Membrane Homeostasis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-07-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/372045v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Maize defective kernel5 is a bacterial tamB homolog required for chloroplast envelope biogenesis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/372045v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Chloroplasts are of prokaryotic origin with a double membrane envelope that separates plastid metabolism from the cytosol. Envelope membrane proteins integrate the chloroplast with the cell, but the biogenesis of the envelope membrane remains elusive. We show that the maize defective kernel5 (dek5) locus is critical for plastid membrane biogenesis. Amyloplasts and chloroplasts are larger and reduced in number in dek5 with multiple ultrastructural defects. We show that dek5 encodes a protein homologous to rice SUBSTANDARD STARCH GRAIN4 (SSG4) and E.coli tamB. TamB functions in bacterial outer membrane biogenesis. The DEK5 protein is localized to the chloroplast envelope with a topology analogous to TamB. Increased levels of soluble sugars in dek5 developing endosperm and elevated osmotic pressure in mutant leaf cells suggest defective intracellular solute transport. Both proteomics and antibody-based analyses show that dek5 chloroplasts have reduced levels of chloroplast envelope transporters. Moreover, dek5 chloroplasts reduce inorganic phosphate uptake with at least an 80% reduction relative to normal chloroplasts. These data suggest that DEK5 functions in plastid envelope biogenesis to enable metabolite transport.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boehlein, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McCarty, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Myers, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Settles, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-07-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/372045</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Maize defective kernel5 is a bacterial tamB homolog required for chloroplast envelope biogenesis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-07-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/374264v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Convergent evolution of effector protease recognition by Arabidopsis and barley 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/374264v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Pseudomonas syringae cysteine protease AvrPphB activates the Arabidopsis resistance protein RPS5 by cleaving a second host protein, PBS1. AvrPphB induces defense responses in other plant species, but the genes and mechanisms mediating AvrPphB recognition in those species have not been defined. Here, we show that AvrPphB induces defense responses in diverse barley cultivars. We show also that barley contains two PBS1 orthologs, that their products are cleaved by AvrPphB, and that the barley AvrPphB response maps to a single locus containing a nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) gene, which we termed AvrPphB Resistance 1 (Pbr1). Transient co-expression of PBR1 with wild-type AvrPphB, but not a protease inactive mutant, triggered defense responses, indicating that PBR1 detects AvrPphB protease activity. Additionally, PBR1 co-immunoprecipitated with barley and N. benthamiana PBS1 proteins, suggesting mechanistic similarity to detection by RPS5. Lastly, we determined that wheat cultivars also recognize AvrPphB protease activity and contain a Pbr1 ortholog. Phylogenetic analyses showed however that Pbr1 is not orthologous to RPS5. Our results indicate that the ability to recognize AvrPphB evolved convergently, and imply that selection to guard PBS1-like proteins is ancient. Also, the results suggest that PBS1-based decoys may be used to engineer protease effector recognition-based resistance in barley and wheat.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Carter, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Helm, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chapman, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wan, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Restrepo Sierra, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Innes, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bogdanove, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, R. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-07-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/374264</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Convergent evolution of effector protease recognition by Arabidopsis and barley]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-07-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/375428v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
High Genetic Potential for Proteolytic Decomposition in Northern Peatland Ecosystems 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/375428v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AbstractNitrogen (N) is a scarce nutrient commonly limiting primary productivity. Microbial decomposition of complex carbon (C) into small organic molecules (e.g., free amino acids) has been suggested to supplement biologically-fixed N in high latitude peatlands. We evaluated the microbial (fungal, bacterial, and archaeal) genetic potential for organic N depolymerization in peatlands at Marcell Experimental Forest (MEF) in northern Minnesota. We used guided gene assembly to examine the abundance and diversity of protease genes; and further compared to those of N-fixing (nifH) genes in shotgun metagenomic data collected across depth at two distinct peatland environments (bogs and fens). Microbial proteases greatly outnumbered nifH genes with the most abundant gene families (archaeal M1 and bacterial Trypsin) each containing more sequences than all sequences attributed to nifH. Bacterial protease gene assemblies were diverse and abundant across depth profiles, indicating a role for bacteria in releasing free amino acids from peptides through depolymerization of older organic material and contrasting the paradigm of fungal dominance in depolymerization in forest soils. Although protease gene assemblies for fungi were much less abundant overall than for bacteria, fungi were prevalent in surface samples and therefore may be vital in degrading large soil polymers from fresh plant inputs during early stage of depolymerization. In total, we demonstrate that depolymerization enzymes from a diverse suite of microorganisms, including understudied bacterial and archaeal lineages, are likely to play a substantial role in C and N cycling within northern peatlands.nnImportanceNitrogen (N) is a common limitation on primary productivity, and its source remains unresolved in northern peatlands that are vulnerable to environmental change. Decompositionof complex organic matter into free amino acids has been proposed as an important N source, but the genetic potential of microorganisms mediating this process has not been examined. Such information can elucidate possible responses of northern peatlands to environmental change. We show high genetic potential for microbial production of free amino acids across a range of microbial guilds. In particular, the abundance and diversity of bacterial genes encoding proteolytic activity suggests a predominant role for bacteria in regulating productivity and contrasts a paradigm of fungal dominance of organic N decomposition. Our results expand our current understanding of coupled carbon and nitrogen cycles in north peatlands and indicate that understudied bacterial and archaeal lineages may be central in this ecosystems response to environmental change.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Graham, E. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bell, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hofmockel, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-07-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/375428</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[High Genetic Potential for Proteolytic Decomposition in Northern Peatland Ecosystems]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-07-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/378687v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A novel maize gene, glossy6 involved in epicuticular wax deposition and drought tolerance 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/378687v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Epicuticular waxes, long-chain hydrocarbon compounds, form the outermost layer of plant surfaces in most terrestrial plants. The presence of epicuticular waxes protects plants from water loss and other environmental stresses. Cloning and characterization of genes involved in the regulation, biosynthesis, and extracellular transport of epicuticular waxes on to the surface of epidermal cells have revealed the molecular basis of epicuticular wax accumulation. However, intracellular trafficking of synthesized waxes to the plasma membrane for cellular secretion is poorly understood. Here, we characterized a maize glossy (gl6) mutant that exhibited decreased epicuticular wax load, increased cuticle permeability, and reduced seedling drought tolerance relative to wild type. We combined an RNA-sequencing based mapping approach (BSR-Seq) and chromosome walking to identify the gl6 candidate gene, which was confirmed via the analysis of multiple independent mutant alleles. The gl6 gene represents a novel maize glossy gene containing a conserved, but uncharacterized domain. Functional characterization suggests that the GL6 protein may be involved in the intracellular trafficking of epicuticular waxes, opening a door to elucidating the poorly understood process by which epicuticular wax is transported from its site of biosynthesis to the plasma membrane.nnSIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTPlant surface waxes provide an essential protective barrier for terrestrial plants. Understanding the composition and physiological functions of surface waxes, as well as the molecular basis underlying wax accumulation on plant surfaces provides opportunities for the genetic optimization of this protective layer. Genetic studies have identified genes involved in wax biosynthesis, extracellular transport, as well as spatial and temporal regulation of wax accumulation. In this study, a maize mutant, gl6 was characterized that exhibited reduced wax load on plant surfaces, increased water losses, and reduced seedling drought tolerance compared to wild type controls. The gl6 gene is a novel gene harboring a conserved domain with an unknown function. Quantification and microscopic observation of wax accumulation as well as subcellular localization of the GL6 protein provided evidence that gl6 may be involved in the intracellular trafficking of waxes, opening a door for studying this necessary yet poorly understood process for wax loading on plant surfaces.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Du, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>He, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dietrich, C. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ma, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zheng, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-07-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/378687</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A novel maize gene, glossy6 involved in epicuticular wax deposition and drought tolerance]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-07-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/380592v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Measurements of maize root plasticity under water stress in hydroponic chamber 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/380592v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1.Under water stress, plants adjust root traits including depth of root system, root diameter, density of root per volume of soil, hydraulic conductance of root. In this experimental study, we present a method to quantify how hydraulic traits of maize roots adapt to drought. The experiments involve a microfluidic flow sensor and a custom-built pressure chamber, made of transparent plastic for visualization purposes. We measured how maize genotypes (PHB47 and PHZ51) grown for a week in deionized (DI) water and one day in hydroponic nutrients solution (called the irrigated condition) respond to one week of water stress. Conditions of water stress (called drought conditions) were created by mixing Polyethylene Glycol with the nutrients solution. Results show that under drought, the roots of both genotypes respond by approximately halving their global hydraulic conductance. This adjustment seems to be achieved mainly by reductions of the total surface area of the roots. Interestingly, the measured hydraulic conductivity of the roots grown under drought was significantly larger. In all, this study sheds light on how plants adapt to water stress in a hydroponic system, by decreasing root area and increasing root permeability.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jubery, T. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lubberstedt, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganapathysubramanian, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Attinger, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-07-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/380592</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Measurements of maize root plasticity under water stress in hydroponic chamber]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-07-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/387613v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genome-wide association study, replication, and mega-analysis using a dense marker panel in a multi-generational mouse advanced intercross line 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/387613v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Replication is considered to be critical for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in humans, but is not routinely performed in model organisms. We explored replication using an advanced intercross line (AIL) which is the simplest possible multigenerational intercross. We re-genotyped a previously published cohort of LG/J x SM/J AIL mice (F34; n=428) using a denser marker set and also genotyped a novel cohort of AIL mice (F39-43; n=600) for the first time. We identified 110 significant loci in the F34 cohort, 36 of which were new discoveries attributable to the denser marker set; we also identified 27 novel significant loci in the F39-43 cohort. For traits measured in both cohorts (locomotor activity, body weight, and coat color), the genetic correlations were high, although, the F39-43 cohort showed systematically lower SNP-heritability estimates. We then attempted to replicate loci identified in either F34 or F39-43 in the other cohort. Albino coat color was robustly replicated; we observed only partial replication of associations for locomotor activity and body weight. Finally, we performed a mega-analysis of locomotor activity and body weight by combining F34 and F39-43 cohorts (n=1,028), which identified four novel loci. The incomplete replication was inconsistent with simulations we performed to estimate our power to replicate. This may reflect: 1) false positives errors in the discovery cohort, 2) environmental or genetic heterogeneity between the two samples, or 3) the systematic over estimation of the effect sizes at significant loci ("Winners Curse"). Our results demonstrate that it is difficult to replicate GWAS results even when using similarly sized discovery and replication cohorts drawn from the same population.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhou, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>St. Pierre, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gonzales, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chitre, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sokoloff, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Palmer, A. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-08-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/387613</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genome-wide association study, replication, and mega-analysis using a dense marker panel in a multi-generational mouse advanced intercross line]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-08-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/389007v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Resistant potato starch fuels beneficial host-microbe interactions in the gut 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/389007v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Interactions between diet, the microbiota, and the host set the ecological conditions in the gut and have broad implications for health. Prebiotics are dietary compounds that may shift these conditions towards health by promoting the growth of beneficial microbes. Pigs fed a diet amended with 5% resistant potato starch (RPS) exhibited alterations associated with gut health relative to swine fed an unamended diet (CON). RPS intake increased abundances of anaerobic Clostridia in feces and several tissues, as well as intestinal concentrations of butyrate. Functional gene amplicons suggested bacteria similar to Anaerostipes hadrus were stimulated by RPS intake. The CON treatment exhibited increased abundances of several genera of Proteobacteria (which utilize respiratory metabolisms) in several location. RPS intake increased the abundance of regulatory T cells in the cecum, but not periphery, and cecal immune status alterations were indicative of enhanced mucosal defenses. A network analysis of host and microbial changes in the cecum revealed that regulatory T cells positively correlated with butyrate concentration, luminal IgA concentration, expression of IL-6 and DEF1B, and several mucosa-associated bacterial taxa. Thus, the administration of RPS modulated the microbiota and host response, improved cecal barrier function, promoted immunological tolerance, and reduced the niche for bacterial respiration.nnImportanceThe gut microbiota is central to host health. Many disease states and disorders appear to arise from interactions between the gut microbial community and host immune system. As a result, methods and interventions to support the growth and activity of beneficial gut microbes are being actively pursued. Feeding the gut microbiota with dietary compounds, known as prebiotics, is one of the most promising ways to support gut health. Here we describe a successful prebiotic intervention in weaning swine, a relevant translational model for human health. This work unites microbial and immunological data and demonstrates one way a prebiotic intervention can play out for the benefit of the host.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Trachsel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Briggs, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gabler, N. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allen, H. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loving, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-08-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/389007</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Resistant potato starch fuels beneficial host-microbe interactions in the gut]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-08-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/391276v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The genome of the soybean cyst nematode (Heterodera glycines) reveals complex patterns of duplications involved in the evolution of parasitism genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/391276v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Heterodera glycines, commonly referred to as the soybean cyst nematode (SCN), is an obligatory and sedentary plant parasite that causes over a billion-dollar yield loss to soybean production annually. Although there are genetic determinants that render soybean plants resistant to certain nematode genotypes, resistant soybean cultivars are increasingly ineffective because their multi-year usage has selected for virulent H. glycines populations. The parasitic success of H. glycines relies on the comprehensive re-engineering of an infection site into a syncytium, as well as the long-term suppression of host defense to ensure syncytial viability. At the forefront of these complex molecular interactions are effectors, the proteins secreted by H. glycines into host root tissues. The mechanisms of effector acquisition, diversification, and selection need to be understood before effective control strategies can be developed, but the lack of an annotated genome has been a major roadblock. Here, we use PacBio long-read technology to assemble a H. glycines genome of 738 contigs into 123Mb with annotations for 29,769 genes. The genome contains significant numbers of repeats (34%), tandem duplicates (18.7Mb), and horizontal gene transfer events (151 genes). Using previously published effector sequences, the newly generated H. glycines genome, and comparisons to other nematode genomes, we investigate the evolutionary mechanisms responsible for the emergence and diversification of effector genes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Masonbrink, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muppirala, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lord, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Juvale, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmutz, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnson, N. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Korkin, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mitchum, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mimee, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eves-van den Akker, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hudson, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Severin, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-08-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/391276</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The genome of the soybean cyst nematode (Heterodera glycines) reveals complex patterns of duplications involved in the evolution of parasitism genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-08-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/395186v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Maize YABBY drooping leaf genes regulate floret development and floral meristem determinacy 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/395186v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Floret units in cereals produce grain, directly impacting yield. Here we report mutations in the maize CRABS CLAW (CRC) co-orthologs drooping leaf1 (drl1) and drl2 alter the development of ear and tassel florets. Pistillate florets of drl1 ears appear sterile and display ectopic unfused carpels that fail to enclose an expanded nucellus. Staminate florets of drl1 tassels have extra stamens and retain fertile anthers. Natural variation and transposon alleles of drl2 enhance drl1 floret phenotypes by reducing floral meristem (FM) determinacy. The drl paralogs are co-expressed in lateral floral organ primordia, but not within the FM. Together, the expression patterns and indeterminate mutant FMs suggest that the drl genes regulate FM activity and impose meristem determinacy by a non-cell autonomous signal. Genetic interaction analyses of drl mutants with maize floral mutants indicate that the drl genes are required throughout floret development, illustrating their importance for proper floret patterning in maize.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Strable, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vollbrecht, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-08-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/395186</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Maize YABBY drooping leaf genes regulate floret development and floral meristem determinacy]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-08-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/399410v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Epigenetic factors coordinate intestinal development 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/399410v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Intestinal epithelium development depends on epigenetic modifications, but whether that is also the case for other intestinal tract cell types remains unclear. We found that functional loss of a DNA methylation machinery component, ubiquitin-like protein containing PHD and RING finger domains 1 (uhrf1), leads to reduced enteric neuron number, changes in neuronal morphology, and severe intestinal smooth muscle disruption. Genetic chimeras revealed that Uhrf1 functions both cell-autonomously in enteric neuron progenitors and cell-non-autonomously in surrounding intestinal cells. Uhrf1 recruits the DNA methyltransferase Dnmt1 to unmethylated DNA during replication. Dnmt1 is also expressed in enteric neuron and smooth muscle progenitors. dnmt1 mutants show a strong reduction in enteric neuron number and disrupted intestinal smooth muscle. Because dnmt1;uhrf1 double mutants have a similar phenotype to dnmt1 and uhrf1 single mutants, Dnmt1 and Uhrf1 must function together during enteric neuron and intestinal muscle development. This work shows that genes controlling epigenetic modifications are important in coordinating intestinal tract development, provides the first demonstration that these genes are important in ENS development, and advances uhrf1 and dnmt1 as potential new Hirschsprung disease candidates.nnSummaryThis work provides evidence that DNA methylation factors are important in all cell types that contribute to development of a functional intestine.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ganz, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Melancon, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wilson, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Amores, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Batzel, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Strader, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Braasch, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diba, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuhlman, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Postlethwait, J. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eisen, J. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-08-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/399410</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Epigenetic factors coordinate intestinal development]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-08-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/405977v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Analysis of a structured intronic region of the LMP2 pre-mRNA from EBV reveals associations with human regulatory proteins. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/405977v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Objective: The pre-mRNA of the Epstein-Barr virus LMP2 (latent membrane protein 2) has a region of unusual RNA structure that partially spans two consecutive exons and the entire intervening intron; suggesting RNA folding might affect splicing--particularly via interactions with human regulatory proteins. To better understand the roles of protein associations with this structured intronic region, we undertook a combined bioinformatics (motif searching) and experimental analysis (biotin pulldowns and RNA immunoprecipitations) of protein binding. Result: Characterization of the ribonucleoprotein composition of this region revealed several human proteins as interactors: regulatory proteins hnRNP A1 (heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein A1), hnRNP U, HuR (human antigen R), and PSF (polypyrimidine tract-binding protein-associated splicing factor), as well as, unexpectedly, the cytoskeletal protein actin. Treatment of EBV-infected cells with drugs that alter actin polymerization specifically showed marked effects on splicing in this region. This suggests a potentially novel role for nuclear actin in regulation of viral RNA splicing.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Moss, W. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumarasinghe, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-08-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/405977</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Analysis of a structured intronic region of the LMP2 pre-mRNA from EBV reveals associations with human regulatory proteins.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-08-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/414565v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
New Drosophila long-term memory genes revealed by assessing computational function prediction methods. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/414565v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A major bottleneck to our understanding of the genetic and molecular foundation of life lies in the ability to assign function to a gene and, subsequently, a protein. Traditional molecular and genetic experiments can provide the most reliable forms of identification, but are generally low-throughput, making such discovery and assignment a daunting task. The bottleneck has led to an increasing role for computational approaches. The Critical Assessment of Functional Annotation (CAFA) effort seeks to measure the performance of computational methods. In CAFA3 we performed selected screens, including an effort focused on long-term memory. We used homology and previous CAFA predictions to identify 29 key Drosophila genes, which we tested via a long-term memory screen. We identify 11 novel genes that are involved in long-term memory formation and show a high level of connectivity with previously identified learning and memory genes. Our study provides first higher-order behavioral assay and organism screen used for CAFA assessments and revealed previously uncharacterized roles of multiple genes as possible regulators of neuronal plasticity at the boundary of information acquisition and memory formation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kacsoh, B. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barton, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mooney, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Radivojac, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Greene, C. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bosco, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-09-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/414565</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[New Drosophila long-term memory genes revealed by assessing computational function prediction methods.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-09-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/420109v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PolyA tracks and poly-lysine repeats are the Achilles heel of Plasmodium falciparum 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/420109v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agent of human malaria, is an apicomplexan parasite with a complex, multi-host life cycle. Sixty percent of transcripts from its extreme AT-rich (81%) genome possess coding polyadenosine (polyA) runs, distinguishing the parasite from its hosts and other sequenced organisms. Recent studies indicate that transcripts with polyA runs encoding poly-lysine are hot spots for ribosome stalling and frameshifting, eliciting mRNA surveillance pathways and attenuating protein synthesis in the majority of prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. Here, we show that the P. falciparum translational machinery is paradigm-breaking. Using bioinformatic and biochemical approaches, we demonstrate that both endogenous genes and reporter sequences containing long polyA runs are efficiently and accurately transcribed and translated in P. falciparum cells. Translation of polyA tracks in the parasite does not elicit any response from mRNA surveillance pathways usually seen in host human cells or organisms with similar AT content. The translation efficiency and accuracy of the parasite protein synthesis machinery reveals a unique role of ribosomes in the evolution and adaptation of P. falciparum to an AU-rich transcriptome and polybasic amino sequences. Finally, we show that the ability of P. falciparum to synthesize long poly-lysine repeats has given this parasite a unique protein exportome and an advantage in infectivity that can be suppressed by addition of exogenous poly-basic polymers.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pavlovic Djuranovic, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Erath, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andrews, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bayguinov, P. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chung, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chalker, D. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fitzpatrick, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Szczesny, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Djuranovic, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-09-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/420109</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PolyA tracks and poly-lysine repeats are the Achilles heel of Plasmodium falciparum]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-09-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/422543v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Chemical depletion of phagocytic immune cells reveals dual roles of mosquito hemocytes in Anopheles gambiae anti-Plasmodium immunity 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/422543v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mosquito innate immunity is comprised of both cellular and humoral factors that provide protection from invading pathogens. Immune cells, known as hemocytes, have been intricately associated with these immune responses through direct roles in phagocytosis and immune signaling. Recent studies have implicated hemocytes as integral determinants of anti-Plasmodium immunity, yet little is known regarding the specific mechanisms by which hemocytes limit malaria parasite survival. With limited genetic tools to enable their study, we employed a chemical-based treatment widely used for macrophage depletion in mammalian systems for the first time in an invertebrate organism. Upon its application in Anopheles gambiae, we observe distinct populations of phagocytic immune cells that are significantly depleted, causing high mortality following bacterial challenge and an increased intensity of malaria parasite infection. Through these studies, we demonstrate that phagocytes are required for mosquito complement recognition of invading ookinetes, as well as the production of prophenoloxidases that limit oocyst survival. Through these experiments, we also define specific sub-types of phagocytic immune cells in An. gambiae, providing new insights beyond the morphological characteristics that traditionally define mosquito hemocyte populations. Together, this study provides the first definitive insights into the dual roles of mosquito phagocytes in limiting malaria parasite survival, and illustrates the use of clodronate liposomes as an important advancement in the study of invertebrate immunity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kwon, H. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-09-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/422543</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Chemical depletion of phagocytic immune cells reveals dual roles of mosquito hemocytes in Anopheles gambiae anti-Plasmodium immunity]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-09-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/427229v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Chemosensory structure and function in the filarial nematode, Brugia malayi. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/427229v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Nematode chemosensory behaviors underlie fundamental processes and activities in development, reproduction, tropisms and taxes. For parasitic species, chemosensation is essential for host seeking and host and tissue invasion behaviors. Such fundamental biology presents an attractive target for developing behavior-blocking anthelminthic drugs, but the anatomy and functional relevance of parasitic nematode chemosensory machinery are poorly understood. The goals of this study were to better understand the chemosensory apparatus and behaviors of infectious stage Brugia malayi (Spirurida: Onchocercidae), a mosquito-borne nematode and etiological agent of Lymphatic Filariasis. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that amphids, the major chemosensory organs, are present on adult B. malayi and arranged in a conserved manner. Internal sensory neuroanatomy display structural differences between life stages, and a simpler chemosensory architecture as compared to free-living nematodes. Positive and negative chemotactic behaviors were identified for a repertoire of chemicals with known chemostimulatory activity for the mosquito host that may facilitate host-selectivity and invasion. This is the first description of chemosensory anatomy and chemotactic behaviors in B. malayi that reveal the involvement of chemosensation in parasite transmission and host invasion.nnO_LSTKey findingsC_LST* Amphidial arrangement in B. malayi is less complex than free-living nematodes.n* Chemosensory neuroanatomy is stage-specific and simpler than free-living nematodes.n* B. malayi responses to stimuli can be measured using a plate-based assay.n* Chemostimulants associated with mosquito host-seeking induce negative and positive tropisms for L3 stage B. malayi.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fraser, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Madriz, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srinivasan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zamanian, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bartholomay, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimber, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-09-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/427229</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Chemosensory structure and function in the filarial nematode, Brugia malayi.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-09-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/427344v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Retinoblastoma binding protein 4 maintains cycling neural stem cells and prevents DNA damage and Tp53-dependent apoptosis in rb1 mutant neural progenitors 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/427344v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Retinoblastoma-binding protein 4 (Rbbp4) is a WDR adaptor protein for multiple chromatin remodelers implicated in human oncogenesis. Here we show Rbbp4 is overexpressed in zebrafish rb1-embryonal brain tumors and is upregulated across the spectrum of human embryonal and glial brain cancers. We demonstrate in vivo Rbbp4 is essential for zebrafish neurogenesis and has distinct roles in neural stem and progenitor cells. rbbp4 mutant neural stem cells show delayed cell cycle progression and become hypertrophic. In contrast, rbbp4 mutant neural precursors accumulate extensive DNA damage and undergo programmed cell death that is dependent on Tp53 signaling. Loss of Rbbp4 and disruption of genome integrity correlates with failure of neural precursors to initiate quiescence and transition to differentiation. rbbp4; rb1 double mutants show that survival of neural precursors after disruption of Rb1 is dependent on Rbbp4. Elevated Rbbp4 in Rb1-deficient brain tumors might drive proliferation and circumvent DNA damage and Tp53-dependent apoptosis, lending support to current interest in Rbbp4 as a potential druggable target.nnAuthor SummaryExamining the developmental mechanisms controlling neural stem and progenitor cell behavior is critical to our understanding of the processes driving brain tumor oncogenesis. Chromatin remodelers and their associated adaptor proteins are thought to be key drivers of brain development and disease through epigenetic regulation of gene expression and maintenance of genome integrity, but knowledge of their in vivo roles in vertebrate neurogenesis is limited. The chromatin remodeler adaptor protein Rbbp4 has recently been shown to function in a mouse model of neuroblastoma and in glioblastoma multiforme cell resistance to the chemotherapeutic temozolomide. However, an in vivo requirement for Rbbp4 in neurogenesis has only just been shown by isolation of a recessive lethal mutation in zebrafish rbbp4. Here we provide conclusive genetic evidence that zebrafish rbbp4 is essential in neural stem and progenitor cell function during development. Our data reveal for the first time in vivo that Rbbp4 prevents DNA damage and activation of Tp53 signaling pathway that leads to programmed cell death. Importantly, neural progenitors that are mutant for the tumor suppressor Rb1 also depend on Rbbp4 for survival. Finally, we show that neural stem cells that have lost Rbbp4 cease dividing, and may enter a senescent like state. Together, these observations provide novel evidence that elevated expression of Rbbp4 in rb1-mutant tumors may contribute to cancer cell survival by blocking senescence and/or DNA damage-induced cell death.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schultz-Rogers, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Almeida, M. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wierson, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kool, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-09-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/427344</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Retinoblastoma binding protein 4 maintains cycling neural stem cells and prevents DNA damage and Tp53-dependent apoptosis in rb1 mutant neural progenitors]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-09-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/431627v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
GeneWeld: a method for efficient targeted integration directed by short homology 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/431627v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Choices for genome engineering and integration involve high efficiency with little or no target specificity or high specificity with low activity. Here, we describe a targeted integration strategy, called GeneWeld, and a vector series for gene tagging, pGTag (plasmids for Gene Tagging), which promote highly efficient and precise targeted integration in zebrafish embryos, pig fibroblasts, and human cells utilizing the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Our work demonstrates that in vivo targeting of a genomic locus of interest with CRISPR/Cas9 and a donor vector containing as little as 24 to 48 base pairs of homology directs precise and efficient knock-in when the homology arms are exposed with a double strand break in vivo. Our results suggest that the length of homology is not important in the design of knock-in vectors but rather how the homology is presented to a double strand break in the genome. Given our results targeting multiple loci in different species, we expect the accompanying protocols, vectors, and web interface for homology arm design to help streamline gene targeting and applications in CRISPR and TALEN compatible systems.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wierson, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Welker, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Almeida, M. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mann, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Webster, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weiss, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Torrie, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vollbrecht, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lan, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McKeighan, K. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ming, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wehmeier, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mikelson, C. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haltom, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kwan, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chien, C.-B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Balciunas, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ekker, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Webber, B. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moriarity, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Solin, S. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carlson, D. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dobbs, D. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Essner, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-10-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/431627</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[GeneWeld: a method for efficient targeted integration directed by short homology]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-10-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/435107v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
RefSoil+: A reference for antimicrobial resistance genes on soil plasmids 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/435107v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plasmids harbor transferable genes that contribute to the functional repertoire of microbial communities, yet their contributions to metagenomes are often overlooked. Environmental plasmids have the potential to spread antibiotic resistance to clinical microbial strains. In soils, high microbiome diversity and high variability in plasmid characteristics present a challenge for studying plasmids. To improve understanding of soil plasmids, we present RefSoil+, a database containing plasmid sequences from 922 soil microorganisms. Soil plasmids were relatively larger than other described plasmids, which is a trait associated with plasmid mobility. There was no relationship between chromosome size and plasmid size or number, suggesting that these genomic traits are independent in soil. Soil-associated plasmids, but not chromosomes, had fewer antibiotic resistance genes than other microorganisms. These data suggest that soils may offer limited opportunity for plasmid-mediated transfer of described antibiotic resistance genes. RefSoil+ can serve as a baseline for the diversity, composition, and host-associations of plasmid-borne functional genes in soil, a utility that will be enhanced as the database expands. Our study improves understanding of soil plasmids and provides a resource for assessing the dynamics of the genes that they carry, especially genes conferring antibiotic resistances.nnImportanceSoil-associated plasmids have the potential to transfer antibiotic resistance genes from environmental to clinical microbial strains, which is a public health concern. A specific resource is needed to aggregate knowledge of soil plasmid characteristics so that the content, host-associations, and dynamics of antibiotic resistance genes can be assessed and then tracked between the environment and the clinic. Here, we present RefSoil+, a database of soil-associated plasmids. RefSoil+ presents a contemporary snapshot of antibiotic resistance genes in soil that can serve as a reference as novel plasmids and transferred antibiotic resistances are discovered. Our study broadens our understanding of plasmids in soil and provides a community resource for investigating clinic-environment dynamics of important plasmid-associated genes, including antibiotic resistance genes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dunivin, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Choi, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shade, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-10-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/435107</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[RefSoil+: A reference for antimicrobial resistance genes on soil plasmids]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-10-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/435560v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Sacubitril/valsartan (LCZ696) Significantly Reduces Aldosterone and Increases cGMP Circulating Levels in a Canine Model of RAAS Activation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/435560v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Simultaneous blockade of angiotensin receptors and enhancement of natriuretic peptides (NP) by the first-in-class angiotensin receptor neprilysin (NEP) inhibitor sacubitril/valsartan constitutes an effective approach to treating heart failure. This study examined the effects of sacubitril/valsartan (225 and 675mg/day) vs. placebo, sacubitril (360mg/day), valsartan (900mg/day), and benazepril (5mg/day) on the dynamics of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) and the NP system in dogs. Beagle dogs (n=18) were fed a low-salt diet (0.05% Na) for 15 days to model RAAS activation observed in clinical heart failure. Drugs were administered once daily during the last 10 days, while the effects on the RAAS and NPs were assessed on days 1, 5, and 10. Steady-state pharmacokinetics of the test agents were evaluated on day 5. Compared with placebo, sacubitril/valsartan (675mg) substantially increased cGMP circulating levels, while benazepril and valsartan showed no effect. Additionally, sacubitril/valsartan (675mg) and valsartan significantly increased plasma renin activity, angiotensin I and angiotensin II concentrations. Finally, sacubitril/valsartan (both doses), and valsartan significantly decreased plasma aldosterone vs. placebo. Systemic exposure to valsartan following sacubitril/valsartan 675mg administration was similar to that observed with valsartan 900mg administration alone. Sacubitril/valsartan favorably modulates the dynamics of the renin and NP cascades through complementary NEP and RAAS inhibition.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tang, C. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peyrou, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Giraudel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Danhof, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rigel, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-10-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/435560</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Sacubitril/valsartan (LCZ696) Significantly Reduces Aldosterone and Increases cGMP Circulating Levels in a Canine Model of RAAS Activation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-10-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/456426v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Age-dependent changes in transcription factor FOXO targeting in Drosophila melanogaster 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/456426v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
FOXO transcription factors have long been associated with longevity control and tissue homeostasis. Although the transcriptional regulation of FOXO have been previously characterized (especially in long-lived insulin mutants and under stress conditions), how normal aging impacts the transcriptional activity of FOXO is poorly understood. Here, we conducted a chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-Seq) analysis in both young and old wild-type fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, to evaluate the dynamics of FOXO gene targeting during aging. Intriguingly, the number of FOXO-bound genes dramatically decreases with age (from 2617 to 224). Consistent to the reduction of FOXO binding activity, many genes targeted by FOXO in young flies are transcriptionally altered with age, either up-regulated (FOXO-repressing genes) or down-regulated (FOXO-activating genes). In addition, we show that many FOXO-bound genes in wild-type flies are unique from those in insulin receptor substrate chico mutants. Distinct from chico mutants, FOXO targets specific cellular processes (e.g., actin cytoskeleton) and signaling pathways (e.g., Hippo, MAPK) in young wild-type flies. FOXO targeting on these pathways decreases with age. Interestingly, FOXO targets in old flies are enriched in cellular processes like chromatin organization and nucleosome assembly. Furthermore, FOXO binding to core histone genes is well maintained at aged flies. Together, our findings provide new insights into dynamic FOXO targeting under normal aging and highlight the diverse and understudied regulatory mechanisms for FOXO transcriptional activity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Birnbaum, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tatar, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-10-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/456426</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Age-dependent changes in transcription factor FOXO targeting in Drosophila melanogaster]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-10-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/466409v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Adult Canine Intestinal Derived Organoids: A Novel In Vitro System for Translational Research in Comparative Gastroenterology 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/466409v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundLarge animal models, such as the dog, are increasingly being used over rodent models for studying naturally occurring diseases including gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. Dogs share similar environmental, genomic, anatomical, and intestinal physiologic features with humans. To bridge the gap between currently used animal models (e.g. mouse) and humans, and expand the translational potential of the dog model, we developed a three dimensional (3D) canine GI organoid (enteroid and colonoid) system. Organoids have recently gained interest in translational research as this model system better recapitulates the physiological and molecular features of the tissue environment in comparison with two-dimensional cultures.nnResultsOrganoids were propagated from isolation of adult intestinal stem cells (ISC) from whole jejunal tissue as well as endoscopically obtained duodenal, ileal and colonic biopsy samples of healthy dogs and GI cases, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and intestinal carcinomas. Intestinal organoids were comprehensively characterized using histology, immunohistochemistry, RNA in situ hybridization and transmission electron microscopy, and organoids mimicked the in vivo tissue environment. Physiological relevance of the enteroid system was defined using functional assays such as Optical Metabolic Imaging (OMI), the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR) function assay, and Exosome-Like Vesicles (EV) uptake assay, as a basis for wider applications of this technology in basic, preclinical and translational GI research.nnConclusionsIn summary, our findings establish the canine GI organoid systems as a novel model to study naturally occurring intestinal diseases in dogs and humans. Furthermore, canine organoid systems will help to elucidate host-pathogen interactions contributing to GI disease pathogenesis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chandra, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borcherding, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kingsbury, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Atherly, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ambrosini, Y. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bourgois-Mochel, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimber, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wannemuehler, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ellinwood, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snella, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Skala, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meyerholz, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Estes, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernandez-Zapico, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jergens, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allenspach, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-11-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/466409</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Adult Canine Intestinal Derived Organoids: A Novel In Vitro System for Translational Research in Comparative Gastroenterology]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-11-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/476234v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Long-term surveillance defines spatial and temporal patterns implicating Culex tarsalis as the primary vector of West Nile virus in Iowa, USA 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/476234v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
West Nile virus (WNV) has become the most epidemiologically important mosquito-borne disease in the United States, causing [~]50,000 cases since its introduction in 1999. Transmitted primarily by Culex species, WNV transmission requires the complex interplay between bird reservoirs and mosquito vectors, with human cases the result of epizootic spillover. To better understand the intrinsic factors that drive these interactions, we have compiled infection data from sentinel chickens, mosquito vectors, and human cases in Iowa over a 15 year period (2002-2016) to better understand the spatial and temporal components that drive WNV transmission. Supplementing these findings with mosquito abundance, distribution, and host preferences data, we provide strong support that Culex tarsalis is the most important vector of human WNV infections in the region. Finally, we identify underlying climatic factors (temperature and drought) that are associated with inter-annual trends in WNV intensity. Together, our analysis provides new insights into WNV infection patterns in multiple hosts and highlights the importance of long-term surveillance to understand the dynamics of mosquito-borne-disease transmission.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dunphy, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kovach, K. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gehrke, E. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Field, E. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rowley, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bartholomay, L. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-11-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/476234</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Long-term surveillance defines spatial and temporal patterns implicating Culex tarsalis as the primary vector of West Nile virus in Iowa, USA]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-11-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/478875v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Microfluidic On-demand Engineering of Exosomes towards Cancer Immunotherapy 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/478875v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Extracellular Vesicles (EVs), particularly exosomes (30-150 nm), are an emerging delivery system in mediating cellular communications, which have been observed for priming immune responses by presenting parent cell signaling proteins or tumor antigens to immune cells. Therefore, preparation of antigenic exosomes that can play therapeutic roles, particularly in cancer immunotherapy, is emerging. However, standard benchtop methods (e.g., ultracentrifugation and filtration) lack the ability to purify antigenic exosomes specifically among other microvesicle subtypes, due to the non-selective and time-consuming (>10 h) isolation protocols. Exosome engineering approaches, such as the transfection of parent cells, also suffer from poor yield, low purity, and time-consuming operations. In this paper, we introduce a streamlined microfluidic cell culture platform for integration of harvesting, antigenic modification, and photo-release of surface engineered exosomes in one workflow, which enables the production of intact, MHC peptide surface engineered exosomes for cytolysis activation. The PDMS microfluidic cell culture chip is simply cast from a 3D-printed mold. The proof-of-concept study demonstrated the enhanced ability of harvested exosomes in antigen presentation and T cell activation, by decorating melanoma tumor peptides on the exosome surface (e.g., gp-100, MART-1, MAGE-A3). Such surface engineered antigenic exosomes were harvested in real-time from the on-chip culture of leukocytes isolated from human blood, leading to much faster cellular uptake. The activation of gp100-specific CD8 T cells which were purified from the spleen of 2 Pmel1 transgenic mice was evaluated using surface engineered exosomes prepared from muring antigen presenting cells. Antigen-specific CD8 T cell proliferation was significantly induced by the engineered exosomes compared to native, non-engineered exosomes. This microfluidic platform serves as an automated and highly integrated cell culture device for rapid, and real-time production of therapeutic exosomes that could advance cancer immunotherapy.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhao, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGill, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>He, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-11-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/478875</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Microfluidic On-demand Engineering of Exosomes towards Cancer Immunotherapy]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-11-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/484626v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Engineering a decoy substrate in soybean to enable recognition of the Soybean Mosaic Virus NIa protease 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/484626v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In Arabidopsis, recognition of the AvrPphB effector protease from Pseudomonas syringae is mediated by the disease resistance (R) protein RPS5, which is activated by AvrPphB-induced cleavage of the Arabidopsis protein kinase PBS1. The recognition specificity of RPS5 can be altered by substituting the AvrPphB cleavage site within PBS1 with cleavage sequences for other proteases, including proteases from viruses. AvrPphB also activates defense responses in soybean (Glycine max), suggesting that soybean may contain an R protein analogous to RPS5. It was unknown, however, whether this response is mediated by cleavage of a soybean PBS1-like protein. Here we show that soybean contains three PBS1 orthologs and that their products are cleaved by AvrPphB. Further, transient expression of soybean PBS1 derivatives containing a five-alanine insertion at their AvrPphB cleavage sites activated cell death in soybean protoplasts, demonstrating that soybean likely contains an AvrPphB-specific resistance protein that is activated by a conformational change in soybean PBS1 proteins. Significantly, we show that a soybean PBS1 decoy protein modified to contain a cleavage site for the Soybean mosaic virus (SMV) NIa protease triggers cell death in soybean protoplasts when cleaved by this protease, indicating that the PBS1 decoy approach will work in soybean using endogenous PBS1 genes. Lastly, we show that activation of the AvrPphB-dependent cell death response effectively inhibits systemic spread of SMV in soybean. These data also indicate that decoy engineering may be feasible in other crop plant species that recognize AvrPphB protease activity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Helm, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Innes, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-12-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/484626</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Engineering a decoy substrate in soybean to enable recognition of the Soybean Mosaic Virus NIa protease]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-12-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/490862v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Inferring Processes of Coevolutionary Diversification in a Community of Panamanian Strangler Figs and Associated Pollinating Wasps 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/490862v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1The fig and pollinator wasp obligate mutualism is diverse (~750 described species), ecologically important, and ancient (~80-90 Ma), providing model systems for generating and testing many questions in evolution and ecology. Once thought to be a prime example of strict one-to-one cospeciation, current thinking suggests that genera of pollinator wasps co-evolve with corresponding subsections of figs, but the degree to which cospeciation or other processes contributes to the association at finer scales is unclear. Here we use genome-wide sequence data from a community of Panamanian strangler figs (Ficus subgenus Urostigma, section Americana) and associated fig wasp pollinators (Pegoscapus spp.) to infer the process of coevolutionary diversification in this obligate mutualism. Using a model-based approach adapted from the study of gene family evolution, our results indicate pervasive and ongoing host switching of pollinator wasps at this fine phylogenetic and regional scale. Although the model estimates a modest amount of cospeciation, simulations reveal this signal to be consistent with levels of co-association expected under a model of free host switching. Our findings provide an outline for testing how ecological and evolutionary processes can be modeled to evaluate the history of association of interacting lineages in a phylogenetic framework.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Satler, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Herre, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jander, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eaton, D. A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Machado, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heath, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nason, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-12-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/490862</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Inferring Processes of Coevolutionary Diversification in a Community of Panamanian Strangler Figs and Associated Pollinating Wasps]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-12-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/491597v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An integrated transcriptomics and metabolomics analysis of the Cucurbita pepo nectary implicates key modules of primary metabolism involved in nectar synthesis and secretion 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/491597v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Nectar is the main reward that flowers offer to pollinators to entice repeated visitation. Cucurbita pepo (squash) is an excellent model for studying nectar biology, as it has large nectaries that produce large volumes of nectar relative to most other species. Squash is also monoecious, having both female and male flowers on the same plant, which allows comparative analyses of nectary function in one individual. Here we report the nectary transcriptomes from both female and male nectaries at four stages of floral maturation. Analysis of these transcriptomes and subsequent confirmatory experiments revealed a metabolic progression in nectaries leading from starch synthesis to starch degradation and to sucrose biosynthesis. These results are consistent with previously published models of nectar secretion and also suggest how a sucrose-rich nectar can be synthesized and secreted in the absence of active transport across the plasma membrane. Non-targeted metabolomic analyses of nectars also confidently identified 40 metabolites in both female and male nectars, with some displaying preferential accumulation in nectar of either male or female flowers. Cumulatively, this study identified gene targets for reverse genetics approaches to study nectary function, as well as previously unreported nectar metabolites that may function in plant-biotic interactions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Solhaug, E. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roy, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chatt, E. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Klinkenberg, P. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mohd-Fadzil, N.-A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hampton, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carter, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-12-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/491597</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An integrated transcriptomics and metabolomics analysis of the Cucurbita pepo nectary implicates key modules of primary metabolism involved in nectar synthesis and secretion]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-12-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/504365v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Sparse functional data analysis accounts for missing information in single-cell epigenomics 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/504365v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Single-cell epigenome assays produce sparsely sampled data, leading to coverage pooling across cells to increase resolution. Imputation of missing data using deep learning is available but requires intensive computation, and it has been applied only to DNA methylation obtained by single cell bisulfite sequencing. Here, sparsity in chromatin accessibility obtained by scNMT-seq is addressed using functional data analysis to fit sparsely sampled GpC coverage profiles of individual cells taking into account all the cells of the same cell-type or condition. For that, sparse functional principal component analysis (S-FPCA) is applied, and the principal components are used to estimate chromatin accessibility coverage in individual cells. This methodology can potentially be used with other single-cell assays with missing data such as scBS-seq, scNOME-seq, or scATAC-seq. The R package fdapace is available in CRAN, and R code used in this manuscript can be found at: http://github.com/pmb59/sparseSingleCell.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Madrigal, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dai, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hadjipantelis, P. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2018-12-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/504365</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Sparse functional data analysis accounts for missing information in single-cell epigenomics]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2018-12-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/534503v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Distinct characteristics of genes associated with phenome-wide variation in maize (Zea mays) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/534503v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Naturally occurring functionally variable alleles in specific genes within a population allows the identification of which genes are involved in the determination of which phenotypes. The omnigenetic model proposes that essentially all genes which are expressed in relevant contexts likely play some role in determining phenotypic outcomes. Here, we develop an approach to identify genes where natural functional variation plays a role in shaping many phenotypic traits simultaneously. We demonstrate that this approach identifies a distinct set of genes relative to conventional genome wide association using data for 260 traits scored a maize diversity panel, and the genes identified using this approach are more likely to be independently validated than genes identified by convetional genome wide association. Genes identified by the new approach share a number of features with a gold standard set of genes characterized through forward genetics which separate them from both genes identified by conventional genome wide association and the overall population of annotated gene models. These features include evidence of significantly stronger purifying selection, positional conservation across the genomes of related species, greater length, and a scarcity of presence absence variation for these loci in natural populations. Genes identified by phenome-wide analyses also showed much stronger signals of GO enrichment and purification than genes identified by conventional genome wide association. Overall these findings are consistent with large subset of annotated gene models - despite support from transcriptional and homology evidence - being unlikely to play any role in determining organismal phenotypes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Liang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-01-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/534503</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Distinct characteristics of genes associated with phenome-wide variation in maize (Zea mays)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-01-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/534677v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Translational landscape in tomato revealed by transcriptome assembly and ribosome profiling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/534677v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
mRNA translation is a critical step in gene expression, but our understanding of the landscape and control of translation in diverse crops remains lacking. Here, we combined de novo transcriptome assembly and ribosome profiling to study global mRNA translation in tomato roots. Taking advantage of the 3-nucleotide periodicity displayed by translating ribosomes, we identified 354 novel small ORFs (sORFs) translated from previously unannotated transcripts, as well as 1329 upstream ORFs (uORFs) translated within the 5 UTRs of annotated protein-coding genes. Proteomic analysis confirmed that some of these novel uORFs and sORFs generate stable proteins in planta. Compared with the annotated ORFs, the uORFs use more flexible Kozak sequences around translation start sites. Interestingly, uORF-containing genes are enriched for protein phosphorylation/dephosphorylation and signaling transduction pathways, suggesting a regulatory role for uORFs in these processes. We also demonstrated that ribosome profiling is useful to facilitate the annotation of translated ORFs and noncanonical translation initiation sites. In addition to defining the translatome, our results revealed the global control of mRNA translation by uORFs and microRNAs in tomato. In summary, our approach provides a high-throughput method to discover unannotated ORFs, elucidates evolutionarily conserved translational features, and identifies new regulatory mechanisms hidden in a crop genome.

SignificanceSeveral studies have shown that altering mRNA translation is a powerful way of improving crop performance. However, due to limited genomic resources and methods, translational regulation remains poorly understood in crops. By leveraging de novo transcriptome assembly and ribosome profiling, we mapped and quantified translating ribosomes across the entire transcriptome in tomato roots. This is the first experiment-based survey to systematically identify actively translated ORFs in a crop. Our results reveal numerous unannotated translation events and uncover new regulatory mechanisms of gene expression in tomato. Our approach not only facilitates our understanding of the tomato translational landscape but also provides a practical strategy to study the translatomes of other species.

O_LIThe raw RNA-seq and Ribo-seq data have been deposited in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database under accession no. GSE124962.
C_LIO_LIProteomics raw data files and MaxQuant Search results have been deposited at the MassIVE repository with dataset identifier: MSV000083363.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wu, H.-Y. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, P. Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-01-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/534677</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Translational landscape in tomato revealed by transcriptome assembly and ribosome profiling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-01-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/540849v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Optimal Scheduling of Bevacizumab and Pemetrexed/Cisplatin Dosing in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/540849v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bevacizumab-pemetrexed/cisplatin (BEV-PEM/CIS) is a first line therapeutic for advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Bevacizumab potentiates PEM/CIS cytotoxicity by inducing transient tumor vasculature normalization. BEV-PEM/CIS has a narrow therapeutic window. Therefore, it is an attractive target for administration schedule optimization. The present study leverages our previous work on BEV-PEM/CIS pharmacodynamic modeling in NSCLC-bearing mice to estimate the optimal gap in the scheduling of sequential BEV-PEM/CIS. We predicted the optimal gap in BEV-PEM/CIS dosing to be 2.0 days in mice and 1.2 days in humans. Our simulations suggest that the efficacy loss in scheduling BEV-PEM/CIS at too great of a gap is much less than the efficacy loss in scheduling BEV-PEM/CIS at too short of a gap.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schneider, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boyer, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ciccolini, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barlesi, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Benzekry, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-02-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/540849</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Optimal Scheduling of Bevacizumab and Pemetrexed/Cisplatin Dosing in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-02-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/543223v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SwiftOrtho: a Fast, Memory-Efficient, Multiple Genome Orthology Classifier 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/543223v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
IntroductionGene homology type classification is a requisite for many types of genome analyses, including comparative genomics, phylogenetics, and protein function annotation. A large variety of tools have been developed to perform homology classification across genomes of different species. However, when applied to large genomic datasets, these tools require high memory and CPU usage, typically available only in costly computational clusters. To address this problem, we developed a new graph-based orthology analysis tool, SwiftOrtho, which is optimized for speed and memory usage when applied to large-scale data.

ResultsIn our tests, SwiftOrtho is the only tool that completed orthology analysis of 1,760 bacterial genomes on a computer with only 4GB RAM. Using various standard orthology datasets, we also show that SwiftOrtho has a high accuracy. SwiftOrtho enables the accurate comparative genomic analyses of thousands of genomes using low memory computers.

Availabilityhttps://github.com/Rinoahu/SwiftOrtho
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-02-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/543223</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SwiftOrtho: a Fast, Memory-Efficient, Multiple Genome Orthology Classifier]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-02-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/543272v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Self-Attention based model for de-novo antibiotic resistant gene classification with enhanced reliability for out of distribution data detection 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/543272v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Antibiotic resistance monitoring is of paramount importance in the face of this ongoing global epidemic. Using traditional alignment based methods to detect antibiotic resistant genes results in huge number of false negatives. In this paper, we introduce a deep learning model based on a self-attention architecture that can classify antibiotic resistant genes into correct classes with high precision and recall by just using protein sequences as input. Additionally, deep learning models trained with traditional optimization algorithms (e.g. Adam, SGD) provide poor posterior estimates when tested against Out-of-Distribution (OoD) antibiotic resistant/non-resistant genes. We train our model with an optimization method called Preconditioned Stochastic Gradient Langevin Dynamics (pSGLD) which provides reliable uncertainty estimates when tested against OoD data.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hamid, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-02-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/543272</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Self-Attention based model for de-novo antibiotic resistant gene classification with enhanced reliability for out of distribution data detection]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-02-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/554501v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
synder: inferring genomic orthologs from synteny maps 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/554501v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Ortholog inference is a key step in understanding the evolution and function of a gene or other genomic feature. Yet often no similar sequence can be identified, or the true ortholog is hidden among false positives. A solution is to consider the sequences genomic context. We present the generic program, synder, for tracing features of interest between genomes based on a synteny map. This approach narrows genomic search-space independently of the sequence of the feature of interest. We illustrate the utility of synder by finding orthologs for the Arabidopsis thaliana 13-member gene family of Nuclear Factor YC transcription factor across the Brassicaceae clade.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Arendsee, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wilkey, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hur, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-02-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/554501</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[synder: inferring genomic orthologs from synteny maps]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-02-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/558270v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A semi-parametric Bayesian approach, iSBA, for differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/558270v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) technologies have been popularly applied to study gene expression in recent years. Identifying differentially expressed (DE) genes across treatments is one of the major steps in RNA-seq data analysis. Most differential expression analysis methods rely on parametric assumptions, and it is not guaranteed that these assumptions are appropriate for real data analysis. In this paper, we develop a semi-parametric Bayesian approach for differential expression analysis. More specifically, we model the RNA-seq count data with a Poisson-Gamma mixture model, and propose a Bayesian mixture modeling procedure with a Dirichlet process as the prior model for the distribution of fold changes between the two treatment means. We develop Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) posterior simulation using Metropolis Hastings algorithm to generate posterior samples for differential expression analysis while controlling false discovery rate. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms other popular methods used for detecting DE genes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bi, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-02-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/558270</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A semi-parametric Bayesian approach, iSBA, for differential expression analysis of RNA-seq data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-02-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/558361v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Tissue-specific mouse mRNA isoform networks 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/558361v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Alternative Splicing produces multiple mRNA isoforms of genes which have important diverse roles such as regulation of gene expression, human heritable diseases, and response to environmental stresses. However, little has been done to assign functions at the mRNA isoform level. Functional networks, where the interactions are quantified by their probability of being involved in the same biological process are typically generated at the gene level. We use a diverse array of tissue-specific RNA-seq datasets and sequence information to train random forest models that predict the functional networks. Since there is no mRNA isoform-level gold standard, we use single isoform genes co-annotated to Gene Ontology biological process annotations, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways, BioCyc pathways and protein-protein interactions as functionally related (positive pair). To generate the non-functional pairs (negative pair), we use the Gene Ontology annotations tagged with "NOT" qualifier. We describe 17 Tissue-spEcific mrNa iSoform functIOnal Networks (TENSION) following a leave-one-tissue-out strategy in addition to an organism level reference functional network for mouse. We validate our predictions by comparing its performance with previous methods, randomized positive and negative class labels, updated Gene Ontology annotations, and by literature evidence. We demonstrate the ability of our networks to reveal tissue-specific functional differences of the isoforms of the same genes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kandoi, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dickerson, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/558361</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Tissue-specific mouse mRNA isoform networks]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/564864v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Scans of the MYC mRNA reveal multiple stable secondary structures—including a 3′ UTR motif, conserved across vertebrates, that can affect gene expression. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/564864v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The MYC gene encodes a human transcription factor and proto-oncogene that is dysregulated in over half of all known cancers. To better understand potential post-transcriptional regulatory features affecting MYC expression, we analyzed secondary structure in the MYC mRNA using a program that is optimized for finding small locally-folded motifs with a high propensity for function. This was accomplished by calculating folding metrics across the MYC sequence using a sliding analysis window and generating unique consensus base pairing models weighted by their lower-than-random predicted folding energy. A series of 30 motifs were identified, primarily in the 5 and 3 untranslated regions, which show evidence of structural conservation and compensating mutations across vertebrate MYC homologs. This analysis was able to recapitulate known elements found within an internal ribosomal entry site, as well as discover a novel element in the 3 UTR that is unusually stable and conserved. This novel motif was shown to affect MYC expression: likely via modulation of miRNA target accessibility. In addition to providing basic insights into mechanisms that regulate MYC expression, this study provides numerous, potentially druggable RNA targets for the MYC gene, which is considered "undruggable" at the protein level.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>O'Leary, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andrews, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tompkins, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Childs-Disney, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Disney, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-03-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/564864</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Scans of the MYC mRNA reveal multiple stable secondary structures—including a 3′ UTR motif, conserved across vertebrates, that can affect gene expression.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-03-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/567156v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Redundant SCARECROW genes pattern distinct cell layers in roots and leaves of maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/567156v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The highly efficient C4 photosynthetic pathway is facilitated by  Kranz leaf anatomy. In Kranz leaves, closely spaced veins are encircled by concentric layers of photosynthetic bundle sheath (inner) and mesophyll (outer) cells. Here we demonstrate that in the C4 monocot maize, Kranz patterning is regulated by redundant function of SCARECROW 1 (ZmSCR1) and a previously uncharacterized homeolog ZmSCR1h. ZmSCR1 and ZmSCR1h transcripts accumulate in ground meristem cells of developing leaf primordia and in Zmscr1;Zmscr1h mutant leaves, most veins are separated by one rather than two mesophyll cells; many veins have sclerenchyma above and/or below instead of mesophyll cells; and supernumerary bundle sheath cells develop. The mutant defects are unified by compromised mesophyll cell development. In addition to Kranz defects, Zmscr1;Zmscr1h mutants fail to form an organized endodermal layer in the root. Collectively, these data indicate that ZmSCR1 and ZmSCR1h redundantly regulate cell-type patterning in both leaves and roots of maize. Leaf and root pathways are distinguished, however, by the cell layer in which they operate - mesophyll at a two-cell distance from leaf veins versus endodermis immediately adjacent to root vasculature.nnSummary statementTwo duplicated maize SCARECROW genes control the development of the endodermis in roots and the mesophyll in leaves
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hughes, T. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sedelnikova, O. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Becraft, P. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Langdale, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-03-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/567156</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Redundant SCARECROW genes pattern distinct cell layers in roots and leaves of maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-03-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/580407v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The RNA encoding the microtubule-associated protein tau has extensive structure that affects its biology 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/580407v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Tauopathies are neurodegenerative diseases that affect millions of people worldwide including those with Alzheimers disease. While many efforts have focused on understanding the role of tau protein in neurodegeneration, there has been little done to systematically analyze and study the structures within taus encoding RNA and their connection to disease pathology. Knowledge of RNA structure can provide insights into disease mechanisms and how to affect protein production for therapeutic benefit. Using computational methods based on thermodynamic stability and evolutionary conservation, we identified structures throughout the tau pre-mRNA, especially at exon-intron junctions and within the 5' and 3' untranslated regions (UTRs). In particular, structures were identified at twenty exon-intron junctions. The 5' UTR contains one structured region, which lies within a known internal ribosome entry site. The 3' UTR contains eight structured regions, including one that contains a polyadenylation signal. A series of functional experiments were carried out to assess the effects of mutations associated with mis-regulation of alternative splicing of exon 10 and to identify regions of the 3' UTR that contain cis-regulatory elements. These studies defined novel structural regions within the mRNA that affect stability and pre-mRNA splicing and may lead to new therapeutic targets for treating tau-associated diseases.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chen, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Spencer, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Childs-Disney, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Disney, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-03-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/580407</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The RNA encoding the microtubule-associated protein tau has extensive structure that affects its biology]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-03-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/592659v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Controlling Heterogeneity and Increasing Titer from Riboswitch-Regulated Bacillus subtilis Spores for Time-Delayed Protein Expression Applications 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/592659v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Sporulated cells have potential as time-delayed expression chassis of proteins for applications such as  on-demand biologics production, whole cell biosensors, or oral vaccines. However, the desired attributes of high expression rates and low product variances are difficult to maintain from germinated spores. In this work we study the effect of an integrating vs. theta replicating plasmid in a wild-type Bacillus subtilis and two PolY mutants. The cells were engineered to produce a fluorescent reporter protein (RFP) under the control of a riboswitch activated by theophylline. This allowed for greater sensitivity to point mutations. The fluorescence and cell growth curves were fit with a custom kinetic model and a peak kinetic rate (LKPmax) was extracted for each clonal population (n = 30 for all cell, vector, and growth combinations). Plasmid based expression yields higher (8.7x) expression rates due to an increased copy number of the expression cassette (10x over integrated). The variance of LKPmax values increased 2.07x after sporulation for the wild type strain. This increase in variance from sporulation is very similar to what is observed with UV exposure. This effect can be partially mitigated by the use of PolY knockouts observed in suspended cell growths and adherent biofilms.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tamiev, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lantz, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vezeau, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salis, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reuel, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-03-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/592659</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Controlling Heterogeneity and Increasing Titer from Riboswitch-Regulated Bacillus subtilis Spores for Time-Delayed Protein Expression Applications]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-03-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/594853v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Integrating case studies into graduate teaching assistant training to improve instruction in biology laboratory courses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/594853v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Todays biology laboratory courses are primarily instructed by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) working toward their own graduate degrees in a science field. Even though GTAs are the driving instructional force in biology laboratories, they receive little to no training in pedagogical principles and applications. Here, we present the GTAs self-reported unmet training needs with respect to teaching biology laboratory courses. To address these needs, we developed three training cases along with instructions for implementation in online and in-person GTA trainings. We piloted our training materials for GTA training in person at Iowa State University and in a Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning three-part online workshop. Upon completion of these training sessions, GTAs reported an increase in both their confidence and knowledge of student-centered instructional approaches. Furthermore, examination of the online workshop participants lesson plans demonstrated that GTAs were able to implement effective teaching practices in their own lesson plans. For brief training sessions, these are positive outcomes suggesting these cases are effective tools that could be incorporated into a variety of GTA training programs to improve instruction in biology laboratory courses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kraft, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walck-Shannon, e.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reilly, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stapleton, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-03-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/594853</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Integrating case studies into graduate teaching assistant training to improve instruction in biology laboratory courses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-03-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/597161v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
De novo design of proteins with two isoenergetic but structurally divergent ground states 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/597161v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The plasticity of naturally occurring protein structures, which can change shape considerably in response to changes in environmental conditions, is critical to biological function. While computational methods have been used to de novo design proteins that fold to a single state with a deep free energy minima (Huang et al., 2016), and to reengineer natural proteins to alter their dynamics (Davey et al., 2017) or fold (Alexander et al., 2009), the de novo design of closely related sequences which adopt well-defined, but structurally divergent structures remains an outstanding challenge. Here, we design closely related sequences (over 94% identity) that can adopt two very different homotrimeric helical bundle conformations -- one short ([~]66 [A] height) and the other long ([~]100 [A] height) -- reminiscent of the conformational transition of viral fusion proteins (Ivanovic et al., 2013; Podbilewicz, 2014; Skehel and Wiley, 2000). Crystallographic and NMR spectroscopic characterization show that both the short and long state sequences fold as designed. We sought to design bistable sequences for which both states are accessible, and obtained a single designed protein sequence that populates either the short state or the long state depending on the measurement conditions. The design of sequences which are poised to adopt two very different conformations sets the stage for creating large scale conformational switches between structurally divergent forms.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wei, K. Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moschidi, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bick, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nerli, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McShan, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carter, L. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, P.-S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fletcher, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sgourakis, N. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boyken, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baker, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-04-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/597161</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[De novo design of proteins with two isoenergetic but structurally divergent ground states]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-04-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/611814v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SequelQC: Analyzing PacBio Sequel Raw Sequence Quality 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/611814v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundPacBio sequencing is an incredibly valuable third-generation DNA sequencing method due to very long read lengths, ability to detect methylated bases, and its real-time sequencing methodology. Yet, hitherto no tool was available for analyzing the quality of, subsampling, and filtering PacBio data.

ResultsHere we present SequelTools, a command-line program containing three tools: Quality Control, Read Subsampling, and Read Filtering. The Quality Control tool quickly processes PacBio Sequel raw sequence data from multiple SMRTcells producing multiple statistics and publication-quality plots describing the quality of the data including N50, read length and count statistics, PSR, and ZOR. The Read Subsampling tool allows the user to subsample reads by one or more of the following criteria: longest subreads per CLR or random CLR selection. The Read Filtering tool provides options for normalizing data by filtering out certain low-quality scraps reads and/or by minimum CLR length. SequelTools is implemented in bash, R, and Python using only standard libraries and packages and is platform independent.

ConclusionsSequelTools is a program that provides the only free, fast, and easy-to-use quality control tool, and the only program providing this kind of read sumbsampling and read filtering for PacBio Sequel raw sequence data, and is available at https://github.com/ISUgenomics/SequelTools
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hufnagel, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-04-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/611814</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SequelQC: Analyzing PacBio Sequel Raw Sequence Quality]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-04-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/613562v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Meningeal Worm Infection in Central Iowa Goat Herds II: Individual Cases and Treatment Using a Camelid Therapeutic Protocol 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/613562v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Summary and ImplicationsMeningeal worm (Paralaphostrongylus tenuis) infection, also known as cerebrospinal nematodiasis, is a common parasitic infection in New World Camelids in the United States. There is also a considerable risk for this disease in the Boer goat population. Despite the rapidly increasing size of the national goat herd, there are no treatment protocols reported in the literature for goats with this disease. This study describes a successful clinical approach and treatment of 3 Boer goat cases with therapy previously reported for use in New World Camelids. The clinical presentation, diagnosis, and long-term outcome of P. tenuis infections in these goats presented to ISU Food Animal and Camelid Hospital (FACH) is reported here within. Practitioners should be aware that clinical presentation and diagnosis are similar for goats as reported for camelids with cerebrospinal nematodiasis. Additionally, the described treatment protocols for camelids appear to demonstrate a comparative efficacy in goats.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Smith, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kreuder, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Breuer, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Still-Brooks, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-04-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/613562</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Meningeal Worm Infection in Central Iowa Goat Herds II: Individual Cases and Treatment Using a Camelid Therapeutic Protocol]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-04-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/614404v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Novel engraftment and T cell differentiation of human hematopoietic cells in Art-/- IL2RG-/ SCID pigs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/614404v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Pigs with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) are an emerging biomedical animal model. Swine are anatomically and physiologically more similar to humans than mice, making them an invaluable tool for preclinical regenerative medicine and cancer research. One essential step in further developing this model is the immunological humanization of SCID pigs. In this work we have generated T- B- NK- SCID pigs through site directed CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis of IL2RG within a naturally occurring DCLRE1C (Artemis)-/- genetic background. We confirmed Art-/- IL2RG-/Y pigs lacked T, B, and NK cells in both peripheral blood and lymphoid tissues. Additionally, we and successfully performed a bone marrow transplant on one Art-/- IL2RG-/Y male SCID pig with a bone marrow from a complete swine leukocyte antigen (SLA) matched donor without conditioning to reconstitute porcine T and NK cells. Next, we performed in utero injections of cultured human CD34+ selected cord blood cells into the fetal Art-/- IL2RG-/Y SCID pigs. At birth, human CD45+ CD3{varepsilon}+ cells were detected in peripheral blood of in utero injected SCID piglets. Human leukocytes were also detected within the bone marrow, spleen, liver, thymus, and mesenteric lymph nodes of these animals. Taken together, we describe critical steps forwards the development of an immunologically humanized SCID pig model.nnOne sentence summaryWe have generated a T- B- NK- SCID pig model through site directed mutagenesis of IL2RG in a naturally occurring Artemis null background and show successful engraftment of human T and B cells in blood and lymphoid organs after in utero injection of human hematopoietic stem cells.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Boettcher, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ahrens, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kiupel, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Byrne, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loving, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cino-Ozuna, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wiarda, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adur, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schultz, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swanson, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snella, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ho, C.-S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charley, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kiefer, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cunnick, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Powell, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dell'Anna, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jens, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sathe, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goldman, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Westin, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dekkers, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuggle, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/614404</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Novel engraftment and T cell differentiation of human hematopoietic cells in Art-/- IL2RG-/ SCID pigs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/616763v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic analysis of the transition from wild to domesticated cotton (G. hirsutum) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/616763v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The evolution and domestication of cotton is of great interest from both economic and evolutionary standpoints. Although many genetic and genomic resources have been generated for cotton, the genetic underpinnings of the transition from wild to domesticated cotton remain poorly known. Here we generated an intraspecific QTL mapping population specifically targeting domesticated cotton phenotypes. We used 466 F2 individuals derived from an intraspecific cross between the wild Gossypium hirsutum var. yucatanense (TX2094) and the elite cultivar G. hirsutum cv. Acala Maxxa, in two environments, to identify 120 QTL associated with phenotypic changes under domestication. While the number of QTL recovered in each subpopulation was similar, only 22 QTL were considered coincident (i.e., shared) between the two locations, eight of which shared peak markers. Although approximately half of QTL were located in the A-subgenome, many key fiber QTL were detected in the D-subgenome, which was derived from a species with unspinnable fiber. We found that many QTL are environment-specific, with few shared between the two environments, indicating that QTL associated with G. hirsutum domestication are genomically clustered but environmentally labile. Possible candidate genes were recovered and are discussed in the context of the phenotype. We conclude that the evolutionary forces that shape intraspecific divergence and domestication in cotton are complex, and that phenotypic transformations likely involved multiple interacting and environmentally responsive factors.

SummaryAn F2 population between wild and domesticated cotton was used to identify QTL associated with selection under domestication. Multiple traits characterizing domesticated cotton were evaluated, and candidate genes underlying QTL are described for all traits. QTL are unevenly distributed between subgenomes of the domesticated polyploid, with many fiber QTL located on the genome derived from the D parent, which does not have spinnable fiber, but a majority of QTL overall located on the A subgenome. QTL are many (120) and environmentally labile. These data, together with candidate gene analyses, suggest recruitment of many environmentally responsive factors during cotton domestication.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yoo, M.-J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gore, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harker, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Byers, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lipka, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Conover, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Udall, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Paterson, A. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-04-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/616763</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic analysis of the transition from wild to domesticated cotton (G. hirsutum)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-04-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/624023v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
JASPer controls interphase histone H3S10 phosphorylation by chromosomal kinase JIL-1 in Drosophila 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/624023v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In flies, the chromosomal kinase JIL-1 is responsible for most interphase histone H3S10 phosphorylation and has been proposed to protect active chromatin from acquiring heterochromatic marks, like dimethylated histone H3K9 (H3K9me2) and HP1. Here, we show that JIL-1s targeting to chromatin depends on a new PWWP domain-containing protein JASPer (JIL-1 Anchoring and Stabilizing Protein). The JASPer-JIL-1 (JJ)-complex is the major form of the kinase in vivo and is targeted to active genes and telomeric transposons via binding of the PWWP domain of JASPer to H3K36me3 nucleosomes. Put in place, the complex modulates the transcriptional output. JIL-1 and JJ-complex depletion in cycling cells lead to small changes in H3K9me2 distribution at active genes and telomeric transposons. Finally, we identified many new interactors of the endogenous JJ-complex and propose that JIL-1 not only prevents heterochromatin formation, but also coordinates chromatin-based regulation in the transcribed part of the genome.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Albig, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dann, G. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wojcik, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schauer, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krause, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maenner, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cai, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Girton, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muir, T. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johansen, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johansen, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Becker, P. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Regnard, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-04-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/624023</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[JASPer controls interphase histone H3S10 phosphorylation by chromosomal kinase JIL-1 in Drosophila]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-04-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/625020v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
VARIANT ANALYSIS PIPELINE FOR ACCURATE DETECTION OF GENOMIC VARIANTS FROM TRANSCRIPTOME SEQUENCING DATA. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/625020v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The wealth of information deliverable from transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) is significant, however current applications for variant detection still remain a challenge due to the complexity of the transcriptome. Given the ability of RNA-seq to reveal active regions of the genome, detection of RNA-seq SNPs can prove valuable in understanding the phenotypic diversity between populations. Thus, we present a novel computational workflow named VAP (Variant Analysis Pipeline) that takes advantage of multiple RNA-seq splice aware aligners to call SNPs in non-human models using RNA-seq data only. We applied VAP to RNA-seq from a highly inbred chicken line and achieved >97% precision and >99% sensitivity when compared with the matching whole genome sequencing (WGS) data. Over 65% of WGS coding variants were identified from RNA-seq. Further, our results discovered SNPs resulting from post translational modifications, such as RNA editing, which may reveal potentially functional variation that would have otherwise been missed in genomic data. Even with the limitation in detecting variants in expressed regions only, our method proves to be a reliable alternative for SNP identification using RNA-seq data.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Adetunji, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmidt, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Abasht, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lamont, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/625020</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[VARIANT ANALYSIS PIPELINE FOR ACCURATE DETECTION OF GENOMIC VARIANTS FROM TRANSCRIPTOME SEQUENCING DATA.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/627117v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Comparative analysis of the Accelerated Aged seed transcriptome profiles of maize CSSLs (I178 and X178) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/627117v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Seed longevity is one of the most essential characters of seed quality. Two Chromosome segment substitution lines (CSSL) I178 and X178 with significant difference on seed longevity were subjected to transcriptome sequencing before (0d-AA) and after five days of accelerated ageing (5d-AA) treatments. Compared to the non-accelerated ageing treatment (0d-AA), 286 and 220 differential expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in I178 and X178, respectively Among those, 98 DEGs were detected in both I178 and X178 after 5d-AA, Enriched GO terms included cellular components of cell part, intracellular part, organelle and membrane etc., including carbohydrate derivative catabolic process, carbohydrate synthesis, sugar isomerase (SIS) family protein etc. Transcriptome analysis of I178 and X178 showed that Alternative splicing (AS) occurs in 63.6% of the expressed genes in all samples. Only 381 genes specifically occurred AS in I178 and X178 after 5d-AA, mostly enriched in nucleotide and nucleoside binding. Combined with the reported QTL mapping result, the DEG and the AS information, 13 DEGs in the mapping intervals and 7 AS-DEGs were potential candidates may directly or indirectly associated to seed ageing.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peng, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hey, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/627117</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Comparative analysis of the Accelerated Aged seed transcriptome profiles of maize CSSLs (I178 and X178)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/630236v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Vertebrate Codex Gene Breaking Protein Trap Library For Genomic Discovery and Disease Modeling Applications 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/630236v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The zebrafish is a powerful model to explore the molecular genetics and expression of the vertebrate genome. The gene break transposon (GBT) is a unique insertional mutagen that reports the expression of the tagged member of the proteome while generating Cre-revertible genetic alleles. This 1000+ locus collection represents novel codex expression data from the illuminated mRFP protein trap, with 36% and 87% of the cloned lines showcasing to our knowledge the first described expression of these genes at day 2 and day 4 of development, respectively. Analyses of 183 molecularly characterized loci indicate a rich mix of genes involved in diverse cellular processes from cell signaling to DNA repair. The mutagenicity of the GBT cassette is very high as assessed using both forward and reverse genetic approaches. Sampling over 150 lines for visible phenotypes after 5dpf shows a similar rate of discovery of embryonic phenotypes as ENU and retroviral mutagenesis. Furthermore, five cloned insertions were in loci with previously described phenotypes; embryos homozygous for each of the corresponding GBT alleles displayed strong loss of function phenotypes comparable to published mutants using other mutagenesis strategies (ryr1b, fras1, tnnt2a, edar and hmcn1). Using molecular assessment after positional cloning, to date nearly all alleles cause at least a 99+% knockdown of the tagged gene. Interestingly, over 35% of the cloned loci represent 68 mutants in zebrafish orthologs of human disease loci, including nervous, cardiovascular, endocrine, digestive, musculoskeletal, immune and integument systems. The GBT protein trapping system enabled the construction of a comprehensive protein codex including novel expression annotation, identifying new functional roles of the vertebrate genome and generating a diverse collection of potential models of human disease.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ichino, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Serres, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Urban, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Urban, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schaefbauer, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Greif, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Varshney, G. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Skuster, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McNulty, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Daby, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liao, H.-k.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>El-Rass, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ding, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schimmenti, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivasubbu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Balciunas, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hammerschmidt, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Farber, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wen, X.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Essner, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burgess, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ekker, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/630236</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Vertebrate Codex Gene Breaking Protein Trap Library For Genomic Discovery and Disease Modeling Applications]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/631267v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Strategies for building computing skills to support microbiome analysis: a five-year perspective from the EDAMAME workshop 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/631267v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Here, we report our educational approach and learner evaluations of the first five years of the Explorations in Data Analysis for Metagenomic Advances in Microbial Ecology (EDAMAME) workshop, held annually at Michigan State Universitys Kellogg Biological Station from 2014-2018. We hope this information will be useful for others who want to organize computing-intensive workshops and encourage quantitative skill development among microbiologists.nnImportanceHigh-throughput sequencing and related statistical and bioinformatic analyses have become routine in microbiology in the past decade, but there are few formal training opportunities to develop these skills. A week-long workshop can offer sufficient time for novices to become introduced to best computing practices and common workflows in sequence analysis. We report our experiences in executing such a workshop targeted to professional learners (graduate students, post-doctoral scientists, faculty, and research staff).
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shade, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dunivin, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Choi, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Teal, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/631267</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Strategies for building computing skills to support microbiome analysis: a five-year perspective from the EDAMAME workshop]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/634980v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Mesoscale liquid model of chromatin recapitulates large-scale organization of eukaryotic cell nuclei. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/634980v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The nuclear envelope segregates the genome of Eukaryota from the cytoplasm. Within the nucleus, chromatin is further compartmentalized into architectures that change throughout the lifetime of the cell. Epigenetic patterns along the chromatin polymer strongly correlate with chromatin compartmentalization and, accordingly, also change during the cell life cycle and at differentiation. Recently, it has been suggested that sub-nuclear chromatin compartmentalization might result from a process of liquid-liquid phase separation orchestrated by the epigenetic marking and operated by proteins that bind to chromatin. Here, we translate these observations into a diffuse interface model of chromatin, which we named MEsoscale Liquid mOdel of Nucleus (MELON). Using this streamlined continuum model of the genome, we study the large-scale rearrangements of chromatin that happen at different stages of the growth and senescence of the cell, and during nuclear inversion events. Particularly, we investigate the role of droplet diffusion, fluctuations, and heterochromatin-lamina interactions during nuclear remodeling. Our results indicate that the physical process of liquid-liquid phase separation, together with surface effects is sufficient to recapitulate much of the large-scale morphology and dynamics of chromatin along the life cycle of cells.nnSIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTEukaryotic chromatin occupies a few micrometers of nuclear space while remaining dynamic and accessible for gene regulation. The physical state of nuclear chromatin is shaped by the juxtaposition of complex, out of equilibrium processes on one hand and intrinsic polymeric aspect of the genome on the other. Recent experiments have revealed a remarkable ability of disordered nuclear proteins to drive liquid-liquid phase separation of chromatin domains. We have built a mesoscale liquid model of nuclear chromatin which allows dissecting the contribution of liquid behavior of chromatin to nuclear order of eukaryotes. Our results show that liquid-liquid phase separation, together with surface effects is sufficient for recapitulating large-scale morphology and dynamics of chromatin at many stages of the nuclear cycle.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Laghmach, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pierro, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/634980</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Mesoscale liquid model of chromatin recapitulates large-scale organization of eukaryotic cell nuclei.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/642793v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Robinson-Foulds Reticulation Networks 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/642793v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Phylogenetic (hybridization) networks allow investigation of evolutionary species histories that involve complex phylogenetic events other than speciation, such as reassortment in virus evolution or introgressive hybridization in invertebrates and mammals. Reticulation networks can be inferred by solving the reticulation network problem, typically known as the hybridization network problem. Given a collection of phylogenetic input trees, this problem seeks a minimum reticulation network with the smallest number of reticulation vertices into which the input trees can be embedded exactly. Unfortunately, this problem is limited in practice, since minimum reticulation networks can be easily obfuscated by even small topological errors that typically occur in input trees inferred from biological data. We adapt the reticulation network problem to address erroneous input trees using the classic Robinson-Foulds distance. The RF embedding cost allows trees to be embedded into reticulation networks inexactly, but up to a measurable error. The adapted problem, called the Robinson-Foulds reticulation network (RF-Network) problem is, as we show and like many other problems applied in molecular biology, NP-hard. To address this, we employ local search strategies that have been successfully applied in other NP-hard phylogenetic problems. Our local search method benefits from recent theoretical advancements in this area. Further, we introduce inpractice effective algorithms for the computational challenges involved in our local search approach. Using simulations we experimentally validate the ability of our method, RF-Net, to reconstruct correct phylogenetic networks in the presence of error in input data. Finally, we demonstrate how RF-networks can help identify reassortment in influenza A viruses, and provide insight into the evolutionary history of these viruses. RF-Net was able to estimate a large and credible reassortment network with 164 taxa.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Markin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vadali, V. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/642793</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Robinson-Foulds Reticulation Networks]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/650515v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Expanding The CRISPR Toolbox With Mad7 In Zebrafish And Human Cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/650515v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR associated (Cas) effector proteins enable the targeting of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) to defined loci based on a variable length RNA guide specific to each effector. The guide RNAs are generally similar in size and form, consisting of a ~20 nucleotide sequence complementary to the DNA target and an RNA secondary structure recognized by the effector. However, the effector proteins vary in Protospacer Adjacent Motif (PAM) requirements, nuclease activities, and DNA binding kinetics. Recently, ErCas12a, a new member of the Cas12a family, was identified in Eubacterium rectale. Here, we report the first characterization of ErCas12a activity in zebrafish and human cells. Using a fluorescent reporter system, we show that CRISPR/ErCas12a elicits strand annealing mediated DNA repair more efficiently than CRISPR/Cas9. Further, using our previously reported gene targeting method that utilizes short homology, GeneWeld, we demonstrate the use of CRISPR/ErCas12a to integrate reporter alleles into the genomes of both zebrafish and human cells. Together, this work provides methods for deploying an additional CRISPR/Cas system, thus increasing the flexibility researchers have in applying genome engineering technologies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wierson, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Simone, B. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>WareJoncas, Z. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mann, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Welker, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gendron, W. A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barry, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dobbs, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ekker, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Essner, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/650515</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Expanding The CRISPR Toolbox With Mad7 In Zebrafish And Human Cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/653105v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The CAFA challenge reports improved protein function prediction and new functional annotations for hundreds of genes through experimental screens 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/653105v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Critical Assessment of Functional Annotation (CAFA) is an ongoing, global, community-driven effort to evaluate and improve the computational annotation of protein function. Here we report on the results of the third CAFA challenge, CAFA3, that featured an expanded analysis over the previous CAFA rounds, both in terms of volume of data analyzed and the types of analysis performed. In a novel and major new development, computational predictions and assessment goals drove some of the experimental assays, resulting in new functional annotations for more than 1000 genes. Specifically, we performed experimental whole-genome mutation screening in Candida albicans and Pseudomonas aureginosa genomes, which provided us with genome-wide experimental data for genes associated with biofilm formation and motility (P. aureginosa only). We further performed targeted assays on selected genes in Drosophila melanogaster, which we suspected of being involved in long-term memory. We conclude that, while predictions of the molecular function and biological process annotations have slightly improved over time, those of the cellular component have not. Term-centric prediction of experimental annotations remains equally challenging; although the performance of the top methods is significantly better than expectations set by baseline methods in C. albicans and D. melanogaster, it leaves considerable room and need for improvement. We finally report that the CAFA community now involves a broad range of participants with expertise in bioinformatics, biological experimentation, biocuration, and bioontologies, working together to improve functional annotation, computational function prediction, and our ability to manage big data in the era of large experimental screens.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhou, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bergquist, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kacsoh, B. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crocker, A. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lewis, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Georghiou, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, H. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamid, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Davis, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>The Critical Assessment of Function Annotation,</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rost, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brenner, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Orengo, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jeffery, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bosco, G. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hogan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Donovan, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mooney, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Greene, C. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Radivojac, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-05-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/653105</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The CAFA challenge reports improved protein function prediction and new functional annotations for hundreds of genes through experimental screens]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-05-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/654848v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Double triage to identify poorly annotated genes in Maize: The missing link in community curation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/654848v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The sophistication of gene prediction algorithms and the abundance of RNA-based evidence for the maize genome may suggest that manual curation of gene models is no longer necessary. However, quality metrics generated by the MAKER-P gene annotation pipeline identified 17,225 of 130,330 (13%) protein-coding transcripts in the B73 Reference Genome V4 gene set with models of low concordance to available biological evidence. Working with eight graduate students, we used the Apollo annotation editor to curate 86 transcript models flagged by quality metrics and a complimentary method using the Gramene gene tree visualizer. All of the triaged models had significant errors - including missing or extra exons, non-canonical splice sites, and incorrect UTRs. A correct transcript model existed for about 60% of genes (or transcripts) flagged by quality metrics; we attribute this to the convention of elevating the transcript with the longest coding sequence (CDS) to the canonical, or first, position. The remaining 40% of flagged genes resulted in novel annotations and represent a manual curation space of about 10% of the maize genome (~4,000 protein-coding genes). MAKER-P metrics have a specificity of 100%, and a sensitivity of 85%; the gene tree visualizer has a specificity of 100%. Together with the Apollo graphical editor, our double triage provides an infrastructure to support the community curation of eukaryotic genomes by scientists, students, and potentially even citizen scientists.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tello-Ruiz, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marco, C. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, F.-M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khangura, R. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiao, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sapkota, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stitzer, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wasikowski, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhan, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chougule, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barone, L. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ghiban, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muna, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Olson, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, L. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ware, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Micklos, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/654848</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Double triage to identify poorly annotated genes in Maize: The missing link in community curation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/657791v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Pervasive off-target and double-stranded DNA nicking by CRISPR-Cas12a 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/657791v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cas12a (formerly Cpf1) is an RNA-guided endonuclease in the CRISPR-Cas immune system that can be easily programmed for genome editing. Cas12a can bind and cut dsDNA targets with high specificity in vivo, making it an ideal candidate for precise genome editing applications. This specificity is contradictory to the natural role of Cas12a as an immune effector against rapidly evolving phages. However, the native cleavage specificity and activity remains to be fully understood. We employed high-throughput in vitro cleavage assays to determine and compare the native specificities of three Cas12a orthologs. Surprisingly, we observed pervasive nicking of randomized target libraries, with strong nicking activity observed against targets with up to four mismatches. Nicking and cleavage activities are dependent on mismatch type and position, and vary depending on the Cas12a ortholog and crRNA sequence. Our high-throughput and biochemical analysis further reveal that Cas12a has robust activated non-specific nicking and weak non-specific dsDNA degradation activity in trans. Together, our findings reveal Cas12a cleavage activities that could be beneficial in the context of bacterial CRISPR-Cas immunity but may be detrimental for genome editing technology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Murugan, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Severin, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sashital, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/657791</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Pervasive off-target and double-stranded DNA nicking by CRISPR-Cas12a]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/657890v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Benchmarking Transposable Element Annotation Methods for Creation of a Streamlined, Comprehensive Pipeline 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/657890v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Sequencing technology and assembly algorithms have matured to the point that high-quality de novo assembly is possible for large, repetitive genomes. Current assemblies traverse transposable elements (TEs) and allow for annotation of TEs. There are numerous methods for each class of elements with unknown relative performance metrics. We benchmarked existing programs based on a curated library of rice TEs. Using the most robust programs, we created a comprehensive pipeline called Extensive de-novo TE Annotator (EDTA) that produces a condensed TE library for annotations of structurally intact and fragmented elements. EDTA is open-source and freely available: https://github.com/oushujun/EDTA.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Su, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chougule, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ware, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/657890</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Benchmarking Transposable Element Annotation Methods for Creation of a Streamlined, Comprehensive Pipeline]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/659128v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Impaired peroxisomal import in Drosophila hepatocyte-like cells induces cardiac dysfunction through the pro-inflammatory cytokine Upd3 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/659128v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Age is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. Currently, the non-autonomous regulation of age-related cardiac dysfunction is poorly understood. In the present study, we discover that age-dependent induction of cytokine unpaired 3 (Upd3) in Drosophila oenocytes (hepatocyte-like cells), due to a dampened peroxisomal import function, is the primary non-autonomous mechanism for elevated arrhythmicity in old hearts. We show that Upd3 is significantly up-regulated (52-fold) in aged oenocytes. Oenocyte-specific knockdown of Upd3 is sufficient to block aging-induced cardiac arrhythmia. We further show that the age-dependent induction of Upd3 is triggered by impaired peroxisomal import and elevated JNK signaling in aged oenocytes. Intriguingly, oenocyte-specific over-expression of Pex5, the key peroxisomal import receptor, restores peroxisomal import, blocks age-related Upd3 induction, and alleviates aging- and paraquat-induced cardiac arrhythmicity. Thus, our studies identify an important role of the evolutionarily conserved pro-inflammatory cytokine signaling and hepatocyte-specific peroxisomal import in mediating non-autonomous regulation of cardiac aging.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Huang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miao, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Simmonds, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Di Cara, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/659128</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Impaired peroxisomal import in Drosophila hepatocyte-like cells induces cardiac dysfunction through the pro-inflammatory cytokine Upd3]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/660910v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Disorder mediated oligomerization of DISC1 proteins revealed by coarse-grained computer simulations. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/660910v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1) is a scaffold protein of significant importance for neurodevelopment and a prominent candidate protein in the etiology of mental disorders. In this work, we investigate the role of conformational heterogeneity and local structural disorder in the oligomerization pathway of the full-length DISC1 and of two truncation variants. Through extensive coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations with a predictive energy landscape based model, we reveal the general mechanistic principles of DISC1 oligomerization. We found that both conformational heterogeneity and structural disorder play an important role in the dimerization pathway of DISC1. This study sheds light on the differences in oligomerization pathways of the full-length protein compared to the truncated variants produced by a chromosomal translocation associated with schizophrenia.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Roche, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/660910</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Disorder mediated oligomerization of DISC1 proteins revealed by coarse-grained computer simulations.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/668921v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An improved pig reference genome sequence to enable pig genetics and genomics research 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/668921v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The domestic pig (Sus scrofa) is important both as a food source and as a biomedical model with high anatomical and immunological similarity to humans. The draft reference genome (Sscrofa10.2) of a purebred Duroc female pig established using older clone-based sequencing methods was incomplete and unresolved redundancies, short range order and orientation errors and associated misassembled genes limited its utility. We present two annotated highly contiguous chromosome-level genome assemblies created with more recent long read technologies and a whole genome shotgun strategy, one for the same Duroc female (Sscrofa11.1) and one for an outbred, composite breed male (USMARCv1.0). Both assemblies are of substantially higher (>90-fold) continuity and accuracy than Sscrofa10.2. These highly contiguous assemblies plus annotation of a further 11 short read assemblies provide an unprecedented view of the genetic make-up of this important agricultural and biomedical model species. We propose that the improved Duroc assembly (Sscrofa11.1) become the reference genome for genomic research in pigs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Warr, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Affara, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aken, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beiki, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bickhart, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Billis, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chow, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eory, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Finlayson, H. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flicek, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Giron, C. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Griffin, D. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hall, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hannum, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hourlier, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hume, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Izuogu, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koren, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Manchanda, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, F. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nonneman, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phillippy, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rohrer, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rosen, B. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rund, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sargent, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schook, L. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schroeder, S. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schwartz, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Skinner, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Talbot, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tseng, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuggle, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Watson, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, T. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Archibald, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/668921</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An improved pig reference genome sequence to enable pig genetics and genomics research]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/670869v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A reduced Gompertz model for predicting tumor age using a population approach 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/670869v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Tumor growth curves are classically modeled by ordinary differential equations. In analyzing the Gompertz model several studies have reported a striking correlation between the two parameters of the model.nnWe analyzed tumor growth kinetics within the statistical framework of nonlinear mixed-effects (population approach). This allowed for the simultaneous modeling of tumor dynamics and interanimal variability. Experimental data comprised three animal models of breast and lung cancers, with 843 measurements in 94 animals. Candidate models of tumor growth included the Exponential, Logistic and Gompertz. The Exponential and - more notably - Logistic models failed to describe the experimental data whereas the Gompertz model generated very good fits. The population-level correlation between the Gompertz parameters was further confirmed in our analysis (R2 > 0.96 in all groups). Combining this structural correlation with rigorous population parameter estimation, we propose a novel reduced Gompertz function consisting of a single individual parameter. Leveraging the population approach using bayesian inference, we estimated the time of tumor initiation using three late measurement timepoints. The reduced Gompertz model was found to exhibit the best results, with drastic improvements when using bayesian inference as compared to likelihood maximization alone, for both accuracy and precision. Specifically, mean accuracy was 12.1% versus 74.1% and mean precision was 15.2 days versus 186 days, for the breast cancer cell line.nnThese results offer promising clinical perspectives for the personalized prediction of tumor age from limited data at diagnosis. In turn, such predictions could be helpful for assessing the extent of invisible metastasis at the time of diagnosis.nnAuthor summaryMathematical models for tumor growth kinetics have been widely used since several decades but mostly fitted to individual or average growth curves. Here we compared three classical models (Exponential, Logistic and Gompertz) using a population approach, which accounts for inter-animal variability. The Exponential and the Logistic models failed to fit the experimental data while the Gompertz model showed excellent descriptive power. Moreover, the strong correlation between the two parameters of the Gompertz equation motivated a simplification of the model, the reduced Gompertz model, with a single individual parameter and equal descriptive power. Combining the mixed-effects approach with Bayesian inference, we predicted the age of individual tumors with only few late measurements. Thanks to its simplicity, the reduced Gompertz model showed superior predictive power. Although our method remains to be extended to clinical data, these results are promising for the personalized estimation of the age of a tumor from limited measurements at diagnosis. Such predictions could contribute to the development of computational models for metastasis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Vaghi, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rodallec, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fanciullino, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ciccolini, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mastri, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Poignard, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ebos, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Benzekry, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/670869</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A reduced Gompertz model for predicting tumor age using a population approach]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/671263v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Recycling RNA-Seq Data to Identify Candidate Orphan Genes for experimental analysis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/671263v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The "dark transcriptome" can be considered the multitude of sequences that are transcribed but not annotated as genes. We evaluated expression of 6,692 annotated genes and 29,354 unannotated ORFs in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome across diverse environmental, genetic and developmental conditions (3,457 RNA-Seq samples). Over 48% of the transcribed ORFs have translation evidence. Phylostratigraphic analysis infers most of these transcribed ORFs would encode species-specific proteins ("orphan-ORFs"); hundreds have mean expression comparable to annotated genes. These data reveal unannotated ORFs most likely to be protein-coding genes. We partitioned a co-expression matrix by Markov Chain Clustering; the resultant clusters contain 2,468 orphan-ORFs. We provide the aggregated RNA-Seq yeast data with extensive metadata as a project in MetaOmGraph, a tool designed for interactive analysis and visualization. This approach enables reuse of public RNA-Seq data for exploratory discovery, providing a rich context for experimentalists to make novel, experimentally-testable hypotheses about candidate genes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arendsee, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/671263</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Recycling RNA-Seq Data to Identify Candidate Orphan Genes for experimental analysis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/675066v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Switching between bacteriostatic and bactericidal antimicrobials for retreatment of bovine respiratory disease (BRD) relapses is associated with an increased frequency of resistant pathogen isolation from veterinary diagnostic laboratory submissions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/675066v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Although 90% of BRD relapses are reported to receive retreatment with a different class of antimicrobial, studies examining the impact of antimicrobial selection (i.e. bactericidal or bacteriostatic) on retreatment outcomes and the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are deficient in the published literature. A survey was conducted to determine the association between antimicrobial class selection for retreatment of BRD relapses on antimicrobial susceptibility of Mannheimia haemolytica, Pasteurella multocida, and Histophilus somni. Pathogens were isolated from samples submitted to the Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory from January 2013 to December 2015. A total of 781 isolates with corresponding animal case histories, including treatment protocols, were included in the analysis. Original susceptibility testing of these isolates for ceftiofur, danofloxacin, enrofloxacin, florfenicol, oxytetracycline, spectinomycin, tilmicosin, and tulathromycin was performed using Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. Data were analyzed using a Bayesian approach to evaluate whether retreatment with antimicrobials of different mechanistic classes (bactericidal or bacteriostatic) increased the probability of resistant BRD pathogen isolation in calves. The posterior distribution we calculated suggests that an increased number of treatments is associated with a greater probability of isolates resistant to at least one antimicrobial. In addition, the frequency of resistant M. haemolytica isolates was greater with retreatment using antimicrobials of different mechanistic classes than retreatment with the same class. Specifically, treatment protocols using a bacteriostatic drug first followed by retreatment with a bactericidal drug was associated with a higher frequency of resistant BRD pathogen isolation. This effect was more profound with specific treatment combinations; tulathromycin (bacteriostatic) followed by ceftiofur (bactericidal) was associated with the highest probability of resistant isolates among all antimicrobial combinations. These findings suggest that the selection of antimicrobial mechanistic class for retreatment of BRD should be considered as part of an antimicrobial stewardship program.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Coetzee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Magstadt, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Follett, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sidhu, P. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schuler, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krull, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cooper, V. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Engelken, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>OConnor, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/675066</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Switching between bacteriostatic and bactericidal antimicrobials for retreatment of bovine respiratory disease (BRD) relapses is associated with an increased frequency of resistant pathogen isolation from veterinary diagnostic laboratory submissions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/675579v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Oncoprotein GT198 is a direct target of taxol 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/675579v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Taxol (paclitaxel) is one of the most successful chemotherapeutic drugs in the treatment of human cancer. It has recently been questioned whether the mechanism of action in mitotic arrest, which is ubiquitously present in all cells, is sufficient to explain the tumor specificity, clinical efficacy, and side effects of taxol. In this report, we have identified a new protein target of taxol as GT198 (gene symbol PSMC3IP, also known as Hop2). GT198 is an oncoprotein and a DNA repair factor involved in human common solid tumors. The GT198 gene carries germline mutations in breast and ovarian cancer families and recurrent somatic mutations in tumor microenvironment. Mutant GT198 was identified in pericyte stem cells on capillary blood vessels inducing tumor angiogenesis. GT198 is a DNA-binding protein dimer, also stimulates DNA repair, regulates meiosis, participates in homologous DNA recombination, and activates nuclear receptor-mediated gene expression. Here we show that taxol directly binds to the DNA-binding domain of GT198 in vitro. Taxol serves as an allosteric inhibitor to block DNA binding to GT198 with an IC50 of 8.6 nM. Labeled taxol colocalizes with GT198 in interphase nuclei of cultured cells. Decreased GT198 expression desensitizes taxolinduced cell death, and taxol inhibits GT198 nuclear foci formation during DNA repair. Together, these results demonstrate that GT198 is a previously unrecognized direct protein target of taxol. The finding of taxol target as an oncoprotein GT198 in common solid tumors provides a rationale for the clinical efficacy of taxol. We anticipate that GT198 may serve as a clinical predictive marker of taxol efficacy as well as a new drug target for future anti-cancer therapy.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gurvich, V. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gupta, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mivechi, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ko, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/675579</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Oncoprotein GT198 is a direct target of taxol]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/681932v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Conformational dynamics of FERM-mediated autoinhibition in Pyk2 tyrosine kinase. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/681932v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Pyk2 is a non-receptor tyrosine kinase that evolved from gene duplication of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) and subsequent functional specialization in the brain and hemopoietic cells. Pyk2 shares a domain organization with FAK, with an N-terminal regulatory FERM domain adjoining the kinase domain. FAK regulation involves integrin-mediated membrane clustering to relieve autoinhibitory interactions between FERM and kinase domains. Pyk2 regulation remains cryptic, involving Ca2+ influx and protein scaffolding. While the mechanism of the FAK FERM domain in autoinhibition is well-established, the regulatory role of the Pyk2 FERM is ambiguous. We probed the mechanisms of FERM-mediated autoinhibition of Pyk2 using hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) and kinase activity profiling. The results reveal FERM-kinase interfaces responsible for autoinhibition. Pyk2 autoinhibition impacts activation loop conformation. In addition, the autoinhibitory FERM-kinase interface exhibits allosteric linkage with the FERM basic patch conserved in both FAK and Pyk2.nnTable of Contents graphicnnO_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=94 SRC="FIGDIR/small/681932v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">nView larger version (41K):norg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@36bf36org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@43afe2org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1d0489forg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@14fecc9_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG C_FIG
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Loving, H. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Underbakke, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-06-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/681932</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Conformational dynamics of FERM-mediated autoinhibition in Pyk2 tyrosine kinase.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-06-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/688952v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Yield, nutritional quality, and fatty acid content of organic winter rye (Secale cereale) and winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) forages under cattle (Bos taurus) grazing conditions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/688952v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The objective of this study was to assess yield, nutritional quality, and fatty acid compositions of winter rye (Secale cereale) and winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) forages for grazing cattle (Bos taurus) in an organic system. The rye and wheat were established on two 4 ha plots in September 2015. Six groups of dairy steers rotationally grazed rye (n = 3) or wheat (n = 3) plots divided into seven paddocks (n = 14) from April to June 2016. Forage samples (n = 96) taken prior to paddock grazing were used to analyze forage characteristics. Mixed models with fixed factors of forage, date, and their interaction, a random subject factor of group nested in paddock, and a repeated effect of date were used for each outcome. The linear effect of date on fatty acids was obtained by substituting date as a continuous variable. The mean forage yield for rye was greater (P < 0.05) than wheat (mean {+/-} standard error; 2840 and 2571 {+/-} 82 kg ha-1, respectively). However, rye yielded less in the latter part of the grazing period. Wheat (19.3 {+/-} 0.30% DM) had greater (P < 0.001) crude protein than rye (17.6 {+/-} 0.30% DM). In general, crude protein, digestibility, and minerals decreased during the grazing period. Wheat (66.3 {+/-} 0.54 g 100g-1) had greater (P < 0.001) alpha-linolenic acid (18:3n-3) concentration than rye (63.3 {+/-} 0.54 g 100g-1). Although both forages decreased (P < 0.05) in alpha-linolenic acid concentration, wheat decreased 2.49 times more (P < 0.001) per d compared to rye forage. Winter rye and winter wheat forages are viable for cattle grazing. Producers should initiate early grazing to maximize protein, digestibility, and alpha-linolenic acid intake while the forages are immature.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Phillips, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heins, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Delate, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Turnbull, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/688952</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Yield, nutritional quality, and fatty acid content of organic winter rye (Secale cereale) and winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) forages under cattle (Bos taurus) grazing conditions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/689976v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Automated methods enable direct computation on phenotypic descriptions for novel candidate gene prediction 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/689976v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1Natural language descriptions of plant phenotypes are a rich source of information for genetics and genomics research. We computationally translated descriptions of plant phenotypes into structured representations that can be analyzed to identify biologically meaningful associations. These repre-sentations include the EQ (Entity-Quality) formalism, which uses terms from biological ontologies to represent phenotypes in a standardized, semantically-rich format, as well as numerical vector representations generated using Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods (such as the bag-of-words approach and document embedding). We compared resulting phenotype similarity measures to those derived from manually curated data to determine the performance of each method. Computationally derived EQ and vector representations were comparably successful in recapitulating biological truth to representations created through manual EQ statement curation. Moreover, NLP methods for generating vector representations of phenotypes are scalable to large quantities of text because they require no human input. These results indicate that it is now possible to computationally and automatically produce and populate large-scale information resources that enable researchers to query phenotypic descriptions directly.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Braun, I. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/689976</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Automated methods enable direct computation on phenotypic descriptions for novel candidate gene prediction]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/692004v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic immunodeficiency and autoimmune disease reveal distinct roles of Hem1 in the WAVE2 and mTORC2 complexes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/692004v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Immunodeficiency often coincides with immune hyperresponsiveness such as autoimmunity, lymphoproliferation, or atopy, but the molecular basis of this paradox is typically unknown. We describe four families with immunodeficiency coupled with atopy, lymphoproliferation, cytokine overproduction, hemophagocytic lymphohistocytosis, and autoimmunity. We discovered loss-of-function variants in the gene NCKAP1L, encoding the hematopoietic-specific Hem1 protein. Three mutations cause Hem1 protein and WAVE regulatory complex (WRC) loss, thereby disrupting actin polymerization, synapse formation, and immune cell migration. Another mutant, M371V encodes a stable Hem1 protein but abrogates binding of the Arf1 GTPase and identifies Arf1 as a critical Hem1 regulator. All mutations reduce the cortical actin barrier to cytokine release explaining immune hyperresponsiveness. Finally, Hem1 loss blocked mTORC2-dependent AKT phosphorylation, T cell proliferation, and effector cytokine production during T cell activation. Thus, our data show that Hem1 independently governs two key regulatory complexes, the WRC and mTORC2, and how Hem1 loss causes a combined immunodeficiency and immune hyperresponsiveness disease.nnOne sentence summaryHem1 loss of function mutations cause a congenital immunodysregulatory disease and reveal its role regulating WAVE2 and mTORC2 signaling.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Comrie, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Poli, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cook, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Similuk, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Oler, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Faruqi, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuhns, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carisey, A. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fournier, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Price, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chahla, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vargas-Hernandez, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Forbes, L. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mace, E. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cao, T. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coban-Akdemir, Z. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jhangiani, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muzny, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gibbs, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lupski, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Orange, J. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cuvelier, G. D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Al Hassani, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>AL Kaabi, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Al Yafei, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jyonouchi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Raje, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Caldwell, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burkhardt, J. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Latour, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>ElGhazali, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rao, V. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chinn, I. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lenardo, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/692004</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic immunodeficiency and autoimmune disease reveal distinct roles of Hem1 in the WAVE2 and mTORC2 complexes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/698969v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
MetaOmGraph: a workbench for interactive exploratory data analysis of large expression datasets 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/698969v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The diverse and growing omics data in public domains provide researchers with a tremendous opportunity to extract hidden knowledge. However, the challenge of providing domain experts with easy access to these big data has resulted in the vast majority of archived data remaining unused. Here, we present MetaOmGraph (MOG), a free, open-source, standalone software for exploratory data analysis of massive datasets by scientific researchers. Using MOG, a researcher can interactively visualize and statistically analyze the data, in the context of its metadata. Researchers can interactively hone-in on groups of experiments or genes based on attributes such as expression values, statistical results, metadata terms, and ontology annotations. MOGs statistical tools include coexpression, differential expression, and differential correlation analysis, with permutation test-based options for significance assessments. Multithreading and indexing enable efficient data analysis on a personal computer, with no need for writing code. Data can be visualized as line charts, box plots, scatter plots, and volcano plots. A researcher can create new MOG projects from any data or analyze an existing one. An R-wrapper lets a researcher select and send smaller data subsets to R for additional analyses. A researcher can save MOG projects with a history of the exploratory progress and later reopen or share them. We illustrate MOG by case studies of large curated datasets from human cancer RNA-Seq, in which we assembled a list of novel putative biomarker genes in different tumors, and microarray and metabolomics from A. thaliana.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hur, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/698969</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[MetaOmGraph: a workbench for interactive exploratory data analysis of large expression datasets]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/703488v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Coupling Day Length Data and Genomic Prediction tools for Predicting Time-Related Traits under Complex Scenarios 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/703488v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Genomic selection (GS) has proven to be an efficient tool for predicting crop-rank performance of untested genotypes; however, when the traits have intermediate optima (phenology stages) this implementation might not be the most convenient. GS might deliver high rank correlations but incurring in serious bias. Days to heading (DTH) is a crucial development stage in rice for regional adaptability with significant impact in yield potential. The objectives of this research consisted in the development of a method that accurately predicts time related traits like DTH in unobserved environments. For this, we developed an implementation that incorporate day length information (DL) in the prediction process for two relevant scenarios: CV0, predicting tested genotypes in unobserved environments (C method); and CV00, predicting untested genotypes in unobserved environments (CB method). The use of DL has advantages over weather data since it can be determined in advance just by knowing the location and planting date. The proposed methods showed that DL information significantly helps to improve the predictive ability of DTH in unobserved environments. Under CV0, the C method returned an root-mean-square-error (RMSE) of 3.9 days, a Pearson Correlation (PC) of 0.98 and the differences between the predicted and observed environmental means (EMD) ranged between -4.95 and 4.67 days. For CV00, the CB method returned an RMSE of 7.3 days, a PC of 0.93 and the EMD ranged between -6.4 and 4.1 days while the conventional GS implementation produced an RMSE of 18.1 days, a PC of 0.41 and the EMD ranged between -31.5 and 28.7 days.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jarquin, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kajiya-Kanegae, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taishen, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yabe, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Persa, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakagawa, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yamazaki, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Iwata, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/703488</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Coupling Day Length Data and Genomic Prediction tools for Predicting Time-Related Traits under Complex Scenarios]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/705897v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A hierarchical Bayesian latent class mixture model with censorship for detection of linear temporal changes in antibiotic resistance 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/705897v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Identifying and controlling the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a high priority for researchers and public health officials. One critical component of this control effort is timely detection of emerging or increasing resistance using surveillance programs. Currently, detection of temporal changes in AMR relies mainly on analysis of the proportion of resistant isolates based on the dichotomization of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values. In our work, we developed a hierarchical Bayesian latent class mixture model that incorporates a linear trend for the mean log2MIC of the non-resistant population. By introducing latent variables, our model addressed the challenges associated with the AMR MIC values, compensating for the censored nature of the MIC observations as well as the mixed components indicated by the censored MIC distributions. Inclusion of linear regression with time as a covariate in the hierarchical structure allowed modelling of the linear creep of the mean log2MIC in the non-resistant population. The hierarchical Bayesian model was accurate and robust as assessed in simulation studies. The proposed approach was illustrated using Salmonella enterica I,4,[5],12:i:- treated with chloramphenicol and ceftiofur in human and veterinary samples, revealing some significant linearly increasing patterns from the applications. Implementation of our approach to the analysis of an AMR MIC dataset would provide surveillance programs with a more complete picture of the changes in AMR over years by exploring the patterns of the mean resistance level in the non-resistant population. Our model could therefore serve as a timely indicator of a need for antibiotic intervention before an outbreak of resistance, highlighting the relevance of this work for public health. Currently, however, due to extreme right censoring on the MIC data, this approach has limited utility for tracking changes in the resistant population.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhang, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/705897</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A hierarchical Bayesian latent class mixture model with censorship for detection of linear temporal changes in antibiotic resistance]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/706739v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Single-gene resolution of locally adaptive genetic variation in Mexican maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/706739v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Threats to crop production due to climate change are one of the greatest challenges facing plant breeders today. While considerable adaptive variation exists in traditional landraces, natural populations of crop wild relatives, and ex situ germplasm collections, separating adaptive alleles from linked deleterious variants that impact agronomic traits is challenging and has limited the utility of these diverse germplasm resources. Modern genome editing techniques such as CRISPR offer a potential solution by targeting specific alleles for transfer to new backgrounds, but such methods require a higher degree of precision than traditional mapping approaches can achieve. Here we present a high-resolution genome-wide association analysis to identify loci exhibiting adaptive patterns in a large panel of more than 4500 traditional maize landraces representing the breadth of genetic diversity of maize in Mexico. We evaluate associations between genotype and plant performance in 13 common gardens across a range of environments, identifying hundreds of candidate genes underlying genotype by environment interaction. We further identify genetic associations with environment across Mexico and show that such loci are associated with variation in yield and flowering time in our field trials and predict performance in independent drought trials. Our results indicate that the variation necessary to adapt crops to changing climate exists in traditional landraces that have been subject to ongoing environmental adaptation and can be identified by both phenotypic and environmental association.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gates, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Runcie, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janzen, G. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romero Navarro, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Willcox, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sonder, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snodgrass, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rodriguez-Zapata, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sawers, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rellan-Alvarez, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckler, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hearne, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/706739</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Single-gene resolution of locally adaptive genetic variation in Mexican maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/715219v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Endocytic Clathrin Coats Develop Curvature at Early Stages of Their Formation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/715219v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Sculpting a flat patch of membrane into an endocytic vesicle requires curvature generation on the cell surface, which is the primary function of endocytic protein complexes. The mechanism through which membrane curvature is imposed during formation of clathrin-coated vesicles is an ongoing controversy. Using super-resolved live cell fluorescence imaging, we demonstrate that curvature generation by clathrin-coated pits can be detected in real time within cultured cells and tissues of developing metazoan organisms. We found that the footprint of clathrin coats increase monotonically during formation of curved pits at different levels of plasma membrane tension. Our findings are only compatible with models that predict curvature generation at early stages of endocytic clathrin-coated pit formation. Therefore, clathrin-coated vesicle formation does not necessitate a dynamically unstable clathrin lattice that would allow an abrupt flat-to-curved transition.

SummaryEndocytic clathrin coats acquire curvature without a flat-to-curved transition that requires an extensive reorganization of the clathrin lattice.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Willy, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferguson, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Silahli, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cakez, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hasan, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Travesset, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zandi, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Betzig, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cocucci, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kural, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/715219</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Endocytic Clathrin Coats Develop Curvature at Early Stages of Their Formation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/717173v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Uncover the Mechanism of Nucleotide Import by HIV-1 Capsid 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/717173v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In this work, we carry out a series of Brownian diffusion simulations to elucidate the nucleotide importing process through the hexamer pores of HIV-1 capsid. Our simulations reveal the mechanism by which deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs) diffuse through the arginine ring, the role of electrostatic potential within the pore in the importing process, and surprisingly, how IP6s and ATPs, though competing with dNTPs for binding at the arginine ring, end up accelerating the nucleotide import rate by thousands of folds so that it is sufficiently high to fuel the encapsidated DNA synthesis.nnIMPORTANCEEfficient nucleotide import is critical to fuel the reverse DNA synthesis that takes place within the capsid. However, the mechanism by which capsid imports the nucleotides is presently unclear. The current study through Brownian simulations shed insights into the process. A clear understanding of the mechanism of nucleotide import can be informative in developing drugs that target the process.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-07-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/717173</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Uncover the Mechanism of Nucleotide Import by HIV-1 Capsid]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-07-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/721753v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Host-specific subtelomere: Genomic architecture of pathogen emergence in asexual filamentous fungi 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/721753v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Several asexual species of filamentous fungal pathogens contain supernumerary chromosomes carrying secondary metabolite (SM) or pathogenicity genes. Supernumerary chromosomes have been shown in in vitro experiments to transfer from pathogenic isolates to non-pathogenic ones and between isolates whose fusion can result in vegetative or heterokaryon incompatibility (HET). However, much is still unknown about the acquisition and maintenance of SM/pathogenicity gene clusters in the adaptation of these asexual pathogens to their hosts. We investigated several asexual fungal pathogens for genomic elements involved in maintaining telomeres for supernumerary and core chromosomes during vegetative reproduction. We found that in vegetative species or lineages with a nearly complete telomere-to-telomere genome assembly (e.g. Fusarium equiseti and five formae speciales of the F. oxysporum species complex), core and super-numerary chromosomes were flanked by highly similar subtelomeric sequences on the 3 side and by their reverse complements on the 5 side. This subtelomere sequence structure was preserved in isolates from the same species or from polyphyletic lineages in the same forma specialis (f.sp.) of the F. oxysporum species complex. Moreover, between some isolates within F. oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici, the mean rate of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a supernumerary chromosome was at least 300 times lower than those in core chromosomes. And a large number of HET domain genes were located in SM/pathogenicity gene clusters, with a potential role in maintaining these gene clusters during vegetative reproduction.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Huang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-08-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/721753</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Host-specific subtelomere: Genomic architecture of pathogen emergence in asexual filamentous fungi]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-08-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/729681v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A prospective role for the rumen in generating antibiotic resistance 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/729681v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Antibiotics were a revolutionary discovery of the 20th century, but the ability of bacteria to spread the genetic determinants of resistance via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has quickly endangered their use1. Indeed, there is a global network of microbial gene exchange, the analysis of which has revealed particularly frequent transfer of resistance determinants between farm animals and human-associated bacteria2. Here, we leverage the recent release of a rumen microbial genome reference set and show that the wide-spread resistance gene cluster aadE-sat4-aphA-3 is harboured in ruminal Bacteroidetes. While this cluster appears to have been recently transferred between commensal bacteria in the rumen and many diverse animal and human pathogens, comparative analysis suggests that the cluster stabilized in the pathogens. Then, focusing on streptomycin resistance, it was found that homologues from the rumen span much of the known diversity of aminoglycoside O-nucleotidyltransferases (AadEs) and that distinct variants of the enzyme are present in a single rumen bacterial genome. Notably, a second variant of AadE has also been recently transferred, albeit more often as a single gene, throughout a different set of animal and human associated bacteria. By examining the synteny of AadE orthologues in various bacterial genomes and analyzing corresponding gene trees in an environmental context, we speculate that the ruminant associated microbiome has a salient role in the emergence of specific resistance variants and clusters. In light of the recent literature on the evolutionary origin of antibiotic resistance, we further suggest that the rumen provides a possible route of dissemination of resistance genes from soil resistomes, throughout the farm, and to human pathogens3.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Strachan, C. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mueller, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ghanbari, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Neubauer, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zwirzitz, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thalguter, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dzieciol, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wetzels, S. U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zanghellini, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wagner, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz-Esser, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mann, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-08-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/729681</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A prospective role for the rumen in generating antibiotic resistance]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-08-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/736363v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Integrated Multi-omic Framework of the Plant Response to Jasmonic Acid 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/736363v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Understanding the systems-level actions of transcriptional responses to hormones provides insight into how the genome is reprogrammed in response to environmental stimuli. Here, we investigate the signaling pathway of the hormone jasmonic acid (JA), which controls a plethora of critically important processes in plants and is orchestrated by the transcription factor MYC2 and its closest relatives in Arabidopsis thaliana. We generated an integrated framework of the response to JA that spans from the activity of master and secondary-regulatory transcription factors, through gene expression outputs and alternative splicing to protein abundance changes, protein phosphorylation and chromatin remodeling. We integrated time series transcriptome analysis with (phospho)proteomic data to reconstruct gene regulatory network models. These enable us to predict previously unknown points of crosstalk from JA to other signaling pathways and to identify new components of the JA regulatory mechanism, which we validated through targeted mutant analysis. These results provide a comprehensive understanding of how a plant hormone remodels cellular functions and plant behavior, the general principles of which provide a framework for analysis of cross-regulation between other hormone and stress signaling pathways.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zander, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lewsey, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clarke, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bartlett, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saldierna Guzman, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hann, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Langford, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jow, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nery, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bar-Joseph, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Solano, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ecker, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-08-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/736363</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Integrated Multi-omic Framework of the Plant Response to Jasmonic Acid]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-08-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/738070v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Characterizing allele-by-environment interactions using maize introgression lines 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/738070v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Relatively small genomic introgressions containing quantitative trait loci can have significant impacts on the phenotype of an individual plant. However, the magnitude of phenotypic effects for the same introgression can vary quite substantially in different environments due to allele-by-environment interactions. To study potential patterns of allele-by-environment interactions, fifteen near-isogenic lines (NILs) with >90% B73 genetic background and multiple Mo17 introgressions were grown in 16 different environments. These environments included five geographical locations with multiple planting dates and multiple planting densities. The phenotypic impact of the introgressions was evaluated for up to 26 traits that span different growth stages in each environment to assess allele-by-environment interactions. Results from this study showed that small portions of the genome can drive significant genotype-by-environment interaction across a wide range of vegetative and reproductive traits, and the magnitude of the allele-by-environment interaction varies across traits. Some introgressed segments were more prone to genotype-by-environment interaction than others when evaluating the interaction on a whole plant basis throughout developmental time, indicating variation in phenotypic plasticity throughout the genome. Understanding the profile of allele-by-environment interaction is useful in considerations of how small introgressions of QTL or transgene containing regions might be expected to impact traits in diverse environments.nnKey MessageSignificant allele-by-environment interactions are observed for traits throughout development from small introgressed segments of the genome.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tirado, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kadam, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coffey, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, N. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Spalding, E. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lorenz, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Leon, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaeppler, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Springer, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-08-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/738070</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Characterizing allele-by-environment interactions using maize introgression lines]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-08-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/743898v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The maize Hairy Sheath Frayed1 (Hsf1) mutant alters leaf patterning through increased cytokinin signaling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/743898v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Leaf morphogenesis requires growth polarized along three axes - proximal-distal, medial-lateral and abaxial-adaxial. Grass leaves display a prominent proximal-distal (P-D) polarity consisting of a proximal sheath separated from the distal blade by the auricle and ligule. Although proper specification of the four segments is essential for normal morphology, our knowledge is incomplete regarding the mechanisms which influence P-D specification in monocots like maize (Zea mays). Here we report the identification of the gene underlying the semi-dominant, leaf patterning, maize mutant Hairy Sheath Frayed1 (Hsf1). Hsf1 plants produce leaves with outgrowths consisting of proximal segments - sheath, auricle and ligule - emanating from the distal blade margin. Analysis of three independent Hsf1 alleles revealed gain-of-function missense mutations in the ligand binding domain of the maize cytokinin (CK) receptor Zea mays Histidine Kinase1 (ZmHK1) gene. Biochemical analysis and structural modeling suggest the mutated residues near the CK binding pocket affect CK binding affinity. Treatment of wild type seedlings with exogenous CK phenocopied the Hsf1 leaf phenotypes. Results from expression and epistatic analyses indicated the Hsf1 mutant receptor appears to be hypersignaling. Our results demonstrate that hypersignaling of CK in incipient leaf primordia can reprogram developmental patterns in maize.nnSummaryIncreased cytokinin signaling in the maize Hairy Sheath Frayed1 mutant modifies leaf development leading to changes in pattering, growth and cell identity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Muszynski, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss-Taylor, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chudalayandi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cahill, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Del-Valle Echevarria, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alvarez-Castro, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Petefish, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sakakibara, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krivosheev, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lomin, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romanov, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thamotharan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dam, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brugiere, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-08-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/743898</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The maize Hairy Sheath Frayed1 (Hsf1) mutant alters leaf patterning through increased cytokinin signaling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-08-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/745208v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The relevance of dominance and functional annotations to predict agronomic traits in hybrid maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/745208v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Heterosis has been key to the development of maize breeding but describing its genetic basis has been challenging. Previous studies of heterosis have shown the contribution of within-locus complementation effects (dominance) and their differential importance across genomic regions. However, they have generally considered panels of limited genetic diversity and have shown little benefit to including dominance effects for predicting genotypic value in breeding populations. This study examined within-locus complementation and enrichment of genetic effects by functional classes in maize. We based our analyses on a diverse panel of inbred lines crossed with two testers representative of the major heterotic groups in the United States (1,106 hybrids), as well as a collection of 24 biparental populations crossed with a single tester (1,640 hybrids). We assayed three agronomic traits: days to silking (DTS), plant height (PH) and grain yield (GY). Our results point to the presence of dominance for all traits, but also among-locus complementation (epistasis) for DTS and genotype-by-environment interactions for GY. Consistently, dominance improved genomic prediction for PH only. In addition, we assessed enrichment of genetic effects in classes defined by genic regions (gene annotation), structural features (recombination rate and chromatin openness), and evolutionary features (minor allele frequency and evolutionary constraint). We found support for enrichment in genic regions and subsequent improvement of genomic prediction for all traits. Our results point to mechanisms by which heterosis arises through local complementation in proximal gene regions and suggest the relevance of dominance and gene annotations for genomic prediction in maize.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramstein, G. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Larsson, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cook, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edwards, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ersoz, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flint-Garcia, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gardner, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holland, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lorenz, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McMullen, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Millard, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rocheford, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuinstra, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bradbury, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckler, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romay, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-08-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/745208</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The relevance of dominance and functional annotations to predict agronomic traits in hybrid maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-08-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/752337v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Receptor-Like Kinase Phosphorylation of Arabidopsis Heterotrimeric G-Protein Gα - Subunit AtGPA1 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/752337v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
As molecular on-off switches, heterotrimeric G protein complexes, comprised of a G subunit and an obligate G{beta}{gamma} dimer, transmit extracellular signals received by G protein- coupled receptors (GPCRs) to cytoplasmic targets that respond to biotic and abiotic stimuli. Signal transduction is modulated by phosphorylation of GPCRs and G protein complexes. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the G subunit AtGPA1 is phosphorylated by the receptor-like kinase (RLK) BRI1-ASSOCIATED Kinase 1 (BAK1), but the extent that other RLKs phosphorylates AtGPA1 is unknown. We mapped 22 trans-phosphorylation sites on AtGPA1 by 12 RLKs hypothesized to act in the Arabidopsis G protein signaling pathway. Cis-phosphorylation sites on these RLKs were also identified. BRI1, BAK1, and SERK1 have been reported as Ser/Thr and Tyr dual specificity kinases. We identified 4 more dual specificity kinases: IOS1, PSY1R, PEPR1, and AT2G37050. Multiple sites are present in the core AtGPA1 functional units, including pSer52 and pThr53 of the conserved P-loop that directly binds nucleotide/phosphate, pThr164 and pSer175 from E helix in the intramolecular domain interface for nucleotide exchange and GTP hydrolysis, and pThr193 or pThr194 in Switch I (SwI) that coordinates nucleotide exchange and protein partner binding. Several AtGPA1 S/T phosphorylation sites are nucleotide-dependent phosphorylation patterns, such as S52/T53 in the P-loop and T193 and/or T194 in SwI.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jia, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Werth, E. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hicks, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jones, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-08-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/752337</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Receptor-Like Kinase Phosphorylation of Arabidopsis Heterotrimeric G-Protein Gα - Subunit AtGPA1]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-08-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/752634v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
EXP1 is required for organization of the intraerythrocytic malaria parasite vacuole 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/752634v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Intraerythrocytic malaria parasites reside within a parasitophorous vacuole membrane (PVM) that closely overlays the parasite plasma membrane (PPM) and constitutes the barrier between parasite and host compartments. The PVM is the site of several essential transport activities but the basis for organization of this membrane system is unknown. We utilized the second-generation promiscuous biotin ligase BioID2 fused to EXP2 or HSP101 to probe the content of the PVM, identifying known and novel candidate PVM proteins. Among the best represented hits were members of a group of single-pass integral membrane proteins that constitute a major component of the PVM proteome but whose function remains unclear. We investigated the function of EXP1, the longest known member of this group, by adapting a CRISPR/Cpf1 genome editing system to install the TetR-DOZI-aptamers system for conditional translational control. EXP1 knockdown was essential for intraerythrocytic development and accompanied by profound changes in vacuole ultrastructure, including increased separation of the PVM and PPM and formation of abnormal membrane structures in the enlarged vacuole lumen. While previous in vitro studies indicated EXP1 possesses glutathione S-transferase activity, a mutant version of EXP1 lacking a residue important for this activity in vitro still provides substantial rescue of endogenous exp1 knockdown in vivo. Intriguingly, while activity of the Plasmodium translocon of exported proteins was not impacted by depletion of EXP1, the distribution of the translocon pore-forming protein EXP2 was substantially altered. Collectively, our results reveal a novel PVM defect that indicates a critical role for EXP1 in maintaining proper PVM organization.nnImportanceLike other obligate intracellular apicomplexans, blood-stage malaria parasites reside within a membrane-bound compartment inside the erythrocyte known as the parasitophorous vacuole. Although the vacuole is the site of several transport activities essential to parasite survival, little is known about its organization. To explore vacuole biology, we adopted recently developed proteomic (BioID2) and genetic (CRISPR/Cpf1) tools for use in Plasmodium falciparum, which allowed us to query the function of the prototypical vacuole membrane protein EXP1.nnKnockdown of EXP1 showed that a previously reported glutathione S-transferase activity cannot fully account for the essential function(s) of EXP1 and revealed a novel role for this protein in maintaining normal vacuole morphology and PVM protein arrangement. Our results provide new insight into vacuole organization and illustrate the power of BioID2 and Cpf1 (which utilizes a T-rich PAM uniquely suited to the P. falciparum genome) for proximity protein identification and genome editing in P. falciparum.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nessel, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rayatpisheh, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jami-Alahmadi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wohlschlegel, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goldberg, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-08-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/752634</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[EXP1 is required for organization of the intraerythrocytic malaria parasite vacuole]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-08-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/760405v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Cytokinin promotes jasmonic acid accumulation in the control of maize leaf growth. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/760405v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Growth of plant organs results from the combined activity of cell division and cell expansion. The coordination of these two processes depends on the interplay between multiple hormones that determine final organ size. Using the semidominant Hairy Sheath Frayed1 (Hsf1) maize mutant, that hypersignals the perception of cytokinin (CK), we show that CK can reduce leaf size and growth rate by decreasing cell division. Linked to CK hypersignaling, the Hsf1 mutant has increased jasmonic acid (JA) content, a hormone that can inhibit cell division. Treatment of wild type seedlings with exogenous JA reduces maize leaf size and growth rate, while JA deficient maize mutants have increased leaf size and growth rate. Expression analysis revealed increased transcript accumulation of several JA pathway genes in the Hsf1 leaf growth zone. A transient treatment of growing wild type maize shoots with exogenous CK also induced JA pathway gene expression, although this effect was blocked by co-treatment with cycloheximide. Together our results suggest that CK can promote JA accumulation possibly through increased expression of specific JA pathway genes.nnOne sentence summaryCytokinin-signaling upregulates the jasmonate biosynthesis pathway, resulting in jasmonate accumulation and influences on maize leaf growth.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Uyehara, A. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Del Valle-Echevarria, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hunter, C. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelissen, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Demuynck, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>James, C. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jander, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muszynski, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-09-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/760405</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Cytokinin promotes jasmonic acid accumulation in the control of maize leaf growth.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-09-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/760942v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A method of back-calculating the log odds ratio and standard error of the log odds ratio from the reported group-level risk of disease 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/760942v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In clinical trials and observational studies, the effect of an intervention or exposure can be reported as an absolute or relative comparative measure such as risk difference, odds ratio or risk ratio, or at the group level with the estimated risk of disease in each group. For meta-analysis of results with covariate adjustment, the log of the odds ratio (log odds ratio), with its standard error, is a commonly used measure of effect. However, extracting the adjusted log odds ratio from the reported estimates of disease risk in each group is not straightforward. Here, we propose a method to transform the adjusted probability of the event in each group to the log of the odds ratio and obtain the appropriate (approximate) standard error, which can then use used in a meta-analysis. We also use example data to compare our method with two other methods and show that our method is superior in calculating the standard error of the log odds ratio.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hu, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-09-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/760942</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A method of back-calculating the log odds ratio and standard error of the log odds ratio from the reported group-level risk of disease]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-09-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/772012v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Establishing the phenotypic basis of adherent-invasive Escherichia coli (AIEC) pathogenicity in intestinal inflammation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/772012v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Background & AimsAdherent-invasive Escherichia coli (AIEC) are enriched in ileal Crohns disease patients and implicated in disease etiology. However, AIEC pathogenesis is poorly understood, and it is unclear if the expansion of these organisms contributes to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Questions also remain as to what extent the various in vitro phenotypes used to classify AIEC are pathologically relevant.nnMethodsWe utilized a combination of in vitro phenotyping and a murine model of intestinal inflammation to systematically relate AIEC phenotypes to pathogenicity for 30 mucosa-associated human-derived E. coli strains. In vitro assays used included survival/replication in and TNF- production by J774 macrophages as well as invasion/replication in Caco2 intestinal epithelial cells.nnResultsAIEC do not form a phenotypic group that is clearly separated from non-AIEC. However, E. coli strains displaying in vitro AIEC phenotypes caused, on average, more severe intestinal inflammation. Survival/replication of strains in J774 and Caco2 cells were positively correlated with disease in vivo, while adherence to Caco2 cells and TNF- production by J774 cells were not. Importantly, co-colonization with adherent non-AIEC strains ameliorated AIEC-mediated disease.nnConclusionOur findings do not support the existence of an AIEC pathovar that can be clearly separated from commensal E. coli. However, intracellular survival/replication phenotypes do contribute to murine intestinal inflammation, suggesting that the AIEC overgrowth observed in human IBD makes a causal contribution to disease. The ability to differentiate pathologically-relevant AIEC phenotypes from those that are not provides an important foundation for developing strategies to predict, diagnose and treat human IBD through characterizing and modulating patient E. coli populations.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kittana, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gomes Neto, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heck, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sughroue, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xian, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mantz, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Segura Munoz, R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cody, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmaltz, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moxley, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hostetter, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernando, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clarke, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kachman, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cressler, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Benson, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walter, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ramer-Tait, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-09-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/772012</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Establishing the phenotypic basis of adherent-invasive Escherichia coli (AIEC) pathogenicity in intestinal inflammation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-09-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/789040v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phylogeny and Multiple Independent Whole-Genome Duplication Events in the Brassicales 
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</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/789040v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Whole-genome duplications (WGDs) are prevalent throughout the evolutionary history of plants. For example, dozens of WGDs have been phylogenetically localized across the order Brassicales, specifically, within the family Brassicaceae. However, while its sister family, Cleomaceae, has also been characterized by a WGD, its placement, as well as that of other WGD events in other families in the order, remains unclear. Using phylo-transcriptomics from 74 taxa and genome survey sequencing for 66 of those taxa, we infer nuclear and chloroplast phylogenies to assess relationships among the major families of the Brassicales and within the Brassicaceae. We then use multiple methods of WGD inference to assess placement of WGD events. We not only present well-supported chloroplast and nuclear phylogenies for the Brassicales, but we also putatively place Th- and provide evidence for previously unknown events, including one shared by at least two members of the Resedaceae, which we name Rs-. Given its economic importance and many genomic resources, the Brassicales are an ideal group to continue assessing WGD inference methods. We add to the current conversation on WGD inference difficulties, by demonstrating that sampling is especially important for WGD identification.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mabry, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brose, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Blischak, P. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sutherland, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dismukes, W. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bottoms, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edger, P. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Washburn, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>An, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hall, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McKain, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Al-Shehbaz, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barker, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schranz, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Conant, G. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pires, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/789040</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phylogeny and Multiple Independent Whole-Genome Duplication Events in the Brassicales]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/793372v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phylogenetic relationships of heteroscleromorph demosponges and the affinity of the genus Myceliospongia (Demospongiae incertae sedis) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/793372v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Class Demospongiae - the largest in the phylum Porifera (Sponges) - encompasses 7,581 accepted species across the three recognized subclasses: Keratosa, Verongimorpha, and Heteroscleromorpha. The latter subclass contains the majority of demosponge species and was previously subdivided into subclasses Heteroscleromorpha sensu stricto and Haploscleromorpha. The current classification of demosponges is the result of nearly three decades of molecular studies that culminated in a formal proposal of a revised taxonomy (Morrow and Cardenas, 2015). However, because most of the molecular work utilized partial sequences of nuclear rRNA genes, this classification scheme needs to be tested by additional molecular markers. Here we used sequences and gene order data from complete or nearly complete mitochondrial genomes of 117 demosponges (including 60 new sequences determined for this study and 6 assembled from public sources) and three additional partial mt-genomes to test the phylogenetic relationships within demosponges in general and Heteroscleromorpha sensu stricto in particular. We also investigated the phylogenetic position of Myceliospongia araneosa - a highly unusual demosponge without spicules and spongin fibers, currently classified as Demospongiae incertae sedis.nnOur results support the sub-class relationship within demosponges and reveal four main clades in Heteroscleromorpha sensu stricto: Clade 1 composed of Spongillida, Sphaerocladina, and Scopalinida; Clade 2 composed of Axinellida, Biemnida, Bubarida; Clade 3 composed of Tetractinellida and "Rhizomorina" lithistids; and Clade 4 composed of Agelasida, Polymastida, Clionaida, Suberitida, Poecilosclerida, and Tethyida. The four clades appear to be natural lineages that unite previously defined taxonomic orders. Therefore, if those clades are to be systematically interpreted, they will have the rank of superorders (hence S1-S4). We inferred the following relationships among the newly defined clades: (S1(S2(S3+S4))). Analysis of molecular data from Myceliospongia araneosa - first from this species/genus - placed it in S3 as a sister group to Microscleroderma sp. and Leiodermatium sp. ("Rhizomorina").nnMolecular clock analysis indicated that the origin of the Heteroscleromorpha sensu stricto as well as the basal split in this group between S1 and the rest of the superorder go back to Cambrian, while the divergences among the three other superorders occurred in Ordovician (with the 95% standard variation from Late Cambrian to Early Silurian). Furthermore most of the proposed orders within Heteroscleromorpha appear to have middle Paleozoic origin, while crown groups within order date mostly to Paleozoic to Mesozoic transition. We propose that these molecular clock estimates can be used to readjust ranks for some of the higher taxa within Heteroscleromorpha.nnIn addition to phylogenetic information, we found several unusual mtgenomic features among the sampled species, broadening our understanding of mitochondrial genome evolution in this group and animals in general. In particular, we found mitochondrial introns within cox2 (first in animals) and rnl (first in sponges).
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lavrov, D. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maldonado, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perez, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morrow, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/793372</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phylogenetic relationships of heteroscleromorph demosponges and the affinity of the genus Myceliospongia (Demospongiae incertae sedis)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/794347v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Exact Distribution of Linkage Disequilibrium in the Presence of Mutation, Selection or Minor Allele Frequency Filtering 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/794347v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Linkage disequilibrium (LD), often expressed in terms of the squared correlation (r2) between allelic values at two loci, is an important concept in many branches of genetics and genomics. Genetic drift and recombination have opposite effects on LD, and thus r2 will keep changing until the effects of these two forces are counterbalanced. Several approximations have been used to determine the expected value of r2 at equilibrium in the presence or absence of mutation. In this paper, we propose a probability-based approach to compute the exact distribution of allele frequencies at two loci in a finite population at any generation t conditional on the distribution at generation t - 1. As r2 is a function of this distribution of allele frequencies, this approach can be used to examine the distribution of r2 over generations as it approaches equilibrium. The exact distribution of LD from our method is used to describe, quantify and compare LD at different equilibria, including equilibrium in the absence or presence of mutation, selection, and filtering by minor allele frequency. We also propose a deterministic formula for expected LD in the presence of mutation at equilibrium based on the exact distribution of LD.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cheng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernando, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garrick, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kachman, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/794347</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Exact Distribution of Linkage Disequilibrium in the Presence of Mutation, Selection or Minor Allele Frequency Filtering]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/795237v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
GenomeQC: A quality assessment tool for genome assemblies and gene structure annotations 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/795237v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundGenome assemblies are foundational for understanding the biology of a species. They provide a physical framework for mapping additional sequences, thereby enabling characterization of, for example, genomic diversity and differences in gene expression across individuals and tissue types. Quality metrics for genome assemblies gauge both the completeness and contiguity of an assembly and help provide confidence in downstream biological insights. To compare quality across multiple assemblies, a set of common metrics are typically calculated and then compared to one or more gold standard reference genomes. While several tools exist for calculating individual metrics, applications providing comprehensive evaluations of multiple assembly features are, perhaps surprisingly, lacking. Here, we describe a new toolkit that integrates multiple metrics to characterize both assembly and gene annotation quality in a way that enables comparison across multiple assemblies and assembly types.nnFindingsOur application, named GenomeQC, is an easy-to-use and interactive web framework that integrates various quantitative measures to characterize genome assemblies and annotations. GenomeQC provides researchers with a comprehensive summary of these statistics and allows for benchmarking against gold standard reference assemblies.nnConclusionsThe GenomeQC web application is implemented in R/Shiny version 1.5.9 and Python 3.6 and is freely available at https://genomeqc.maizegdb.org/ under the GPL license.nnAll source code and a containerized version of the GenomeQC pipeline is available in the GitHub repository https://github.com/HuffordLab/GenomeQC.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Manchanda, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Portwood, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/795237</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[GenomeQC: A quality assessment tool for genome assemblies and gene structure annotations]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/796060v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Highly expressed maize pollen genes display coordinated expression with neighboring transposable elements and contribute to pollen fitness 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/796060v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In flowering plants, the haploid male gametophyte (pollen) is essential for sperm delivery, double fertilization, and subsequent initiation of seed development. Pollen also undergoes dynamic epigenetic regulation of expression from transposable elements (TEs), but how this process interacts with gene regulation and function is not clearly understood. To identify components of these processes, we quantified transcript levels in four male reproductive stages of maize (tassel primordia, microspores, mature pollen, and isolated sperm cells) via RNA-seq. We found that, in contrast to Arabidopsis TE expression in pollen, TE transcripts in maize accumulate as early as the microspore stage and are also present in sperm cells. Intriguingly, coordinated expression was observed between the most highly expressed protein-coding genes and neighboring TEs, specifically in both mature pollen and sperm cells. To test the hypothesis that such elevated expression correlates with functional relevance, we measured the fitness cost (male-specific transmission defect) of GFP-tagged exon insertion mutations in over 50 genes highly expressed in pollen vegetative cell, sperm cell, or seedling (as a sporophytic control). Insertions in genes highly expressed only in seedling or primarily in sperm cells (with one exception) exhibited no difference from the expected 1:1 transmission ratio. In contrast, insertions in over 20% of vegetative cell genes were associated with significant reductions in fitness, showing a positive correlation of transcript level with non-Mendelian segregation. The gamete expressed2 (gex2) gene was the single sperm cell gene associated with reduced transmission when mutant (<35% for two independent insertions), and also triggered seed defects when crossed as a male, supporting a role for gex2 in double fertilization. Overall, our study demonstrates a developmentally programmed and coordinated transcriptional activation of TEs and genes, and further identifies maize pollen as a model in which transcriptomic data have predictive value for quantitative phenotypes.nnAuthor SummaryIn flowering plants, pollen is essential for delivering sperm cells to the egg and central cell for double fertilization, initiating the process of seed development. In plants with abundant pollen like maize, this process can be highly competitive. In an added layer of complexity, growing evidence indicates expression of transposable elements (TEs) is more dynamic in pollen than in other plant tissues. How these elements impact pollen function and gene regulation is not well understood. We used transcriptional profiling to generate a framework for both detailed analysis of TE expression and quantitative assessment of gene function during maize pollen development. TEs are expressed early and persist, many showing coordinate activation with highly-expressed neighboring genes in the pollen vegetative cell and sperm cells. Measuring fitness costs for a set of over 50 mutations indicates a correlation between elevated transcript level and gene function in the vegetative cell. Finally, we establish a role in fertilization for the gamete expressed2 (gex2) gene, identified based on its specific expression in sperm cells. These results highlight maize pollen as a powerful model for investigating the developmental interplay of TEs and genes, as well as for measuring fitness contributions of specific genes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Warman, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Panda, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vejlupkova, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hokin, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Unger-Wallace, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cole, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chettoor, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vollbrecht, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Evans, M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Slotkin, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fowler, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/796060</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Highly expressed maize pollen genes display coordinated expression with neighboring transposable elements and contribute to pollen fitness]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/800177v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
TEsorter: lineage-level classification of transposable elements using conserved protein domains 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/800177v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
SummaryTransposable elements (TEs) constitute an import part in eukaryotic genomes, but their classification, especially in the lineage or clade level, is still challenging. For this purpose, we propose TEsorter, which is based on conserved protein domains of TEs. It is easy-to-use, fast with multiprocessing, sensitive and precise to classify TEs especially LTR retrotransposons (LTR-RTs). Its results can also directly reflect phylogenetic relationships and diversities of the classified LTR-RTs.nnAvailabilityThe code in Python is freely available at https://github.com/zhangrengang/TEsorter.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhang, R.-G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Z.-X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/800177</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[TEsorter: lineage-level classification of transposable elements using conserved protein domains]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/801480v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Malaria parasite immune evasion and adaptation to its mosquito host is influenced by the acquisition of multiple blood meals 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/801480v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A minimum of two blood meals are required for a mosquito to acquire and transmit malaria, yet Anopheles mosquitoes frequently obtain additional blood meals during their adult lifespan. To determine the impact of subsequent blood-feeding on parasite development in Anopheles gambiae, we examined rodent and human Plasmodium parasite infection with or without an additional non-infected blood meal. We find that an additional blood meal significantly reduces P. berghei immature oocyst numbers, yet does not influence mature oocysts that have already begun sporogony. This is in contrast to experiments performed with the human parasite, P. falciparum, where an additional blood meal does not affect oocyst numbers. These observations are reproduced when mosquitoes were similarly challenged with an artificial protein meal, suggesting that parasite losses are due to the physical distension of the mosquito midgut. We provide evidence that feeding compromises the integrity of the midgut basal lamina, enabling the recognition and lysis of immature P. berghei oocysts by the mosquito complement system. Moreover, we demonstrate that additional feeding promotes P. falciparum oocyst growth, suggesting that human malaria parasites exploit host resources provided with blood-feeding to accelerate their growth. This contrasts experiments with P. berghei, where the size of surviving oocysts is independent of an additional blood meal. Together, these data demonstrate differences in the ability of Plasmodium species to evade immune detection and adapt to utilize host resources at the oocyst stage, representing an additional, yet unexplored component of vectorial capacity that has important implications for transmission of malaria.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kwon, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reynolds, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Simoes, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dimopoulos, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/801480</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Malaria parasite immune evasion and adaptation to its mosquito host is influenced by the acquisition of multiple blood meals]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/804419v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic regulators of mineral amount in Nelore cattle muscle predicted by a new co-expression and regulatory impact factor approach 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/804419v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mineral amount in bovine muscle affect meat quality, growth, health and reproductive traits in beef cattle. To better understand the genetic basis of this phenotype, we implemented new applications of use for two complementary algorithms: the partial correlation and information theory (PCIT) and the regulatory impact factor (RIF), by including GEBVs as part of the input. We used PCIT to determine putative regulatory relationships based on significant associations between gene expression and mineral amount. Then, RIF was used to determine the regulatory impact of genes and miRNA expression over mineral amount. We also investigated over-represented pathways, as well as evidences from previous studies carried in the same population, to determine regulatory genes for mineral amount e.g. NOX1, whose expression was positively correlated to Zn and was described as regulated by this mineral in humans. With this methodology, we were able to identify genes, miRNAs and pathways not yet described as important for mineral amount. The results support the hypothesis that extracellular matrix interactions are the core regulator of mineral amount in muscle cells. Putative regulators described here add information to this hypothesis, expanding the molecular relationships between gene expression and minerals.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Afonso, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fortes, M. R. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reverter-Gomez, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diniz, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cesar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Lima, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Petrini, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Souza, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coutinho, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mourao, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zerlotini, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gromboni, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nogueira, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Regitano, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/804419</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic regulators of mineral amount in Nelore cattle muscle predicted by a new co-expression and regulatory impact factor approach]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/804807v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identification of a small molecule that stimulates human beta-cell proliferation and insulin secretion, and protects against cytotoxic stress in rat insulinoma cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/804807v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A key event in the development of both major forms of diabetes is the loss of functional pancreatic islet {beta}-cell mass. Strategies aimed at enhancing {beta}-cell regeneration have long been pursued, but methods for reliably inducing human {beta}-cell proliferation with full retention of key functions such as glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) are still very limited. We have previously reported that overexpression of the homeobox transcription factor Nkx6.1 stimulates {beta}-cell proliferation, while also enhancing GSIS and providing protection against {beta}-cell cytotoxicity through induction of the VGF prohormone. We developed an Nkx6.1 pathway screen by stably transfecting 832/13 rat insulinoma cells with a VGF promoter-luciferase reporter construct, using the resultant cell line to screen a 630,000 compound chemical library. We isolated three compounds with consistent effects to stimulate human islet cell proliferation. Further studies of the most potent of these compounds, GNF-9228, revealed that it selectively activates human {beta}-cell relative to -cell proliferation and has no effect on {delta}-cell replication. In addition, pre-treatment, but not short term exposure of human islets to GNF-9228 enhances GSIS. GNF-9228 also protects 832/13 insulinoma cells against ER stress- and inflammatory cytokine-induced cytotoxicity. In contrast to recently emergent Dyrk1a inhibitors that stimulate human islet cell proliferation, GNF-9228 does not activate NFAT translocation. These studies have led to identification of a small molecule with pleiotropic positive effects on islet biology, including stimulation of human {beta}-cell proliferation and insulin secretion, and protection against multiple agents of cytotoxic stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hohmeier, H. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stephens, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McNamara, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Laffitte, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Newgard, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/804807</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identification of a small molecule that stimulates human beta-cell proliferation and insulin secretion, and protects against cytotoxic stress in rat insulinoma cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/808246v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Mitochondrial Dysfunction Induces Epigenetic Dysregulation by H3K27 Hyperacetylation to Perturb Active Enhancers in Parkinson’s Disease Models 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/808246v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Genetic mutations explain only 10-15% of cases of Parkinsons disease (PD), while an overriding environmental component has been implicated in the etiopathogenesis of PD. But regardless of where the underlying triggers for the onset of familial and sporadic PD fall on the gene-environment axis, mitochondrial dysfunction emerges as a common mediator of dopaminergic neuronal degeneration. Herein, we employ a multidisciplinary approach to convincingly demonstrate that neurotoxicant exposure- and genetic mutation-driven mitochondrial dysfunction share a common mechanism of epigenetic dysregulation. Under both scenarios, lysine 27 acetylation of likely variant H3.2 (H3.2K27ac) increased in dopaminergic neuronal models of PD, thereby opening that region to active enhancer activity via H3K27 hyperacetylation. These vulnerable epigenomic loci represent potential transcription factor motifs for PD pathogenesis. We further confirmed the mitochondrial dysfunction induced H3K27ac during neurodegeneration in ex vivo models of PD. Our results reveal an exciting axis of  exposure/mutation-mitochondrial dysfunction-metabolism-H3K27ac-transcriptome for PD pathogenesis. Collectively, the novel mechanistic insights presented here interlinks mitochondrial dysfunction to epigenetic transcriptional regulation in dopaminergic degeneration as well as offer potential new epigenetic intervention strategies for PD.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Huang, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lou, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charli, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kong, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jin, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anantharam, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/808246</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Mitochondrial Dysfunction Induces Epigenetic Dysregulation by H3K27 Hyperacetylation to Perturb Active Enhancers in Parkinson’s Disease Models]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/809988v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Gene Ontology Meta Annotator for Plants 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/809988v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Annotating gene structures and functions to genome assemblies is necessary to make assembly resources useful for biological inference. Gene Ontology (GO) term assignment is the most used functional annotation system, and new methods for GO assignment have improved the quality of GO-based function predictions. The Gene Ontology Meta Annotator for Plants (GOMAP) is an optimized, high-throughput, and reproducible pipeline for genome-scale GO annotation of plants. We containerized GOMAP to increase portability and reproducibility and also optimized its performance for HPC environments. Here we report on the pipelines availability and performance for annotating large, repetitive plant genomes and describe how GOMAP was used to annotate multiple maize genomes as a test case. Assessment shows that GOMAP expands and improves the number of genes annotated and annotations assigned per gene as well as the quality (based on Fmax) of GO assignments in maize. GOMAP has been deployed to annotate other species including wheat, rice, barley, cotton, and soy. Instructions and access to the GOMAP Singularity container are freely available online at https://bioinformapping.com/gomap/. A list of annotated genomes and links to data is maintained at https://dill-picl.org/projects/gomap/.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wimalanathan, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/809988</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Gene Ontology Meta Annotator for Plants]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/814491v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Replaying the evolutionary tape to investigate subgenome dominance in allopolyploidBrassica napus 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/814491v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Interspecific hybridization and allopolyploidization merges evolutionarily distinct parental genomes (subgenomes) into a single nucleus. A frequent observation is that one subgenome is "dominant" over the other subgenome, having a greater number of reatined duplicate genes and being more highly expressed. Which subgenome becomes dominantly expressed in allopolyploids remains poorly understood. Here we "replayed the evolutionary tape" with six isogenic resynthesized Brassica napus (rapeseed) allopolyploid lines and investigated subgenome dominance patterns over the first ten generations. We found that the same subgenome was consistently more dominantly expressed in all lines and generations. Furthermore, DNA methylation differences between subgenomes mirrored the observed gene expression bias towards the Brassica oleracea derived  C subgenome in all lines and generations. These differences in gene expression and methylation were also found when comparing the progenitor genomes, suggesting subgenome dominance is related to inherited parental genome differences rather than a byproduct of allopolyploidization. Gene network analyses indicated an enrichment for network interactions and several biological functions for  C subgenome biased pairs, but no enrichment was observed for  A subgenome biased pairs. These findings demonstrate that "replaying the evolutionary tape" in allopolyploids results in repeatable and predictable subgenome expression dominance patterns based on preexisting genetic differences among the parental species. These findings have major implications regarding the genotypic and phenotypic diversity observed following plant hybridization in both ecological and agricultural contexts.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bird, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Niederhuth, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ou, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gehan, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pires, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xiong, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>VanBuren, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edger, P. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/814491</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Replaying the evolutionary tape to investigate subgenome dominance in allopolyploidBrassica napus]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/816710v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transcriptomic Profile Analysis of Brain Inferior Colliculus Following Acute Hydrogen Sulfide Exposure 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/816710v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a gaseous molecule found naturally in the environment, and as an industrial byproduct, and is known to cause acute death and induces long-term neurological disorders following acute high dose exposures. Currently, there is no drug approved for treatment of acute H2S-induced neurotoxicity and/or neurological sequelae. Lack of a deep understanding of pathogenesis of H2S-induced neurotoxicity has delayed the development of appropriate therapeutic drugs that target H2S-induced neuropathology. RNA sequencing analysis was performed to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of H2S-induced neurodegeneration, and to identify key molecular elements and pathways that contribute to H2S-induced neurotoxicity. C57BL/6J mice were exposed by whole body inhalation to 700 ppm of H2S for either one day, two consecutive days or 4 consecutive days. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan analyses showed H2S exposure induced lesions in the inferior colliculus (IC) and thalamus (TH). This mechanistic study focused on the IC. RNA Sequencing analysis revealed that mice exposed once, twice, or 4 times had 283, 193 and 296 differentially expressed genes (DEG), respectively (q-value < 0.05, fold-change > 1.5). Hydrogen sulfide exposure modulated multiple biological pathways including unfolded protein response, neurotransmitters, oxidative stress, hypoxia, calcium signaling, and inflammatory response in the IC. Hydrogen sulfide exposure activated PI3K/Akt and MAPK signaling pathways. Pro-inflammatory cytokines were shown to be potential initiators of the modulated signaling pathways following H2S exposure. Furthermore, microglia were shown to release IL-18 and astrocytes released both IL-1{beta} and IL-18 in response to H2S. This transcriptomic analysis data revealed complex signaling pathways involved in H2S-induced neurotoxicity and may provide important associated mechanistic insights.

HighlightsO_LITranscriptomic profiling analyses following acute exposure to H2S were performed
C_LIO_LIMultiple signaling pathways were dysregulated following H2S exposure
C_LIO_LIPI3K/Akt and MAPK signaling pathways were activated after H2S exposure
C_LIO_LIMRI scan analysis revealed lesions in the IC and TH following H2S exposure
C_LIO_LIAcute H2S exposure induced a neuroinflammatory response
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kim, D.-S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anantharam, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Padhi, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thedens, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilbreath, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rumbeiha, W. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/816710</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transcriptomic Profile Analysis of Brain Inferior Colliculus Following Acute Hydrogen Sulfide Exposure]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/818526v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) primes innate immune responses that limit bacteria and malaria parasite survival in Anopheles gambiae 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/818526v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Blood-feeding is an integral behavior of mosquitoes to acquire nutritional resources needed for reproduction. This requirement also enables mosquitoes to serve as efficient vectors to acquire and potentially transmit a multitude of mosquito-borne diseases, most notably malaria. Recent studies suggest that mosquito immunity is stimulated following a blood meal, independent of infection status. Since blood-feeding results in the increased production of the hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E), we hypothesized that 20E may play an important role in priming the immune response for pathogen challenge. Herein, we examine the immunological effects of priming in Anopheles gambiae with 20E prior to pathogen infection, demonstrating a significant reduction in bacteria and Plasmodium berghei survival in the mosquito host. RNA-seq analysis following 20E treatment identifies several known 20E-regulated genes, as well as several immune genes with previously reported function in anti-pathogen defense. This includes the anti-microbial peptide cecropin 3, which we demonstrate its role as an antagonist of bacteria and Plasmodium in Anopheles gambiae and provide support that these responses are under temporal regulation. Together, these data demonstrate that 20E influences cellular immune function and anti-pathogen immunity following mosquito blood-feeding, arguing the importance of hormones in the regulation of mosquito innate immune function.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Reynolds, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kwon, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-10-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/818526</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) primes innate immune responses that limit bacteria and malaria parasite survival in Anopheles gambiae]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-10-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/829127v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Causes and consequences of mitochondrial proteome size-variation in animals 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/829127v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Despite a conserved set of core mitochondrial functions, animal mitochondrial proteomes show a large variation in size. In this study, we analyzed the putative mechanisms behind and functional significance of this variation using experimentally-verified mt-proteomes of four bilaterian animals and two non-animal outgroups. We found that, of several factors affecting mitochondrial proteome size, evolution of novel mitochondrial proteins in mammals and loss of ancestral proteins in protostomes were the main contributors. Interestingly, gain and loss of conventional mitochondrial targeting signals was not a significant factor in the proteome size evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Muthye, V. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lavrov, D. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-11-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/829127</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Causes and consequences of mitochondrial proteome size-variation in animals]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-11-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/852749v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A multiple-trait Bayesian Lasso for genome-enabled analysis and prediction of complex traits 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/852749v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1A multiple-trait Bayesian LASSO (MBL) for genome-based analysis and prediction of quantitative traits is presented and applied to two real data sets. The data-generating model is a multivariate linear Bayesian regression on possibly a huge number of molecular markers, and with a Gaussian residual distribution posed. Each (one per marker) of the T x 1 vectors of regression coefficients (T : number of traits) is assigned the same T -variate Laplace prior distribution, with a null mean vector and unknown scale matrix{Sigma} . The multivariate prior reduces to that of the standard univariate Bayesian LASSO when T = 1. The covariance matrix of the residual distribution is assigned a multivariate Jeffreys prior and{Sigma} is given an inverse-Wishart prior. The unknown quantities in the model are learned using a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling scheme constructed using a scale-mixture of normal distributions representation. MBL is demonstrated in a bivariate context employing two publicly available data sets using a bivariate genomic best linear unbiased prediction model (GBLUP) for benchmarking results. The first data set is one where wheat grain yields in two different environments are treated as distinct traits. The second data set comes from genotyped Pinus trees with each individual was measured for two traits, rust bin and gall volume. In MBL, the bivariate marker effects are shrunk differentially, i.e., "short" vectors are more strongly shrunk towards the origin than in GBLUP; conversely, "long" vectors are shrunk less. A predictive comparison was carried out as well where, in wheat, the comparators of MBL where bivariate GBLUP and bivariate Bayes C{pi}, a variable selection procedure. A training-testing layout was used, with 100 random reconstructions of training and testing sets. For the wheat data, all methods produced similar predictions. In Pinus, MBL gave better predictions that either a Bayesian bivariate GBLUP or the single trait Bayesian LASSO. MBL has been implemented in the Julia language package JWAS and is now available for the scientific community to explore with different traits, species and environments. It is well known that there is no universally best prediction machine and MBL represents a new piece in the armamentarium for genome-enabled analysis and prediction of complex traits.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>GIANOLA, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>FERNANDO, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-11-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/852749</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A multiple-trait Bayesian Lasso for genome-enabled analysis and prediction of complex traits]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-11-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/857771v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Systems analyses of key metabolic modules of floral and extrafloral nectaries of cotton 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/857771v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Nectar is a primary reward mediating plant-animal mutualisms to improve plant fitness and reproductive success. In Gossypium hirsutum (cotton), four distinct trichomatic nectaries develop, one floral and three extrafloral. The secreted floral and extrafloral nectars serve different purposes, with the floral nectar attracting bees to promote pollination and the extrafloral nectar attracting predatory insects as a means of indirect resistance from herbivores. Cotton therefore provides an ideal system to contrast mechanisms of nectar production and nectar composition between floral and extrafloral nectaries. Here, we report the transcriptome, ultrastructure, and metabolite spatial distribution using mass spectrometric imaging of the four cotton nectary types throughout development. Additionally, the secreted nectar metabolomes were defined and were jointly composed of 197 analytes, 60 of which were identified. Integration of theses datasets support the coordination of merocrine-based and eccrine-based models of nectar synthesis. The nectary ultrastructure supports the merocrine-based model due to the abundance of rough endoplasmic reticulum positioned parallel to the cell walls and profusion of vesicles fusing to the plasma membranes. The eccrine-based model which consist of a progression from starch synthesis to starch degradation and to sucrose biosynthesis was supported by gene expression data. This demonstrates conservation of the eccrine-based model for the first time in both trichomatic and extrafloral nectaries. Lastly, nectary gene expression data provided evidence to support de novo synthesis of amino acids detected in the secreted nectars.

One sentence summaryThe eccrine-based model of nectar synthesis and secretion is conserved in both trichomatic and extrafloral nectaries determined by a system-based comparison of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) nectaries.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chatt, E. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mahalim, S.-N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mohd-Fadzil, N.-A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roy, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Klinkenberg, P. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Horner, H. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hampton, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carter, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-11-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/857771</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Systems analyses of key metabolic modules of floral and extrafloral nectaries of cotton]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-11-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/858365v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Effect of Sequence Depth and Length in Long-read Assembly of the Maize Inbred NC358 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/858365v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Recent improvements in the quality and yield of long-read data and scaffolding technology have made it possible to rapidly generate reference-quality assemblies for complex genomes. Still, generating these assemblies is costly, and an assessment of critical sequence depth and read length to obtain high-quality assemblies is important for allocating limited resources. To this end, we have generated eight independent assemblies for the complex genome of the maize inbred line NC358 using PacBio datasets ranging from 20-75x genomic depth and N50 read lengths of 11-21 kb. Assemblies with 30x or less depth and N50 read length of 11 kb were highly fragmented, with even the low-copy genic fraction of the genome showing degradation at 20x depth. Distinct sequence-quality thresholds were observed for complete assembly of genes, transposable elements, and highly repetitive genomic features such as telomeres, heterochromatic knobs and centromeres. This study provides a useful resource allocation reference to the community as long-read technologies continue to mature.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>LIU, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chougule, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fungtammasan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stein, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Llaca, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MANCHANDA, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilbert, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wei, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chin, C.-S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufnagel, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pedersen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snodgrass, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fengler, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walenz, B. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koren, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phillippy, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hannigan, B. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dawe, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ware, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-11-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/858365</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Effect of Sequence Depth and Length in Long-read Assembly of the Maize Inbred NC358]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-11-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/863993v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Contacting domains that segregate lipid from solute transporters in malaria parasites 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/863993v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
While membrane contact sites (MCS) between intracellular organelles are abundant1, and cell-cell junctions are classically defined2, very little is known about the contacts between membranes that delimit extracellular junctions within cells, such as those of chloroplasts and intracellular parasites. The malaria parasite replicates within a unique organelle, the parasitophorous vacuole (PV) but the mechanism(s) are obscure by which the limiting membrane of the PV, the parasitophorous vacuolar membrane (PVM), collaborates with the parasite plasma membrane (PPM) to support the transport of proteins, lipids, nutrients, and metabolites between the cytoplasm of the parasite and the cytoplasm of the host erythrocyte (RBC). Here, we demonstrate the existence of multiple micrometer-sized regions of especially close apposition between the PVM and the PPM. To determine if these contact sites are involved in any sort of transport, we localized the PVM nutrient-permeable and protein export channel EXP2, as well as the PPM lipid transporter PfNCR1. We found that EXP2 is excluded from, but PfNCR1 is included within these regions of close apposition. Thus, these two different transport systems handling hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances, respectively, assume complementary and exclusive distributions. This new structural and molecular data assigns a functional significance to a macroscopic membrane domain.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Garten, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roth, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tenkova-Heuser, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heuser, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bleck, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goldberg, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zimmerberg, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/863993</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Contacting domains that segregate lipid from solute transporters in malaria parasites]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/867069v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The tuatara genome: insights into vertebrate evolutionfrom the sole survivor of an ancient reptilian order 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/867069v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus), the only living member of the archaic reptilian order Rhynchocephalia (Sphenodontia) once widespread across Gondwana, is an iconic and enigmatic terrestrial vertebrate endemic to New Zealand. A key link to the now extinct stem reptiles from which dinosaurs, modern reptiles, birds and mammals evolved, the tuatara provides exclusive insights into the ancestral amniotes. The tuatara genome, at [~]5 Gbp, is among the largest vertebrate genomes assembled. Analysis of this genome and comparisons to other vertebrates reinforces the uniqueness of the tuatara. Phylogenetic analyses indicate tuatara diverged from the snakes and lizards [~]250 MYA. This lineage also shows moderate rates of molecular evolution, with instances of punctuated evolution. Genome sequence analysis identifies expansions of protein, non-protein-coding RNA families, and repeat elements, the latter of which show an extraordinary amalgam of reptilian and mammalian features. Sequencing of this genome provides a valuable resource for deep comparative analyses of tetrapods, as well as for tuatara biology and conservation. It also provides important insights into both the technical challenges and the cultural obligations associated with genome sequencing.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gemmell, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rutherford, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Prost, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tollis, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Winter, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Macey, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adelson, D. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Suh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bertozzi, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grau, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Organ, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gardner, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muffato, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Patricio, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Billis, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, F. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flicek, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Petersen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Michalak, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckley, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wilson, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schott, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jordan, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Newcomb, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arroyo, J. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Valenzuela, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hore, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Renart, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peona, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peart, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warmuth, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>ZENG, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kortschak, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Raison, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zapata, V. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Santesmasses, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mariotti, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guigo, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rupp, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Twort, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dussex, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, H. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Abe, H</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/867069</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The tuatara genome: insights into vertebrate evolutionfrom the sole survivor of an ancient reptilian order]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/868042v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Unraveling a tangled skein: Evolutionary analysis of the bacterial gibberellin biosynthetic operon 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/868042v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Gibberellin (GA) phytohormones are ubiquitous regulators of growth and developmental processes in vascular plants. The convergent evolution of GA production by plant-associated bacteria, including both symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and phytopathogens, suggests that manipulation of GA signaling is a powerful mechanism for microbes to gain an advantage in these interactions. Although homologous operons encode GA biosynthetic enzymes in both rhizobia and phytopathogens, notable genetic heterogeneity and scattered operon distribution in these lineages suggests distinct functions for GA in varied plant-microbe interactions. Therefore, deciphering GA operon evolutionary history could provide crucial evidence for understanding the distinct biological roles for bacterial GA production. To further establish the genetic composition of the GA operon, two operon-associated genes that exhibit limited distribution among rhizobia were biochemically characterized, verifying their roles in GA biosynthesis. Additionally, a maximum-parsimony ancestral gene block reconstruction algorithm was employed to characterize loss, gain, and horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of GA operon genes within alphaproteobacteria rhizobia, which exhibit the most heterogeneity among GA operon-containing bacteria. Collectively, this evolutionary analysis reveals a complex history for HGT of both individual genes and the entire GA operon, and ultimately provides a basis for linking genetic content to bacterial GA functions in diverse plant-microbe interactions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nett, R. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, N. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nagel, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marcassa, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charles, T. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peters, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2019-12-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/868042</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Unraveling a tangled skein: Evolutionary analysis of the bacterial gibberellin biosynthetic operon]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2019-12-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.11.487885v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Using large soybean historical data to study genotype by environment variation and identify mega-environments with the integration of genetic and non-genetic factors 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.11.487885v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) provides plant-based protein for global food production and is extensively bred to create cultivars with greater productivity in distinct environments. Plant breeders evaluate new soybean genotypes using multi-environment trials (MET). The application of MET assumes that trial locations provide representative environmental conditions that cultivars are likely to encounter when grown by farmers. In addition, MET are important to depict the patterns of genotype by environment interactions (GEI). To evaluate GEI for soybean seed yield and identify mega-environments (ME), a retrospective analysis of 39,006 data points from experimental soybean genotypes evaluated in preliminary and uniform field trials conducted by public plant breeders from 1989-2019 was considered. ME were identified from phenotypic information from the annual trials, geographic, soil, and meteorological records at the trial locations. Results indicate that yield variation was mostly explained by location and location by year interactions. The static portion of the GEI represented 26.30% of the total yield variance. Estimates of variance components derived from linear mixed models demonstrated that the phenotypic variation due to genotype by location interaction effects was greater than genotype by year interaction effects. A trend analysis indicated a two-fold increase in the genotypic variance between 1989-1995 and 1996-2019. Furthermore, the heterogeneous estimates of genotypic, genotype by location, genotype by year, and genotype by location by year variances, were encapsulated by distinct probability distributions. The observed target population of environments can be divided into at least two and at most three ME, thereby suggesting improvements in the response to selection can be achieved when selecting directly for clustered (i.e., regions, ME) versus selecting across regions. Clusters obtained using phenotypic data, latitude, and soil variables plus elevation, were the most effective. In addition, we published the R package SoyURT which contains the data sets used in this work.

2 HighlightsO_LIMega-environments can be identified with phenotypic, geographic, and meteorological data.
C_LIO_LIReliable estimates of variances can be obtained with proper analyses of historical data.
C_LIO_LIGenotype by location was more important than genotype by year variation for seed yield.
C_LIO_LIThe trend in genotype by environment variances was captured in probability distributions.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dalsente Krause, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Olimpio das Gracas Dias, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beavis, W. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-04-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.04.11.487885</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Using large soybean historical data to study genotype by environment variation and identify mega-environments with the integration of genetic and non-genetic factors]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-04-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.11.487926v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Extracellular vesicles secreted by Brugia malayi microfilariae modulate the melanization pathway in the mosquito host 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.11.487926v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Vector-borne, filarial nematode diseases represent a significant and affecting disease burden in humans, domestic animals, and livestock worldwide. Parasitic filarial nematodes require both an intermediate (vector) host and a definitive (mammalian) host during the course of their life cycle. In either host, the nematode must evade the host elicited immune response in order to develop and establish infection. There is direct evidence of parasite-derived immunomodulation in mammals, however, there is less evidence of parasite immunomodulation of the vector host. We have previously reported that all life stages of Brugia malayi, a causative agent of lymphatic filariasis, secrete extracellular vesicles (EVs). Here we investigate the immunomodulatory effects of microfilariae derived EVs on the vector host Aedes aegypti. RNA-seq analysis of an A. aegypti cell line treated with B. malayi microfilariae EVs showed differential expression of both mRNAs and miRNAs, some with roles in immune regulation. One downregulated gene, AAEL002590, identified as a serine protease, was shown to have direct involvement in the phenoloxidase (PO) cascade through analysis of PO activity. Similarly, injection of adult female mosquitoes with B. malayi microfilariae EVs validated these results in vivo, eliciting a downregulation of the AAEL002590 transcript and a significant reduction in PO activity. Our data indicates that parasite-derived EVs are capable of interfering with critical immune responses in the vector host, particularly immune responses such as melanization that target extracellular parasites. In addition, this data provides novel targets for transmission control strategies for LF and other parasitic diseases.

Author SummaryVector-borne, filarial nematode diseases represent a significant and affecting disease burden in humans, domestic animals and livestock worldwide. Parasitic nematodes must evade the elicited immune response of their hosts in order to develop and establish infection. While there is evidence for immunomodulation of the mammalian host, the mechanism of this immunomodulation is not fully clear and there is limited evidence for immunomodulation of the vector host. Here we have shown that parasite-derived extracellular vesicles are effector structures for immunomodulation of the vector host. In particular, we have identified that parasite-derived extracellular vesicles can interfere with critical mosquito immune responses against parasites. This data provides insight into parasite biology and novel targets for transmission control strategies for parasitic diseases.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Loghry, H. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kwon, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sondjaja, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Minkler, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Young, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wheeler, N. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zamanian, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bartholomay, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimber, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-04-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.04.11.487926</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Extracellular vesicles secreted by Brugia malayi microfilariae modulate the melanization pathway in the mosquito host]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-04-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.12.488070v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A chromosome-scale genome assembly of a Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ac insecticidal protein resistant strain of Helicoverpa zea 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.12.488070v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Helicoverpa zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is an insect pest of major cultivated crops in North and South America. The species has adapted to different host plants and developed resistance to several insecticidal agents, including Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) insecticidal proteins in transgenic cotton and maize. H. zea populations persist year-round in tropical and subtropical regions, but seasonal migrations into temperate zones increase the geographic range of associated crop damage. To better understand the genetic basis of these physiological and ecological characteristics, we generated a high-quality chromosome-level assembly for a single H. zea male from Bt resistant strain, HzStark_Cry1AcR. Hi-C data were used to scaffold an initial 375.2 Mb contig assembly into 30 autosomes and the Z sex chromosome (scaffold N50 = 12.8 Mb and L50 = 14). The scaffolded assembly was error-corrected with a novel pipeline, polishCLR. The mitochondrial genome was assembled through an improved pipeline and annotated. Assessment of this genome assembly indicated 98.8% of the Lepidopteran Benchmark Universal Single-Copy Ortholog set were complete (98.5% as complete single-copy). Repetitive elements comprised approximately 29.5% of the assembly with the plurality (11.2%) classified as retroelements. This chromosome-scale reference assembly for H. zea, ilHelZeax1.1, will facilitate future research to evaluate and enhance sustainable crop production practices.

SignificanceWe established a chromosome-level reference assembly for Helicoverpa zea, an insect pest of multiple cultivated crops in the Americas. This assembly of a Bacillus thuringiensis insecticidal protein resistant strain, HzStark_Cry1AcR, will facilitate future research in areas such as population genomics and adaptations to agricultural control practices.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Stahlke, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tembrock, L. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sim, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chudalayandi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Geib, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Scheffler, B. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perera, O. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilligan, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Childers, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hackett, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coates, B. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-04-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.04.12.488070</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A chromosome-scale genome assembly of a Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ac insecticidal protein resistant strain of Helicoverpa zea]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-04-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.18.488641v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The field of protein function prediction as viewed by different domain scientists 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.18.488641v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Experimental biologists, biocurators, and computational biologists all play a role in characterizing a proteins function. The discovery of protein function in the laboratory by experimental scientists is the foundation of our knowledge about proteins. Experimental findings are compiled in knowledge-bases by biocurators to provide standardized, readily accessible, and computationally amenable information. Computational biologists train their methods using these data to predict protein function and guide subsequent experiments. To understand the state of affairs in this ecosystem, centered here around protein function prediction, we surveyed scientists from these three constituent communities. Our objective was to understand their views on this research area, including the importance of the problem, the usefulness of the methods, the bottlenecks in the field, and the level of interaction between the communities. We show that the three core communities have common but also idiosyncratic perspectives on the field. Most strikingly, experimentalists rarely use modern prediction software, but when presented with predictions, report many to be surprising and useful. Ontologies appear to be highly valued by biocurators, less so by experimentalists and computational biologists, yet controlled vocabularies bridge the communities and simplify the prediction task. Additionally, many software tools are not readily accessible and the predictions presented to the users can be broad and uninformative. To meet both the social and technical challenges in the field, a more productive and meaningful interaction between members of the core communities is necessary.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramola, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Radivojac, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-04-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.04.18.488641</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The field of protein function prediction as viewed by different domain scientists]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-04-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.21.488948v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CAPG: Comprehensive Allopolyploid Genotyper 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.21.488948v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationGenotyping by sequencing is a powerful tool for investigating genetic variation in plants, but many economically important plants are allopolyploids, where homoeologous similarity obscures the subgenomic origin of reads and confounds allelic and homoeologous SNPs. Recent polyploid genotyping methods use allelic frequencies, rate of heterozygosity, parental cross or other information to resolve read assignment, but good subgenomic references offer the most direct information. The typical strategy aligns reads to the joint reference, performs diploid genotyping within each subgenome, and filters the results, but persistent read misassignment results in an excess of false heterozygous calls.

ResultsWe introduce the Comprehensive Allopolyploid Genotyper (CAPG), which formulates an explicit likelihood to weight read alignments against both subgenomic references and genotype individual allopolyploids from whole genome resequencing (WGS) data. We demonstrate CAPG in allotetraploids, where it performs better than GATKs HaplotypeCaller applied to reads aligned to the combined subgenomic references.

AvailabilityCode and tutorials are available at https://github.com/Kkulkarni1/CAPG.git.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kulkarni, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-04-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.04.21.488948</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CAPG: Comprehensive Allopolyploid Genotyper]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-04-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.27.489729v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Powdery mildew effectors AVRA1 and BEC1016 target the ER J-domain protein HvERdj3B required for immunity in barley 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.27.489729v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The barley powdery mildew fungus, Blumeria hordei (Bh), secretes hundreds of candidate secreted effector proteins (CSEPs) to facilitate pathogen infection and colonization. One of these, CSEP0008, is directly recognized by the barley nucleotide-binding leucine-rich-repeat (NLR) receptor, MLA1, and therefore designated AVRA1. Here we show that AVRA1 and the sequence-unrelated Bh effector BEC1016 (CSEP0491) suppress immunity in barley. We used yeast two-hybrid next-generation interaction screens (Y2H-NGIS), followed by binary Y2H and in planta protein-protein interactions studies, and identified a common barley target of AVRA1 and BEC1016, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-localized J-domain protein, HvERdj3B. Silencing of this ER quality control (ERQC) protein increased the Bh penetration. HvERdj3B is ER luminal, and we showed using split GFP that AVRA1 and BEC1016 translocate into the ER - signal peptide-independently. Silencing of HvERdj3B and expression the two effectors hampered trafficking of a vacuolar marker through the ER as a shared cellular phenotype, agreeing with the effectors targeting this ERQC component. Together, these results suggest that the barley innate immunity, preventing Bh entry into epidermal cells, is dependent on ERQC, which in turn requires the J-domain protein, HvERdj3B, regulated by AVRA1 and BEC1016. Plant disease resistance often occurs upon direct or indirect recognition of pathogen effectors by host NLR receptors. Previous work has shown that AVRA1 is directly recognized in the cytosol by the immune receptor, MLA1. We speculate that the AVRA1 J-domain target being inside the ER, where it is inapproachable by NLRs, has forced the plant to evolve this challenging direct recognition.

SIGNIFICANCEThe complex plant immune system is highly dependent on fundamental cellular machineries, such as the endomembrane system and the ER quality control (ERQC), essential for delivery of immunity-associated membrane-bound and endomembrane soluble proteins to their destinations. We now find that pathogen effectors can interact with an ERQC component and suppress immunity, thereby adding to the molecular insight in plant-pathogen interactions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Velasquez-Zapata, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elmore, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xie, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jorgensen, H. J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pedersen, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, R. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thordal-Christensen, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-04-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.04.27.489729</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Powdery mildew effectors AVRA1 and BEC1016 target the ER J-domain protein HvERdj3B required for immunity in barley]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-04-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.05.490808v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A QuantCrit investigation of society's educational debts due to racism, sexism, and classism in biology student learning 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.05.490808v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We investigated the intersectional relationships between racism, sexism, and classism in inequities in student conceptual knowledge in introductory biology courses using a quantitative critical framework. Using Bayesian hierarchical linear models, we examined students conceptual knowledge as measured by the Introductory Molecular and Cell Biology Assessment. The data came from the LASSO database and included 6,547 students from 87 introductory courses at 11 institutions. The model indicated that students with marginalized identities by race, gender, and class tended to start with lower scores than continuing-generation, White men. We conceptualized these differences as educational debts society owed these students due to racism, sexism, and classism. Instruction added to these educational debts for most marginalized groups, with the largest increases for students with multiple marginalized identities. After instruction, society owed Black and Hispanic, first-generation women an educational debt equal to 60-80% of the average learning in the courses. These courses almost all (85/87) used collaborative learning and half (45/87) supported instruction with learning assistants. While research shows collaborative learning better serves students than lecture-based instruction, these results indicate it does not repay educational debts due to racism, sexism, and classism.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nissen, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Van Dusen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kukday, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.05.490808</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A QuantCrit investigation of society's educational debts due to racism, sexism, and classism in biology student learning]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.07.490914v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Population genomics provide insights into the global genetic structure of Colletotrichum graminicola, the causal agent of maize anthracnose 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.07.490914v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundColletotrichum graminicola, the causal agent of maize anthracnose, is an important crop disease worldwide. Understanding the genetic diversity and mechanisms underlying genetic variation in pathogen populations is crucial to the development of effective control strategies. The genus Colletotrichum is largely recognized as asexual, but several species have been reported to have a sexual cycle. Here, we employed a population genomics approach to investigate the genetic diversity and reproductive biology of C. graminicola isolates infecting maize. We sequenced 108 isolates of C. graminicola collected in 14 countries using restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (RAD-Seq) and whole-genome sequencing (WGS).

ResultsClustering analyses based on single-nucleotide polymorphisms showed populational differentiation at a global scale, with three genetic groups delimited by continental origin, compatible with short-dispersal of the pathogen, and geographic subdivision. Distinct levels of genetic diversity were observed between these clades, suggesting different evolutionary histories. Intra and inter-continental migration was predicted between Europe and South America, likely associated with the movement of contaminated germplasm. Low clonality and evidence of genetic recombination were detected from the analysis of linkage disequilibrium and the pairwise homoplasy index (PHI) test for clonality. We show evidence that even if rare (possibly due to losses of sex and meiosis-associated genes) C. graminicola can undergo sexual recombination based on lab assays and genomic analyses.

ConclusionsOur results support hypotheses of intra and intercontinental pathogen migration and genetic recombination with great impact on C. graminicola population structure.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rogerio, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baroncelli, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cuevas-Fernandez, F. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Becerra, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crouch, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bettiol, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Azcarate-Peril, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Malapi-Wigh, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ortega, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Betran, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tenuta, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dambolena, J. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Esker, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Revilla, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jackson-Ziems, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hiltbrunner, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Munkvold, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buhinicek, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vicente-Villardon, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sukno, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thon, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.07.490914</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Population genomics provide insights into the global genetic structure of Colletotrichum graminicola, the causal agent of maize anthracnose]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.10.491380v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Structures reveal a key mechanism of WAVE Regulatory Complex activation by Rac1 GTPase 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.10.491380v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Rho-family GTPase Rac1 activates the WAVE regulatory complex (WRC) to drive Arp2/3-mediated actin polymerization in many essential processes. Rac1 binds to WRC at two distinct sites--the A and D sites. Precisely how Rac1 binds and how the binding triggers WRC activation remain unknown. Here we report WRC structures by itself, and when bound to single or double Rac1 molecules, at [~]3 [A] resolutions by cryogenic-electron microscopy. The structures reveal that Rac1 binds to the two sites by distinct mechanisms, and binding to the A site, but not the D site, drives WRC activation. Activation involves a series of unique conformational changes leading to the release of sequestered WCA (WH2- central-acidic) polypeptide, which stimulates the Arp2/3 complex to polymerize actin. Together with biochemical and cellular analyses, the structures provide a novel mechanistic understanding of how the Rac1-WRC-Arp2/3-actin signaling axis is regulated in diverse biological processes and diseases.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ding, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schaks, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rottner, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.10.491380</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Structures reveal a key mechanism of WAVE Regulatory Complex activation by Rac1 GTPase]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.13.491788v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dendrite branching receptor HPO-30 uses two novel mechanisms to regulate actin cytoskeletal remodeling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.13.491788v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Dendrite morphogenesis is essential for neural circuit formation, yet the molecular mechanisms underlying complex dendrite branching remain elusive. Previous studies on the highly branched C. elegans PVD sensory neuron identified a membrane co-receptor complex that links extracellular signals to intracellular actin remodeling machinery, promoting high-order dendrite branching. In this complex, the claudin-like transmembrane protein HPO-30 recruits the WAVE regulatory complex (WRC) to dendrite branching sites, stimulating the Arp2/3 complex to polymerize actin. We report here our biochemical and structural analysis of this interaction, revealing that the intracellular domain (ICD) of HPO-30 is intrinsically disordered and employs two distinct mechanisms to regulate the actin cytoskeleton. First, HPO-30 ICD binding to the WRC requires dimerization and involves the entire ICD sequence, rather than a short linear peptide motif. This interaction enhances WRC activation by the GTPase Rac1. Second, HPO-30 ICD directly binds to the sides and barbed end of actin filaments. Binding to the barbed end requires ICD dimerization and inhibits both actin polymerization and depolymerization, resembling the actin capping protein CapZ. These dual functions provide an intriguing model of how membrane proteins can integrate distinct mechanisms to fine-tune local actin dynamics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kramer, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Narvaez-Ortiz, H. Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roche, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nolen, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.13.491788</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dendrite branching receptor HPO-30 uses two novel mechanisms to regulate actin cytoskeletal remodeling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.13.491857v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Arf GTPase activates the WAVE Regulatory Complex through a novel binding site 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.13.491857v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Crosstalk between Rho- and Arf-family GTPases plays an important role in linking actin cytoskeletal remodeling to membrane protrusion, organelle structure, and vesicle trafficking. The central actin regulator, WAVE Regulatory Complex (WRC), is a converging point of Rac1 (a Rho-family GTPase) and Arf signaling in many processes, but how Arf promotes WRC activation is unknown. Here we reconstituted a direct interaction between Arf and WRC. This interaction can be greatly enhanced by Rac1 binding to the D site of the WRC. Arf1 binds to a newly identified conserved surface on Sra1 located between the D site and the WH2 helix of WAVE1, which can drive WRC activation using a mechanism distinct from that of Rac1. Mutating Arf binding site abolishes Arf1-WRC interaction, disrupts Arf1-mediated WRC activation, and impairs lamellipodia morphology. This work uncovers a new mechanism underlying WRC activation and provides a mechanistic foundation for studying how WRC-mediated actin polymerization links Arf and Rac signaling in the cell.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schaks, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ding, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ding, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alekhina, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Billadeau, D. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rottner, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.13.491857</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Arf GTPase activates the WAVE Regulatory Complex through a novel binding site]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.16.492117v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Mammary Tissue-Derived Extracellular Matrix Hydrogels Reveal the Role of the Irradiated Microenvironment in Breast Cancer Recurrence 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.16.492117v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Radiation therapy (RT) is essential for triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) treatment. However, patients with TNBC continue to experience recurrence after RT. The role of the extracellular matrix (ECM) of irradiated breast tissue in tumor recurrence is still unknown. In this study, we evaluated the structure, molecular composition, and mechanical properties of irradiated murine mammary fat pads (MFPs) and developed ECM hydrogels from decellularized tissues (dECM) to assess the effects of RT-induced ECM changes on breast cancer cell behavior. Irradiated MFPs were characterized by increased ECM deposition and fiber density compared to unirradiated controls, which may provide a platform for cell invasion and proliferation. ECM component changes in collagens I, IV, and VI, and fibronectin were observed following irradiation in both MFPs and dECM hydrogels. Encapsulated TNBC cell proliferation and invasive capacity was enhanced in irradiated dECM hydrogels. In addition, TNBC cells co-cultured with macrophages in irradiated dECM hydrogels induced M2 macrophage polarization and exhibited further increases in proliferation. Our study establishes that the ECM in radiation-damaged sites promotes TNBC invasion and proliferation as well as an immunosuppressive microenvironment. This work represents an important step toward elucidating how changes in the ECM after RT contribute to breast cancer recurrence.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhu, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alves, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adamo, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wen, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Corn, K. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shostak, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shaub, N. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hacker, B. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>D'Amore, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bardhan, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rafat, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.16.492117</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Mammary Tissue-Derived Extracellular Matrix Hydrogels Reveal the Role of the Irradiated Microenvironment in Breast Cancer Recurrence]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.17.492330v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identifying novel regulators of placental development using time series transcriptomic data and network analyses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.17.492330v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The placenta serves as a connection between the mother and the fetus during pregnancy, and provides the fetus with oxygen, nutrients, and growth hormones. However, the regulatory mechanisms and dynamic gene interaction networks underlying early placental development are understudied. Here, we generated RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data from mouse fetal placenta tissues at embryonic day (e) 7.5, e8.5 and e9.5 to identify genes with timepoint-specific expression, then inferred gene interaction networks to analyze highly connected network modules. We determined that timepoint-specific gene network modules associated with distinct developmental processes, and with similar expression profiles to specific human placental cell populations. From each module, we obtained hub genes and their direct neighboring genes, which were predicted to govern placental functions. We confirmed that four novel candidate regulators identified through our analyses regulate cell migration in the HTR-8/SVneo cell line. Upon conclusion of this study, we were able to predict several novel regulators of placental development using network analysis of bulk RNA-seq data. Our findings and analysis approaches will be valuable for future studies investigating the transcriptional landscape of early placental development.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Vu, H. T. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaur, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kies, K. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Starks, R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuteja, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.17.492330</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identifying novel regulators of placental development using time series transcriptomic data and network analyses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.19.492729v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Semi-field and surveillance data define the natural diapause timeline for Culex pipiens across the United States 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.19.492729v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Culex pipiens is a globally-distributed mosquito of medical and veterinary importance, serving as a primary vector of West Nile virus (WNV). To survive winter, female Cx. pipiens mosquitoes undergo adult reproductive diapause initiated by photoperiod and temperature cues. While well-studied under laboratory conditions, the environmental signals that promote Cx. pipiens diapause induction in natural settings are less understood. Here, we evaluate Cx. pipiens in laboratory and semi-field studies to examine diapause induction, defining an approximate timeline beginning in late-August where mosquitoes become receptive to diapause. Using gravid (reproductive) mosquito surveillance data as a proxy for adult diapause incidence for locations across the United States (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia), we demonstrate consistent population declines coinciding with periods of diapause receptivity except in hybridization zones where Cx. quinquefasciatus is present, suggesting that Culex population genetics can significantly impact end-season population trends. Together, this study defines a window for diapause induction across the United States, shaped by temperature, latitude, elevation, and mosquito population genetics. Coinciding with the cessation of WNV activity, these data can have important implications for mosquito control, where targeted efforts prior to diapause induction can decrease mosquito populations and WNV overwintering to reduce mosquito-borne disease incidence the following season.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Field, E. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shepard, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clifton, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Price, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Witmier, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnson, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boze, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Abadam, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ebel, G. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Armstrong, P. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barker, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.19.492729</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Semi-field and surveillance data define the natural diapause timeline for Culex pipiens across the United States]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.23.493127v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Secreted filarial nematode galectins modulate host immune cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.23.493127v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lymphatic filariasis (LF) is a mosquito-borne disease caused by filarial nematodes including Brugia malayi. Over 860 million people worldwide are infected or at risk of infection in 72 endemic countries. The absence of a protective vaccine means that current control strategies rely on mass drug administration programs that utilize inadequate drugs that cannot effectively kill adult parasites, thus established infections are incurable. Progress to address deficiencies in the approach to LF control is hindered by a poor mechanistic understanding of host-parasite interactions, including mechanisms of host immunomodulation by the parasite, a critical adaptation for establishing and maintaining infections. The canonical type 2 host response to helminth infection characterized by anti-inflammatory and regulatory immune phenotypes is modified by filarial nematodes during chronic LF. Current efforts at identifying parasite-derived factors driving this modification focus on parasite excretory-secretory products (ESP), including extracellular vesicles (EVs). We have previously profiled the cargo of B. malayi EVs and identified B. malayi galectin-1 and galectin-2 as among the most abundant EV proteins. In this study we further investigated the function of these proteins. Sequence analysis of the parasite galectins revealed highest homology to mammalian galectin-9 and functional characterization identified similar substrate affinities consistent with this designation. Immunological assays showed that Bma-LEC-2 is a bioactive protein that can polarize macrophages to an alternatively activated phenotype and selectively induce apoptosis in Th1 cells. Our data shows that an abundantly secreted parasite galectin is immunomodulatory and induces phenotypes consistent with the modified type 2 response characteristic of chronic LF infection.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Loghry, H. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sondjaja, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Minkler, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimber, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.23.493127</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Secreted filarial nematode galectins modulate host immune cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.26.493509v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
FcRγ- NK cell induction by specific CMV and expansion by subclinical viral infections in rhesus macaques 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.26.493509v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Long-lived  memory-like NK cells, characterized by FcR{gamma}-deficiency and enhanced responsiveness to antibody-bound virus-infected cells, have been found in certain human cytomegalovirus (HCMV)-seropositive individuals. Because humans are exposed to numerous microbes and environmental agents, specific relationships between HCMV and FcR{gamma}-deficient NK cells (also known as g-NK cells) have been challenging to define. Here, we show that a subgroup of rhesus cytomegalovirus (RhCMV)-seropositive macaques possesses FcR{gamma}-deficient NK cells that stably persist and display phenotype resembling human FcR{gamma}-deficient NK cells. Moreover, these macaque NK cells resembled human FcR{gamma}-deficient NK cells with respect to functional characteristics, including enhanced responsiveness to RhCMV-infected target in an antibody-dependent manner and hypo-responsiveness to tumor and cytokine stimulation. These cells were not detected in specific-pathogen-free (SPF) macaques free of RhCMV and six other viruses; however, experimental infection of SPF animals with RhCMV strain UCD59, but not RhCMV strain 68-1 or SIV, led to induction of FcR{gamma}-deficient NK cells. In non-SPF macaques, co-infection by RhCMV with other common viruses was associated with higher frequencies of FcR{gamma}-deficient NK cells. These results support a causal role for specific cytomegalovirus strain(s) in the induction of FcR{gamma}-deficient NK cells, and suggest that co-infection by other viruses further expands this memory-like NK cell pool.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chang, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Scott, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hong, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Deere, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Park, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sparger, E. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dandekar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hartigan-O'Connor, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barry, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.26.493509</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[FcRγ- NK cell induction by specific CMV and expansion by subclinical viral infections in rhesus macaques]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.29.493935v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
MATTE: anti-noise module alignment for phenotype-gene-related analysis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.29.493935v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
PurposeAlthough many transcriptome analysis methods find fundamental interactions or markers of some phenotypes, preservation of module or network is still a challenge.

MethodsThe study developed a method to directly compare the transcriptome data of phenotypes and present the differences modularly, called Module Alignment of TranscripTomE(MATTE).

ResultsMATTE performs better under high noise than differential co-expression(DC) clustering in the simulation experiments but still detects differential expression(DE) and DC genes. After subsequent annotation of cell types in single-cell data, MATTE obtained the best scores in both supervised and unsupervised learning, i. e. MATTE found meaningful markers. Finally, we apply MATTE in analyzing the transcriptome of Breast Cancer(BRCA). We have found five BRCA subtypes, and the characteristic of one subtype is detected in the form of a module network.

ConclusionMATTE can find meaningful genes and modules, thus facilitating the downstream analysis task to obtain insight into biology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cai, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.29.493935</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[MATTE: anti-noise module alignment for phenotype-gene-related analysis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.30.494023v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CRISPR-Cas effector specificity and target mismatches determine phage escape outcomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.30.494023v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
CRISPR-mediated interference relies on complementarity between a guiding CRISPR RNA (crRNA) and target nucleic acids to provide defense against bacteriophage. Phages escape CRISPR-based immunity mainly through mutations in the PAM and seed regions. However, previous specificity studies of Cas effectors, including the class 2 endonuclease Cas12a, have revealed a high degree of tolerance of single mismatches. The effect of this mismatch tolerance has not been extensively studied in the context of phage defense. Here, we tested defense against lambda phage provided by Cas12a-crRNAs containing pre-existing mismatches against the genomic targets in phage DNA. We observe a correlation between Cas12a mismatch tolerance in vitro and phage defense on solid media. However, in liquid media, we find that most pre-existing crRNA mismatches lead to phage escape and lysis, regardless of whether the mismatches ablate Cas12a cleavage in vitro. We used high-throughput sequencing to examine the target regions of phage genomes following CRISPR challenge. Mismatches at all locations in the target accelerated emergence of mutant phage, including mismatches that greatly slowed cleavage in vitro. Mutations arose near the existing mismatch, in some cases resulting in multiple PAM-distal mismatches allowing for phage escape. Similar experiments with Cas9 showed the location of emergent target mutations was unaffected by pre-existing crRNA-target mismatches. Expression of multiple mismatched crRNAs prevented new mutations from arising in multiple targeted locations, allowing Cas12a mismatch tolerance to provide stronger and longer term protection. These results demonstrate that Cas effector mismatch tolerance and existing target mismatches strongly influence phage evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schelling, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, G. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sashital, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.30.494023</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CRISPR-Cas effector specificity and target mismatches determine phage escape outcomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.30.494039v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PAM binding ensures orientational integration during Cas4-Cas1-Cas2 mediated CRISPR adaptation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.30.494039v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Adaptation in CRISPR-Cas systems immunizes bacteria and archaea against mobile genetic elements. In many DNA-targeting systems, the Cas4-Cas1-Cas2 complex is required for selection and processing of DNA segments containing PAM sequences, prior to integration of these "prespacer" substrates as spacers in the CRISPR array. We determined cryo-EM structures of the Cas4-Cas1-Cas2 adaptation complex from the type I-C system that encodes standalone Cas1 and Cas4 proteins. The structures reveal how Cas4 specifically reads out bases within the PAM sequence and how interactions with both Cas1 and Cas2 activate Cas4 endonuclease activity. The Cas4-PAM interaction ensures tight binding between the adaptation complex and the prespacer, significantly enhancing integration of the non-PAM end into the CRISPR array and ensuring correct spacer orientation. Corroborated with our biochemical results, Cas4-Cas1-Cas2 structures with substrates representing various stages of CRISPR adaptation reveal a temporally resolved mechanism for maturation and integration of functional spacers into the CRISPR array.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dhingra, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Suresh, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Juneja, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sashital, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-05-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.05.30.494039</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PAM binding ensures orientational integration during Cas4-Cas1-Cas2 mediated CRISPR adaptation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-05-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.01.494422v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Complex chromosomal rearrangements induced by transposons in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.01.494422v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Eukaryotic genomes are large and complex, and gene expression can be affected by multiple regulatory elements and their positions within the dynamic chromatin architecture. Transposable Elements (TEs) are known to play important roles in genome evolution, yet questions remain as to how TEs alter genome structure and affect gene expression. Previous studies have shown that genome rearrangements can be induced by Reversed Ends Transposition (RET) involving termini of Activator (Ac) and related TEs in maize and other plants. Here, we show that complex alleles can be formed by the rapid and progressive accumulation of Ac-induced duplications and rearrangements. The p1 gene enhancer in maize can induce ectopic expression of the nearby p2 gene in pericarp tissue when placed near it via different structural rearrangements. By screening for p2 expression, we identified and studied five cases in which multiple sequential transposition events occurred and increased the p1 enhancer copy number. We see active p2 expression due to multiple copies of the p1 enhancer present near p2 in all five cases. The p1 enhancer effects are confirmed by the observation that loss of p2 expression is correlated with transposition-induced excision of the p1 enhancers. We also performed a targeted Chromosome Conformation Capture (3C) experiment to test the physical interaction between the p1 enhancer and p2 promoter region. Together, our results show that transposon-induced rearrangements can accumulate rapidly, and progressively increase genetic variation important for genomic evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sharma, S. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-06-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.06.01.494422</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Complex chromosomal rearrangements induced by transposons in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-06-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.07.494775v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Gossypium herbaceum L. Wagad genome as a resource for understanding cotton domestication 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.07.494775v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Gossypium herbaceum is a species of cotton native to Africa and Asia that is one of the two domesticated diploids. Together with its sister-species G. arboreum, these A-genome taxa represent models of the extinct A-genome donor of modern polyploid cotton, which provide about 95% of cotton grown worldwide. As part of a larger effort to characterize variation and improve resources among diverse diploid and polyploid cotton genomes, we sequenced and assembled the genome of G. herbaceum cultivar (cv) Wagad, representing the first domesticated accession for this species. This chromosome-level genome was generated using a combination of PacBio long-read technology, HiC, and Bionano optical mapping and compared to existing genome sequences in cotton. We compare the genome of this cultivar to the existing genome of wild G. herbaceum subspecies africanum to elucidate changes in the G. herbaceum genome concomitant with domestication, and extend these analyses to gene expression using available RNA-seq. Our results demonstrate the utility of the G. herbaceum cv Wagad genome in understanding domestication in the diploid species, which could inform modern breeding programs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramaraj, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mendoza, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jareczek, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leach, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Udall, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-06-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.06.07.494775</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Gossypium herbaceum L. Wagad genome as a resource for understanding cotton domestication]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-06-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.12.495839v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Accurate Estimation of Molecular Counts from Amplicon Sequence Data with Unique Molecular Identifiers 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.12.495839v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationAmplicon sequencing is widely applied to explore heterogeneity and rare variants in genetic populations. Resolving true biological variants and quantifying their abundance is crucial for downstream analyses, but measured abundances are distorted by stochasticity and bias in amplification, plus errors during Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and sequencing. One solution attaches Unique Molecular Identifiers (UMIs) to sample sequences before amplification eliminating amplification bias by clustering reads on UMI and counting clusters to quantify abundance. While modern methods improve over naive clustering by UMI identity, most do not account for UMI reuse, or collision, and they do not adequately model PCR and sequencing errors in the UMIs and sample sequences.

ResultsWe introduce Deduplication and accurate Abundance estimation with UMIs (DAUMI), a probabilistic framework to detect true biological sequences and accurately estimate their deduplicated abundance from amplicon sequence data. DAUMI recognizes UMI collision, even on highly similar sequences, and detects and corrects most PCR and sequencing errors in the UMI and sampled sequences. DAUMI performs better on simulated and real data compared to other UMI-aware clustering methods.

AvailabilitySource code is available at https://github.com/xiyupeng/AmpliCI-UMI.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Peng, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-06-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.06.12.495839</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Accurate Estimation of Molecular Counts from Amplicon Sequence Data with Unique Molecular Identifiers]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-06-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.14.496146v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nemacol is a Small Molecule Inhibitor of C. elegans Vesicular Acetylcholine Transporter with Anthelmintic Potential 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.14.496146v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Nematode parasites of humans and livestock pose a significant burden to human health, economic development, and food security. Anthelmintic drug resistance is widespread among parasites of livestock and many nematode parasites of humans lack effective treatments. Here, we present a nitrophenyl-piperazine scaffold that induces motor defects rapidly in the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We call this scaffold Nemacol and show that it inhibits the vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT), a target recognized by commercial animal and crop health groups as a viable anthelmintic target. We demonstrate that it is possible to create Nemacol analogs that maintain potent in vivo activity whilst lowering their affinity to the mammalian VAChT 10-fold. We also show that Nemacol synergizes with the anthelmintic ivermectin to kill C. elegans. Hence, Nemacol represents a promising new anthelmintic scaffold that acts through an identified viable anthelmintic target.

One sentence summaryA small molecule screen identifies a vesicular acetylcholine transporter inhibitor scaffold that incapacitates parasitic nematodes
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Harrington, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pyche, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burns, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Spalholz, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baker, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ching, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lautens, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kulke, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Deuther-Conrad, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brust, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roy, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-06-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.06.14.496146</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nemacol is a Small Molecule Inhibitor of C. elegans Vesicular Acetylcholine Transporter with Anthelmintic Potential]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-06-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.14.496152v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Conservation at the uterine-placental interface 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.14.496152v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The hemochorial placentation site is characterized by a dynamic interplay between trophoblast cells and maternal cells. These cells cooperate to establish an interface required for nutrient delivery to promote fetal growth. In the human, trophoblast cells penetrate deep into the uterus. This is not a consistent feature of hemochorial placentation and has hindered the establishment of suitable animal models. The rat represents an intriguing model for investigating hemochorial placentation with deep trophoblast cell invasion. In this study, we used single cell RNA sequencing to characterize the transcriptome of the invasive trophoblast cell lineage, as well as other cell populations within the rat uterine-placental interface during early (gestation day, gd, 15.5) and late (gd 19.5) stages of intrauterine trophoblast cell invasion. We identified a robust set of transcripts that define invasive trophoblast cells, as well as transcripts that distinguished endothelial, smooth muscle, natural killer, and macrophage cells. Invasive trophoblast, immune, and endothelial cell populations exhibited distinct spatial relationships within the uterine-placental interface. Furthermore, the maturation stage of invasive trophoblast cell development could be determined by assessing gestation-stage dependent changes in transcript expression. Finally, and most importantly, expression of a prominent subset of rat invasive trophoblast cell transcripts is conserved in the invasive extravillous trophoblast cell lineage of the human placenta. These findings provide foundational data to identify and interrogate key conserved regulatory mechanisms essential for development and function of an important compartment within the hemochorial placentation site that is essential for a healthy pregnancy.

SIGNIFICANCETrophoblast cell-guided restructuring of the uterus is an essential event in the establishment of the hemochorial placenta. Establishment of a suitable animal model for investigating regulatory mechanisms in this critical developmental process is a key to better understanding the etiology of diseases of placentation, such as early pregnancy loss, preeclampsia, intrauterine growth restriction, and preterm birth. The rat exhibits deep trophoblast cell invasion, as seen in human hemochorial placentation. Similarities are identified in the transcriptomes of rat and human invasive trophoblast cells, leading to the discovery of conserved candidate regulators of the invasive trophoblast cell lineage. This creates opportunities to test hypotheses underlying the pathophysiologic basis of trophoblast cell-guided uterine transformation and new insights into the etiology of diseases of placentation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Scott, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vu, H. T. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jain, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Iqbal, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuteja, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Soares, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-06-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.06.14.496152</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Conservation at the uterine-placental interface]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-06-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.18.496683v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Temperature Sensitive Contacts in Disordered Loops Tune Enzyme I Activity 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.18.496683v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Homologous enzymes with identical folds often exhibit different thermal and kinetic behaviors. Understanding how enzyme sequence encodes catalytic activity at functionally optimal temperatures is a fundamental problem in biophysics. Recently it was shown that the residues that tune catalytic activities of thermophilic/mesophilic variants of the C-terminal domain of bacterial Enzyme I (EIC) are largely localized within disordered loops, offering a model system with which to investigate this phenomenon. In this work, we employ molecular dynamics simulations and mutagenesis experiments to reveal a mechanism of sequence-dependent activity tuning of EIC homologs.

We find that a network of contacts in the catalytic loops is particularly sensitive to changes in temperature, with some contacts exhibiting distinct linear or non-linear temperature-dependent trends. Moreover, these trends define structurally clustered dynamical modes and can distinguish regions that tend toward order or disorder at higher temperatures. Assaying several thermophilic EIC mutants, we show that complementary mesophilic mutations to the most temperature-sensitive positions exhibit the most enhanced activity while mutations to relatively temperature insensitive positions exhibit the least enhanced activities. These results provide a mechanistic explanation of sequence-dependent temperature tuning and offer a computational method for rational enzyme modification.

SignificanceTemperature affects the catalytic rates of all enzymes. The impact of temperature on the catalytic activity of an enzyme, however, is convoluted from contributions of protein sequence, structure, and dynamics. As such, understanding and designing the molecular features of enzymes which tune catalytic rates at different temperatures remains a fundamental challenge in biophysics. In this work we have employed molecular simulations and mutagenesis experiments to reveal the temperature tuning mechanism of mesophilic and thermophilic homologues of the C domain of bacterial Enzyme l. We find that enzymes can be tuned to their physiological temperatures through a network of temperature-sensitive residue contacts localized in the disordered loops. Furthermore, we find that among temperature-sensitive contacts some exhibit linear and others non-linear dependence on temperature. These clues offer a promising physics-based approach for tuning enzyme activity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Burns, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Venditti, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-06-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.06.18.496683</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Temperature Sensitive Contacts in Disordered Loops Tune Enzyme I Activity]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-06-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.21.497020v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Non-catalyzable denitrification intermediates induce nitrous oxide reduction in two purple nonsulfur bacteria 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.21.497020v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Denitrification is a form of anaerobic respiration wherein nitrate (NO3-) is sequentially reduced via nitrite (NO2-), nitric oxide, and nitrous oxide (N2O) to dinitrogen gas (N2) by four reductase enzymes. Partial denitrifying bacteria possess only one, or some, of these four reductases and use them as independent respiratory modules. However, it is unclear if partial denitrifiers sense and respond to denitrification intermediates outside of their reductase repertoire. Here we tested the denitrifying capabilities of two purple nonsulfur bacteria, Rhodopseudomonas palustris CGA0092 and Rhodobacter capsulatus SB1003. Each had denitrifying capabilities that matched their genome annotation; CGA0092 reduced NO2- to N2 and SB1003 reduced N2O to N2. For each bacterium, N2O reduction could be used for both electron balance during growth on electron-rich organic compounds in light and for energy transformation via respiration in the dark. However, N2O reduction required supplementation with a denitrification intermediate, including those for which there was no associated denitrification enzyme. For CGA0092, NO3- served as a stable, non-catalyzable molecule that was sufficient to activate N2O reduction. Using a {beta}-galactosidase reporter we found that NO3- acted, at least in part, by stimulating N2O reductase gene expression. In SB1003, NO2-, but not NO3-, activated N2O reduction but NO2- was slowly removed, likely by a promiscuous enzyme activity. Our findings reveal that partial denitrifiers can still be subject to regulation by denitrification intermediates that they cannot use.

ImportanceDenitrification is a form of microbial respiration wherein nitrate is converted via several nitrogen oxide intermediates into harmless dinitrogen gas. Partial denitrifying bacteria, which individually have some but not all denitrifying enzymes, can achieve complete denitrification as a community by cross-feeding nitrogen oxide intermediates. However, the last intermediate, nitrous oxide (N2O), is a potent greenhouse gas that often escapes, motivating efforts to understand and improve the efficiency of denitrification. Here we found that at least some partial denitrifying N2O reducers can sense and respond to nitrogen oxide intermediates that they cannot otherwise use. The regulatory effects of nitrogen oxides on partial denitrifiers are thus an important consideration in understanding and applying denitrifying bacterial communities to combat greenhouse gas emissions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>LaSarre, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morlen, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Neumann, G. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harwood, C. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McKinlay, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-06-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.06.21.497020</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Non-catalyzable denitrification intermediates induce nitrous oxide reduction in two purple nonsulfur bacteria]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-06-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.28.482069v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
L-norepinephrine induces ROS formation but alters microbial community composition by altering cellular metabolism 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.28.482069v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Neuroendocrine compounds discharged into wastewater systems represent an emerging challenge at the intersection of human physiology and environmental microbiology. L-norepinephrine (L-NE) L-NE, which has been recognized to potentiate growth of human and animal bacterial pathogens, is discharged in sewage through urine and feces. While extensive pure culture studies have established L-NEs capacity to modulate bacterial virulence through iron acquisition and quorum sensing pathways, its impact on complex microbial communities, where intricate metabolic networks and interspecies interactions dominate, remains largely unexplored. This knowledge gap is particularly critical as urbanization drives increasing neuroendocrine compound loads in wastewater influents in metropolitan areas. Through parallel treatments of L-NE (1x10{square}{square} to 1x10{square}{square} M), dextrose, and H{square}O{square} in municipal and agricultural wastewater communities, we uncovered sophisticated metabolic and regulatory mechanisms that challenge the conventional understanding of microbial substrate utilization. Despite containing 10-fold less carbon, L-NE treatments achieved superior growth (10{square} CFU mL{square}{superscript 1}) while maintaining Pseudomonadaceae-dominated communities. Targeted metaproteomics revealed coordinated upregulation of oxidative stress genes (oxyR, soxRS) and antioxidant enzymes, while proteome-constrained metabolic modeling demonstrated distinct pathway modulation in central carbon and nitrogen metabolism. Notably, when compared to dextrose-supplemented controls representing typical carbon substrate utilization, L-NE treatments showed similar taxonomic profiles without preferential enrichment of known pathogenic families. However, L-NE significantly enhanced autoinducer gene (luxS, qseC) expression, suggesting increased virulence potential through community-level metabolic reprogramming. These findings reveal L-NE as a potent modulator of microbial community dynamics in engineered ecosystems, with important implications for treatment process stability and downstream environmental impacts.

O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=139 SRC="FIGDIR/small/482069v2_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
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]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bains, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dahal, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Manna, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lyte, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kolodziej, E. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chaplen, F. W. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singhal, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-06-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.06.28.482069</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[L-norepinephrine induces ROS formation but alters microbial community composition by altering cellular metabolism]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-06-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.500059v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Establishment and Characterization of Novel Canine Organoids with Organ-Specific Physiological Similarity 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.500059v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Organoids are 3-dimensional (3D) stem cell-derived cell culture lines that offer a variety of technical advantages compared to traditional 2-dimensional (2D) cell cultures. Although murine models have proved useful in biomedical research, rodent models often fail to adequately mimic human physiology and disease progression, resulting in poor preclinical prediction of therapeutic drug efficacy and toxicity. With the advent of organoid technology, many of these challenges can be overcome. Previously, the use of canine organoids in drug testing and disease modeling was limited to organoids originating from the intestine, liver, kidney, lung, and urinary bladder. Here, we report the cultivation, maintenance, and molecular characterization of two novel adult-stem cell-derived canine organoid cell lines, including the endometrium and pancreas, in addition to previously reported bladder, lung, and liver organoids from two genetically related canines. Five tissues and organoid lines from each donor were characterized using bulk RNA-seq, allowing for a unique, multi-organ comparison between these two individuals and identification of specific cell types such as glandular epithelial cells in endometrial organoids.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zdyrski, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gabriel, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ospina, O. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wickham, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahoo, D. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dao, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aguilar Meza, L. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bedos, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Honold, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pineyro, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allenspach, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-07-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.07.15.500059</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Establishment and Characterization of Novel Canine Organoids with Organ-Specific Physiological Similarity]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-07-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.500250v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Allele-specific expression reveals multiple paths to highland adaptation in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.15.500250v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maize is a staple food of smallholder farmers living in highland regions up to 4,000 meters above sea level worldwide. Mexican and South American highlands are two major highland maize growing regions, and population genetic data suggests the maizes adaptation to these regions occurred largely independently, providing a case study for parallel evolution. To better understand the mechanistic basis of highland adaptation, we crossed maize landraces from 108 highland and lowland sites of Mexico and South America with the inbred line B73 to produce F1 hybrids and grew them in both highland and lowland sites in Mexico. We identified thousands of genes with divergent expression between highland and lowland populations. Hundreds of these genes show patterns of convergent evolution between Mexico and South America. To dissect the genetic architecture of the divergent gene expression, we developed a novel allele-specific expression analysis pipeline to detect genes with divergent functional cis-regulatory variation between highland and lowland populations. We identified hundreds of genes with divergent cis-regulation between highland and lowland landrace alleles, with 20 in common between regions, further suggesting convergence in the genes underlying highland adaptation. Further analyses suggest multiple mechanisms contribute to this convergence. Our findings reveal a complex genetic architecture of cis-regulatory alleles underlying adaptation to highlands in maize. Although the vast majority of evolutionary changes associated with highland adaptation were region-specific, our findings highlight an important role for convergence at the gene expression and gene regulation levels as well.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crow, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nojoomi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schulz, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Estevez-Palmas, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flint-Garcia, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sawers, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rellan-Alvarez, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Runcie, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-07-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.07.15.500250</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Allele-specific expression reveals multiple paths to highland adaptation in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-07-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.18.499170v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Fine-mapping and comparative genomic analysis reveal the gene composition at the S and Z self-incompatibility loci in grasses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.18.499170v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Self-incompatibility (SI) is a genetic mechanism of hermaphroditic plants to prevent inbreeding after self-pollination. Allogamous Poaceae species exhibit a unique gametophytic SI system controlled by two multi-allelic and independent loci, S and Z. Despite intense research efforts in the last decades, the genes that determine the initial recognition mechanism are yet to be identified. Here, we report the fine-mapping of the Z-locus in perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) and provide evidence that the pollen and stigma components are determined by two genes encoding DUF247 domain proteins (ZDUF247-I and ZDUF247-II) and the gene sZ, respectively. The pollen and stigma determinants are located side-by-side and were genetically linked in 10,245 individuals of two independent mapping populations segregating for Z. Moreover, they exhibited high allelic diversity as well as tissue-specific gene expression, matching expected characteristics of SI determinants known from other systems. Revisiting the S-locus using the latest high-quality whole-genome assemblies revealed a similar gene composition and structure as found for Z, supporting the hypothesis of a duplicated origin of the two-locus SI system of grasses. Ultimately, comparative genomic analyses across a wide range of self-compatible and self-incompatible Poaceae species revealed that the absence of a functional copy of at least one of the six putative SI determinants is accompanied by a self-compatible phenotype. Our study provides new insights into the origin and evolution of the unique gametophytic SI system in one of the largest and economically most important plant families.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rohner, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Manzanares, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yates, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thorogood, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Copetti, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lübberstedt, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Asp, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Studer, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-07-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.07.18.499170</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Fine-mapping and comparative genomic analysis reveal the gene composition at the S and Z self-incompatibility loci in grasses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-07-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.25.501456v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Robust probabilistic modeling for single-cell multimodal mosaic integration and imputation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.25.501456v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Recent advances in single-cell technologies enable joint profiling of multiple omics. These profiles can reveal the complex interplay of different regulatory layers in single cells; still, new challenges arise when integrating datasets with some features shared across experiments and others exclusive to a single source; combining information across these sources is called mosaic integration. The difficulties lie in imputing missing molecular layers to build a self-consistent atlas, finding a common latent space, and transferring learning to new data sources robustly. Existing mosaic integration approaches based on matrix factorization cannot efficiently adapt to nonlinear embeddings for the latent cell space and are not designed for accurate imputation of missing molecular layers. By contrast, we propose a probabilistic variational autoencoder model, scVAEIT, to integrate and impute multimodal datasets with mosaic measurements. A key advance is the use of a missing mask for learning the conditional distribution of unobserved modalities and features, which makes scVAEIT flexible to combine different panels of measurements from multimodal datasets accurately and in an end-to-end manner. Imputing the masked features serves as a supervised learning procedure while preventing overfitting by regularization. Focusing on gene expression, protein abundance, and chromatin accessibility, we validate that scVAEIT robustly imputes the missing modalities and features of cells biologically different from the training data. scVAEIT also adjusts for batch effects while maintaining the biological variation, which provides better latent representations for the integrated datasets. We demonstrate that scVAEIT significantly improves integration and imputation across unseen cell types, different technologies, and different tissues.

Significance StatementSingle-cell multimodal assays provide an unprecedented opportunity for investigating heterogeneity of cell types and novel associations with disease and development. Although analyses of such multimodal datasets have the potential to provide new insights that cannot be inferred with a single modality, access typically requires the integration of multiple data sources. We propose a probabilistic variational autoencoder model for mosaic integration, which involves merging data sources that include features shared across datasets and features exclusive to a single data source. Our model is designed to provide a lower dimensional representation of the cells for visualization, clustering, and other downstream tasks; accurate imputation of missing features and observations; and transfer learning for robustly imputing new datasets when only partial measurements are available.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Du, J.-H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cai, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roeder, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-07-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.07.25.501456</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Robust probabilistic modeling for single-cell multimodal mosaic integration and imputation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-07-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.28.501872v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
TSNAdb v2.0: the updated version of tumor-specific neoantigen database 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.28.501872v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Tumor neoantigens have been well-acknowledged as ideal targets for tumor immunotherapy in recent years. With the deepening of research on neoantigen-based tumor immunotherapy, comprehensive neoantigen databases are urgently needed to meet the growing demand for clinical studies. We have built the Tumor-Specific NeoAntigen Database (TSNAdb v1.0) previously, which has attracted wide attention. In this study, we provide an updated version of the Tumor-Specific NeoAntigen Database (TSNAdb v2.0) with several new features including 1) taking stricter criteria for neoantigen identification. 2) providing predicted neoantigens derived from three types of somatic mutations. 3) collecting experimentally validated neoantigens and classifying them according to the evidence. TSNAdb v2.0 is freely available at https://pgx.zju.edu.cn/tsnadb/.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hua, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.07.28.501872</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[TSNAdb v2.0: the updated version of tumor-specific neoantigen database]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.29.502042v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Adoption of modern pest control systems associated with declines in butterfly abundance across Midwestern monitoring network 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.07.29.502042v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mounting evidence shows overall insect abundances are in decline globally. Habitat loss, climate change, and pesticides have all been implicated, but their relative effects have never been evaluated in a comprehensive large-scale study. We harmonized 17 years of land use, climate, multiple classes of pesticides, and butterfly survey data across 81 counties in five states in the US Midwest. We find community-wide declines in total butterfly abundance and species richness to be most strongly associated with pesticides in general, and for butterflies species richness the use of neonicotinoid-treated seeds in particular. This included the abundance of the migratory monarch (Danaus plexippus), whose decline is the focus of intensive debate and public concern. Insect declines cannot be understood without comprehensive data on all putative drivers, and the 2015 cessation of neonicotinoid data releases in the US will impede future research.

One Sentence SummaryShifts in insecticide use towards neonicotinoid-treated seeds are associated with an 8 percent decline in butterfly species diversity across the American Corn Belt.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Van Deynze, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swinton, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hennessy, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ries, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.07.29.502042</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Adoption of modern pest control systems associated with declines in butterfly abundance across Midwestern monitoring network]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.04.502839v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Pollinator and host sharing lead to hybridization and introgression in Panamanian free-standing figs, but not in their pollinator wasps 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.04.502839v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Obligate pollination mutualisms, in which plant and pollinator lineages depend on each other for reproduction, often exhibit high levels of species-specificity. However, cases in which two or more pollinator species share a single host species (host sharing), or two or more host species share a single pollinator species (pollinator sharing), are known to occur in current ecological time. Further, evidence for host switching in evolutionary time is increasingly being recognized in these systems. The degree to which departures from strict specificity differentially affect the potential for hybridization and introgression in the associated host or pollinator is unclear. We addressed this question using genome-wide sequence data from five sympatric Panamanian free-standing fig species (Ficus subgenus Pharmacosycea, section Pharmacosycea) and their six associated fig pollinator wasp species (Tetrapus). Two of the five fig species, F. glabrata and F. maxima, were found to regularly share pollinators. In these species, ongoing hybridization was demonstrated by the detection of several first-generation (F1) hybrid individuals and historical introgression was indicated by phylogenetic network analysis. In contrast, although two of the pollinator species regularly share hosts, all six species were genetically distinct and deeply divergent, with no evidence for either hybridization or introgression. This pattern is consistent with results from other obligate pollination mutualisms, suggesting that, in contrast to their host plants, pollinators appear to be reproductively isolated, even when different species of pollinators mate in shared hosts.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Satler, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Herre, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heath, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Machado, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zuniga, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jander, K. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eaton, D. A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nason, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.04.502839</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Pollinator and host sharing lead to hybridization and introgression in Panamanian free-standing figs, but not in their pollinator wasps]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.05.502955v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Sex-based de novo transcriptome assemblies of the parasitoid wasp Encarsia suzannae, a host of the manipulative heritable symbiont Cardinium hertigii 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.05.502955v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Minute parasitoid wasps in the genus Encarsia are commonly used as biological pest control agents of whiteflies and armored scale insects in greenhouses or in the field. They are also a key host of the bacterial endosymbiont Cardinium hertigii which can cause a suite of reproductive manipulation phenotypes, including parthenogenesis, feminization, and cytoplasmic incompatibility; the last being most thoroughly studied in Encarsia suzannae. Despite their biological and economic importance, there are currently no published Encarsia genomes and only one public transcriptome. In this study, we applied a mapping-and-removal approach to eliminate known contaminants from previously-obtained Illumina sequencing data. We generated de novo transcriptome assemblies for both female and male E. suzannae which contain 45,986 and 54,762 final coding sequences, respectively. Benchmarking Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) results indicate both assemblies are highly complete. Preliminary analyses revealed the presence of homologs of sex-determination genes characterized in other insects and putative venom proteins. These transcriptomes will be valuable tools to better understand the biology of Encarsia wasps and their evolutionary relatives. Furthermore, the separate male and female assemblies will be particularly useful references for studies involving insects of only one sex.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schultz, D. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Selberherr, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stouthamer, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doremus, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelly, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hunter, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz-Esser, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.05.502955</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Sex-based de novo transcriptome assemblies of the parasitoid wasp Encarsia suzannae, a host of the manipulative heritable symbiont Cardinium hertigii]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.05.502996v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Plasmodesmata-located proteins regulate plasmodesmal function at specific cell interfaces in Arabidopsis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.05.502996v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plasmodesmata (PD) are membrane-lined channels connecting adjoining plant cells. PD control symplasmic intercellular communication by allowing molecules to move between cells. Plant polysaccharide callose ({beta}-1,3-glucan) is deposited at PD, affecting plasmodesmal function; however, the regulation of PD at different cell interfaces is largely unknown. This study discovered that two PD-located proteins, PDLP5 and PDLP6, are expressed in non-overlapping cell types. The constitutive expression of PDLP5 and PDLP6 results in the overaccumulation of PD callose at different cell interfaces and starch hyperaccumulation in different cell types within mature leaves. Using a proximity labeling approach, we identified sucrose synthase 6 (SUS6) as a functional partner of PDLP6. We further demonstrated that PDLP6 physically and genetically interacts with SUS6. In addition, callose synthase 7 (CalS7) interacts with both SUS6 and PDLP6 and is required for PDLP6s function. We propose that PDLP6-SUS6-CalS7 forms a callose synthase complex in the vasculature to regulate the plasmodesmal function.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.-L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes-Serey, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aung, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.05.502996</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Plasmodesmata-located proteins regulate plasmodesmal function at specific cell interfaces in Arabidopsis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.12.503786v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Trypanosoma brucei Mitochondrial DNA Polymerase POLIB Contains a Novel Thumb Insertion That Confers Dominant Exonuclease Activity 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.12.503786v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Trypanosoma brucei and related parasites contain an unusual catenated mitochondrial genome known as kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) composed of maxicircles and minicircles. The kDNA structure and replication mechanism are divergent and essential for parasite survival. POLIB is one of three Family A DNA polymerases independently essential to maintain the kDNA network. However, the division of labor among the paralogs, particularly which might fulfill the role of a replicative, proofreading enzyme remains enigmatic. De novo modeling of POLIB revealed a structure divergent from all other Family A polymerases in which the thumb subdomain contains a 369 amino acid insertion with homology to DEDDh DnaQ family 3-5 exonucleases. Here we demonstrate recombinant POLIB 3-5 exonuclease prefers DNA vs. RNA substrates and degrades single- and double-stranded DNA in a non-processive manner. The exonuclease activity prevails over polymerase activity on DNA substrates at pH 8.0, while DNA primer extension is favored at pH 6.0. Mutations that ablate POLIB polymerase activity slow the exonuclease rate suggesting crosstalk between the domains. We show that POLIB is able to extend an RNA primer more efficiently than a DNA primer in the presence of dNTPs but does not incorporate rNTPs efficiently using either primer. Immunoprecipitation of Pol I-like paralogs from T. brucei corroborate the pH selectivity and RNA primer preferences of POLIB and revealed that the other paralogs efficiently extend a DNA primer. The unique POLIB thumb insertion influences the balance between polymerase and exonuclease activity and provides another example of exquisite diversity among DNA polymerases for specialized function.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Klingbeil, M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelson, S. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frost, M. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Delzell, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.12.503786</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Trypanosoma brucei Mitochondrial DNA Polymerase POLIB Contains a Novel Thumb Insertion That Confers Dominant Exonuclease Activity]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.10.503436v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Protein Fold Classification using Graph Neural Network and Protein Topology Graph 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.10.503436v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Protein fold classification reveals key structural information about proteins that is essential for understanding their function. While numerous approaches exist in the literature that classifies protein fold from sequence data using machine learning, there is hardly any approach that classifies protein fold from the secondary or tertiary structure data using deep learning. This work proposes a novel protein fold classification technique based on graph neural network and protein topology graphs. Protein topology graphs are constructed according to definitions in the Protein Topology Graph Library from protein secondary structure level data and their contacts. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach that applies graph neural network for protein fold classification. We analyze the SCOPe 2.07 data set, a manually and computationally curated database that classifies known protein structures into their taxonomic hierarchy and provides predefined labels for a certain number of entries from the Protein Data Bank. We also analyze the latest version of the CATH data set. Experimental results show that the classification accuracy is at around 82% - 100% under certain settings. Due to the rapid growth of structural data, automating the structure classification process with high accuracy using structural data is much needed in the field. This work introduces a new paradigm of protein fold classification that meets this need. The implementation of the model for protein fold classification and the datasets are available here https://github.com/SuriDipannitaSayeed/ProteinFoldClassification.git

Author summaryClassification of protein structures is traditionally done using manual curation, evolutionary relationship, or sequence comparison-based methods. Applying machine learning and deep learning to protein structure classification is a comparatively new trend that holds great promises for automating the structure classification process. Advance deep learning technique like Graph Neural Network is still unexplored in this respect. SCOP and CATH are two traditional databases that provide the hierarchical taxonomic classification of protein structures. This work provides a novel computational approach that classifies protein folds in SCOP and CATH with graph neural network, performing a graph classification task.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sayeed, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wolf, J. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koch, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.10.503436</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Protein Fold Classification using Graph Neural Network and Protein Topology Graph]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.11.503648v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Single-molecule sequencing of animal mitochondrial genomes reveals chloroplast-like architecture and repeat-mediated recombination 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.11.503648v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Recent advances in long-read sequencing technology have allowed for single-molecule sequencing of entire mitochondrial genomes, opening the door for direct investigation of mitochondrial genome architecture and landscapes of recombination. We used PacBio sequencing to re-assemble mitochondrial genomes from two species of New Zealand freshwater snails, Potamopyrgus antipodarum and Potamopyrgus estuarinus. These assemblies revealed a [~]1.7 kb structure within the mitochondrial genomes of both species that was previously undetected by assembly of short sequencing reads and likely corresponding to a large non-coding region commonly present in mitochondrial genomes. The overall architecture of these Potamopyrgus mitochondrial genomes is reminiscent of the chloroplast genomes of land plants, harboring a large single-copy region (LSC) and a small single-copy region (SSC) separated by a pair of inverted repeats (IRa and IRb). Individual sequencing reads that spanned across the Potamopyrgus IRa-SSC-IRb structure revealed the occurrence of "flip-flop" recombination, apparently mediated by the IRs. We also detected evidence for two distinct IR haplotypes and recombination between them in wild-caught P. estuarinus, as well as extensive inter-molecular recombination between SNPs in the LSC region. Together, these observations suggest that mitochondrial inheritance is not strictly maternal in these snails. The chloroplast-like architecture and repeat-mediated mitochondrial recombination we describe here raise fundamental questions regarding the origins and commonness of such architecture, whether and how recombination mediates mitochondrial genome evolution, and the role of genome architecture in driving cytoplasmic genome biology and the maintenance of cytoplasmic genomes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bankers, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cook, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fields, P. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jalinsky, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McElroy, K. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Neiman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Logsdon, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boore, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.11.503648</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Single-molecule sequencing of animal mitochondrial genomes reveals chloroplast-like architecture and repeat-mediated recombination]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.16.502005v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Leveraging prior biological knowledge improves prediction of tocochromanols in maize grain 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.16.502005v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
With an essential role in human health, tocochromanols are mostly obtained by consuming seed oils; however, the vitamin E content of the most abundant tocochromanols in maize grain is low. Several large-effect genes with cis-acting variants affecting mRNA expression are mostly responsible for tocochromanol variation in maize grain, with other relevant associated quantitative trait loci (QTL) yet to be fully resolved. Leveraging existing genomic and transcriptomic information for maize inbreds could improve prediction when selecting for higher vitamin E content. Here, we first evaluated a multikernel genomic best linear unbiased prediction (MK-GBLUP) approach for modeling known QTL in the prediction of nine tocochromanol grain phenotypes (12-21 QTL per trait) within and between two panels of 1,462 and 242 maize inbred lines. On average, MK-GBLUP models improved predictive abilities by 7.0 to 13.6% when compared to GBLUP. In a second approach with a subset of 545 lines from the larger panel, the highest average improvement in predictive ability relative to GBLUP was achieved with a multi-trait GBLUP model (15.4%) that had a tocochromanol phenotype and transcript abundances in developing grain for a few large-effect candidate causal genes (1-3 genes per trait) as multiple response variables. Taken together, our study illustrates the enhancement of prediction models when informed by existing biological knowledge pertaining to QTL and candidate causal genes.

Core IdeasO_LIWith varying levels of vitamin E activity, tocochromanols found in maize grain are essential for human health
C_LIO_LISelecting for higher vitamin E content in maize grain can be enhanced with genomic prediction
C_LIO_LIPrediction models leveraging existing biological knowledge were evaluated in two panels of maize inbred lines
C_LIO_LIMultikernel prediction models based on previously identified QTL improved predictive ability
C_LIO_LIA multi-trait prediction model that had transcript abundances of a few large-effect causal genes performed the best
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tanaka, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tibbs-Cortes, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wood, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Magallanes-Lundback, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bornowski, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamilton, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vaillancourt, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Deason, N. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schoenbaum, G. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buell, C. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>DellaPenna, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gore, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.16.502005</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Leveraging prior biological knowledge improves prediction of tocochromanols in maize grain]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.25.505341v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Discovering genomic islands in unannotated bacterialgenomes using sequence embedding 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.25.505341v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationGenomic islands (GEIs) are clusters of genes in bacterial genomes that are typically acquired by horizontal gene transfer. Genomic islands play a crucial role in the evolution of bacteria by helping them adapt quickly to changing environments. Specifically of interest to human health, many GEIs contain pathogenicity and antimicrobial resistance genes. Detecting GEIs is therefore an important problem in biomedical and environmental research. There have been many previous studies for computationally identifying GEIs, but most of the studies rely either on detecting differences between closely related genomes, or on annotated nucleotide sequences with predictions based on a fixed set of known features.

ResultsHere we present TreasureIsland, which uses a new unsupervised representation of DNA sequences to predict GEIs. We developed a high precision boundary detection method featuring an incremental fine-tuning of GEI borders, and we evaluated the accuracy of this framework using a new comprehensive reference dataset, Benbow. We show that TreasureIsland performs competitively when compared with other GEI predictors, enabling the identification of genomic islands in unannotated and taxonomically isolated bacterial genomes.

AvailabilityThe source code and the datasets used in this study are available at: https://github.com/priyamayur/GenomicIslandPrediction

Contactidoerg@iastate.edu

Supplementary informationSupplementary Material is available at Bioinformatics online.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-08-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.25.505341</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Discovering genomic islands in unannotated bacterialgenomes using sequence embedding]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-08-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.29.505745v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Environmentally robust cis-regulatory changes underlie rapid climatic adaptation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.29.505745v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Changes in gene expression are proposed to play a major role in adaptive evolution. While it is known that gene expression is highly sensitive to the environment, very few studies have determined the influence of genetic and environmental effects on adaptive gene regulation in natural populations. Here, we utilize allele-specific expression to characterize cis and trans gene regulatory divergence in temperate and tropical house mice in two metabolic tissues under two thermal conditions. First, we show that gene expression divergence is pervasive between populations and across thermal conditions, with roughly 5-10% of genes exhibiting genotype-by-environment interactions. Second, we found that most expression divergence was due to cis-regulatory changes that were stable across temperatures. In contrast, patterns of expression plasticity were largely attributable to trans-effects, which showed greater sensitivity to temperature. Nonetheless, we discovered a small subset of temperature-dependent cis-regulatory changes, thereby identifying loci underlying expression plasticity. Finally, we performed scans for selection in wild house mice to identify genomic signatures of rapid adaptation. Genomic outliers were enriched in genes with evidence for cis-regulatory divergence. Notably, these genes were associated with phenotypes that affected body weight and metabolism, suggesting that cis-regulatory changes are a possible mechanism for adaptive body size evolution between populations. Our results show that gene expression plasticity, largely controlled in trans, may facilitate the colonization of new environments, but that evolved changes in gene expression are largely controlled in cis, illustrating the genetic and non-genetic mechanisms underlying the establishment of populations in new environments.

Significance StatementGene expression variation is shaped by both genetic and environmental effects, yet these two factors are rarely considered together in the context of adaptive evolution. We studied environmental influences on gene regulatory evolution in temperate and tropical house mice in cold and warm laboratory environments. We discovered that genetic effects in the form of cis-regulatory divergence were pervasive and largely insensitive to the environment. Many of these genetic effects are under selection and are associated with genes that affect body size, suggesting cis-regulatory changes as a possible mechanism for adaptive body size evolution. We also discovered many trans-effects controlling expression plasticity, demonstrating the importance of both genetic and non-genetic changes associated with adaptation over short timescales (a few hundred generations).
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ballinger, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mack, K. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Durkin, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riddell, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nachman, M. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-09-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.08.29.505745</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Environmentally robust cis-regulatory changes underlie rapid climatic adaptation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-09-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.06.506835v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Innovations in double digest restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (ddRAD-Seq) method for more efficient SNP identification 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.06.506835v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We present an improved ddRAD-Seq protocol for identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). It utilizes optimally sized restriction enzyme digestion fragments, quick acting ligases that are neutral with the restriction enzyme buffer eliminating buffer exchange steps, and adapters designed to be compatible with Illumina index primers. Library amplification and barcoding are completed in one PCR step, and magnetic beads are used to purify the genomic fragments from the ligation and library generation steps. Our protocol increases the efficiency and decreases the time to complete a ddRAD-Seq experiment. To demonstrate its utility, we compared SNPs from our protocol with those from whole genome resequencing data from Gossypium herbaceum and Gossypium arboreum. Principal component analysis demonstrated that the variability of the combined data was explained by the genotype (PC1) and methodology applied (PC2). Phylogenetic analysis showed that the SNPs from our method clustered with SNPs from the resequencing data of the corresponding genotype. Sequence alignments illustrated that for homozygous loci, more than 90% of the SNPs from the resequencing data were discovered by our method. Our analyses suggest that our ddRAD-Seq method is reliable in identifying SNPs suitable for phylogenetic and association genetic studies while reducing cost and time over known methods.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Magbanua, Z. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, C.-y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pechanova, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-09-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.09.06.506835</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Innovations in double digest restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (ddRAD-Seq) method for more efficient SNP identification]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-09-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.08.507226v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A high-quality chromosome-level genome assembly of rohu carp, Labeo rohita, and its utilization in SNP-based exploration of gene flow and sex determination 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.08.507226v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Labeo rohita (rohu) is a carp important to aquaculture in South Asia, with a production volume close to Atlantic salmon. While genetic improvements to rohu are ongoing, the genomic methods commonly used in other aquaculture improvement programs have historically been precluded in rohu, partially due to the lack of a high quality reference genome. Here we present a high-quality de novo genome produced using a combination of next-generation sequencing technologies, resulting in a 946 Mb genome consisting of 25 chromosomes and 2,844 unplaced scaffolds. Notably, while approximately half the size of the existing genome sequence, our genome represents 97.9% of the genome size newly estimated here using flow cytometry. Sequencing from 120 individuals was used in conjunction with this genome to predict the population structure, diversity, and divergence in three major rivers (Jamuna, Padma, and Halda), in addition to infer a likely sex determination mechanism in rohu. These results demonstrate the utility of the new rohu genome in modernizing some aspects of rohu genetic improvement programs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, C.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Magbanua, Z. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pechanova, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thrash, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Youngblood, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ezzell, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alam, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Benzie, J. A. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamilton, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karsi, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-09-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.09.08.507226</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A high-quality chromosome-level genome assembly of rohu carp, Labeo rohita, and its utilization in SNP-based exploration of gene flow and sex determination]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-09-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.12.507613v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PARNAS: Objectively Selecting the Most Representative Taxa on a Phylogeny 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.12.507613v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The use of next-generation sequencing technology has enabled phylogenetic studies with hundreds of thousands of taxa. Such large-scale phylogenies have become a critical component in genomic epidemiology in pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A virus. However, detailed phenotypic characterization of pathogens or generating a computationally tractable dataset for detailed phylogenetic analyses requires bias free subsampling of taxa. To address this need, we propose parnas, an objective and flexible algorithm to sample and select taxa that best represent observed diversity by solving a generalized k-medoids problem on a phylogenetic tree. parnas solves this problem efficiently and exactly by novel optimizations and adapting algorithms from operations research. For more nuanced selections, taxa can be weighted with metadata or genetic sequence parameters, and the pool of potential representatives can be user-constrained. Motivated by influenza A virus genomic surveillance and vaccine design, parnas can be applied to identify representative taxa that optimally cover the diversity in a phylogeny within a specified distance radius. We demonstrated that parnas is more efficient and flexible than current approaches, and applied it to select representative influenza A virus in swine genes derived from over 5 years of genomic surveillance data. Our objective selection of 4 to 6 strains selected every two years from the 16 distinct genetic clades were sufficient to cover 80% of diversity circulating in US swine. We suggest that this method, through the objective selection of representatives in a phylogeny, provides criteria for rational multivalent vaccine design and for quantifying diversity. PARNAS is available at https://github.com/flu-crew/parnas.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Markin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wagle, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vincent Baker, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-09-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.09.12.507613</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PARNAS: Objectively Selecting the Most Representative Taxa on a Phylogeny]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-09-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.16.508001v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Brassinosteroid gene regulatory networks at cellular resolution 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.16.508001v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Brassinosteroids (BRs) are plant steroid hormones that regulate diverse processes such as cell division and cell elongation. BRs control thousands of genes through gene regulatory networks that vary in space and time. By using time-series single-cell RNA-sequencing to identify BR-responsive gene expression specific to different cell types and developmental stages of the Arabidopsis root, we uncovered the elongating cortex as a site where BRs trigger a shift from proliferation to elongation associated with increased expression of cell wall-related genes. Our analysis revealed HAT7 and GTL1 as BR-responsive transcription factors that regulate cortex cell elongation. These results establish the cortex as an important site for BR-mediated growth and unveil a BR signaling network regulating the transition from proliferation to elongation, illuminating new aspects of spatiotemporal hormone response.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nolan, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vukasinovic, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, C.-W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vanhoutte, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shahan, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taylor, I. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Greenstreet, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heitz, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Szekely, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brosnan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schiebinger, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ohler, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Russinova, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Benfey, P. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-09-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.09.16.508001</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Brassinosteroid gene regulatory networks at cellular resolution]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-09-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.21.508841v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transpiration and water use efficiency of sorghum canopies have a large genetic variability and are positively related under naturally high evaporative demand. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.21.508841v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Indoor experiments with individual plants often show that transpiration rate is restricted under high vapor pressure deficit (VPD), resulting in a plateau of transpiration that increases water use efficiency (WUE) of some genotypes. We tested this hypothesis outdoors during dry or rainy seasons of India and Senegal, based on the response of the transpiration of canopy-grown sorghum plants to the reference evapotranspiration that takes both light and VPD into account. This response showed no plateau at high evaporative demand in 47 genotypes, but a large genetic variability was observed for the slope of the relationship over the whole range of evaporative demand. Unexpectedly, this slope was genetically correlated with WUE in two experiments with high evaporative demand: genotypes that most transpired had the highest WUE. Conversely, a negative correlation was observed under low evaporative demand. Genotypes with high WUE and response to evaporative demand were also those allowing maximum light penetration into the canopy. We suggest that this caused the observed high WUE of these genotypes because leaves within the canopy had sufficient light for photosynthesis whereas we observed a lower VPD in the canopy than in open air when leaf area index reached 2.5-3, thereby decreasing transpiration.

HighlightsThe transpiration response to evaporative demand was genetically variable and correlated to WUE: genotypes that most transpired had highest light penetration towards leaves subjected to lower VPD than in air.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pilloni, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kakkera, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>El Ghazzal, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumar, A. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hajjarpoor, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Affortit, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ribiere, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kholova, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tardieu, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vadez, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-09-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.09.21.508841</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transpiration and water use efficiency of sorghum canopies have a large genetic variability and are positively related under naturally high evaporative demand.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-09-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.28.509846v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Global diversification of the common moonwort ferns (Botrychium lunaria group, Ophioglossaceae) was mainly driven by Pleistocene climatic shifts 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.28.509846v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The cosmopolitan Botrychium lunaria group belong to the most species rich genus of the family Ophioglossaceae and was considered to consist of two species until molecular studies in North America and northern Europe led to the recognition of multiple new taxa. Recently, additional genetic lineages were found scattered in Europe, emphasizing our poor understanding of the global diversity of the B. lunaria group, while the processes involved in the diversification of the group remain unexplored. We conducted the first global phylogenetic study of the group including 513 ingroup accessions sequenced for four non-coding plastid loci. We recovered ten well-supported clades, although relationships between clades were inconsistent between Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood analyses. We treated each clade at the species level, except for one clade including two ploidy levels, resulting in the recognition of 11 species, 5 of which are unnamed. In contrast to previous studies, we found species diversity to be equally distributed across the northern hemisphere, with 7-8 species per continent. We estimated the stem age of the B. lunaria group at 2.4-5.1 million years, with most species 1.8-2.6 million years old, and subspecies 0.5-1.0 million years old. Diversification thus coincided with Pleistocene climatic fluctuations that strongly affected the areas inhabited by the group, suggesting that diversification was driven by climatically induced cycles of extinction, dispersal, and migration. Furthermore, ecological differentiation between species suggests these complex population dynamics were associated with adaptations to specific environmental conditions. We found limited evidence that speciation is driven by polyploidization and hybridization. We show that the B. lunaria group has greater species level diversity than previously assumed and suspect that further cryptic species may await discovery, especially in the B. neolunaria clade.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mossion, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koenen, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grant, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Croll, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Farrar, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kessler, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-09-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.09.28.509846</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Global diversification of the common moonwort ferns (Botrychium lunaria group, Ophioglossaceae) was mainly driven by Pleistocene climatic shifts]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-09-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.28.509969v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Using Machine Learning Enabled Phenotyping To Characterize Nodulation In Three Early Vegetative Stages In Soybean 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.28.509969v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The symbiotic relationship between soybean [Glycine max L. (Merr.)] roots and bacteria (Bradyrhizobium japonicum) lead to the development of nodules, important legume root structures where atmospheric nitrogen (N2) is fixed into bio-available ammonia (NH3) for plant growth and development. With the recent development of the Soybean Nodule Acquisition Pipeline (SNAP), nodules can more easily be quantified and evaluated for genetic diversity and growth patterns across unique soybean root system architectures. We explored six diverse soybean genotypes across three field year combinations in three early vegetative stages of development and report the unique relationships between soybean nodules in the taproot and non-taproot growth zones of diverse root system architectures of these genotypes. We found unique growth patterns in the nodules of taproots showing genotypic differences in how nodules grew in count, size, and total nodule area per genotype compared to non-taproot nodules. We propose that nodulation should be defined as a function of both nodule count and individual nodule area resulting in a total nodule area per root or growth regions of the root. We also report on the relationships between the nodules and total nitrogen in the seed at maturity, finding a strong correlation between the taproot nodules and final seed nitrogen at maturity. The applications of these findings could lead to an enhanced understanding of the plant-Bradyrhizobium relationship, and exploring these relationships could lead to leveraging greater nitrogen use efficiency and nodulation carbon to nitrogen production efficiency across the soybean germplasm.

Core IdeasO_LIThe growth and development of soybean nodules on the taproot and non-taproots have unique growth and development patterns.
C_LIO_LIIn general, taproot nodules increase in area, while non-taproot nodules increase in count and area.
C_LIO_LINodulation should be defined by the total nodule area as a function of both nodule count and individual nodule size.
C_LIO_LIGenotypes adjust their nodulation through either increasing nodule count or nodule size to increase the total nodule area per root between each growth stage.
C_LIO_LIThere is a strong correlation between early growth stage taproot nodules and final seed nitrogen content.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Carley, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zubrod, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dutta, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-09-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.09.28.509969</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Using Machine Learning Enabled Phenotyping To Characterize Nodulation In Three Early Vegetative Stages In Soybean]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-09-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.02.510306v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The PTEX pore component EXP2 is important for intrahepatic development during the Plasmodium liver stage 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.02.510306v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
During vertebrate infection, obligate intracellular malaria parasites develop within a parasitophorous vacuole which constitutes the interface between the parasite and its hepatocyte or erythrocyte host cells. To transcend this barrier, Plasmodium spp. utilize a dual-function pore formed by EXP2 for nutrient transport and, in the context of the PTEX translocon, effector protein export across the vacuole membrane. While critical to blood stage survival, less is known about EXP2/PTEX function in the liver stage, although major differences in the export mechanism are indicated by absence of the PTEX unfoldase HSP101 in the intrahepatic vacuole. Here, we employed the glucosamine-activated glmS ribozyme to study the role of EXP2 during Plasmodium berghei liver stage development in hepatoma cells. Insertion of the glmS sequence into the exp2 3UTR enabled glucosamine-dependent depletion of EXP2 after hepatocyte invasion, allowing separation of EXP2 function during intrahepatic development from a recently reported role in hepatocyte invasion. Post-invasion EXP2 knockdown reduced parasite size and largely abolished expression of the mid to late liver stage marker LISP2. As an orthogonal approach to monitor development, EXP2-glmS parasites and controls were engineered to express nanoluciferase. Activation of glmS after invasion substantially decreased luminescence in hepatoma monolayers and in culture supernatants at later time points corresponding with merosome detachment that marks the culmination of liver stage development. Collectively, our findings extend the utility of the glmS ribozyme to study protein function in the liver stage and reveal EXP2 is important for intrahepatic parasite development, indicating PTEX components also function at the hepatocyte-parasite interface.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hussain, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Linera-Gonzalez, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fierro, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mair, G. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.02.510306</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The PTEX pore component EXP2 is important for intrahepatic development during the Plasmodium liver stage]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.02.510311v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A novel knock sideways approach for Plasmodium secreted proteins reveals a surprising insensitivity to vacuolar depletion of PTEX component HSP101 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.02.510311v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Malaria parasites uniquely depend on protein secretion for their obligate intracellular lifestyle but approaches for dissecting Plasmodium secreted protein functions are limited. We report knockER, a novel DiCre-mediated knock-sideways approach to sequester secreted proteins in the ER by inducible fusion with a KDEL ER-retrieval sequence. We show conditional ER sequestration of diverse proteins is not generally toxic, enabling loss-of-function studies. We employed knockER in multiple Plasmodium species to interrogate the trafficking, topology and function of an assortment of proteins that traverse the secretory pathway to diverse compartments including the apicoplast (ClpB1), rhoptries (RON6), dense granules and parasitophorous vacuole (EXP2, PTEX150, HSP101). Taking advantage of the unique ability to redistribute secreted proteins from their terminal destination to the ER, we reveal vacuolar levels of the PTEX translocon component HSP101 but not PTEX150 are maintained in excess of what is required to sustain effector protein export into the erythrocyte. Intriguingly, vacuole depletion of HSP101 hypersensitized parasites to a destabilization tag that inhibits HSP101-PTEX complex formation but not to translational knockdown of the entire HSP101 pool, illustrating how redistribution of a target protein by knockER can be used to query function in a compartment-specific manner. Collectively, our results establish knockER as a novel tool for dissecting secreted protein function with sub-compartmental resolution that should be widely amenable to genetically tractable eukaryotes.

SignificanceProtein trafficking and secretion through the endomembrane system is a defining feature of eukaryotes. The secretory pathway is central to the unique biology and pathology of the obligate intracellular malaria parasite, however tools for studying secreted protein function are limited. Knock-sideways is a powerful mutagenesis strategy that conditionally sequesters a protein away from its site of function but is generally not applicable to secreted proteins. We developed a simple approach to conditionally sequester Plasmodium secreted proteins in the ER by inducible C-terminal fusion with a KDEL ER-retrieval sequence that can be used for trafficking, topology and loss-of-function studies. The knockER strategy is broadly applicable to functional dissection of proteins that traverse the eukaryotic secretory pathway.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fierro, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hussain, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Campin, L. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.02.510311</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A novel knock sideways approach for Plasmodium secreted proteins reveals a surprising insensitivity to vacuolar depletion of PTEX component HSP101]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.02.510518v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Validation of the linear regression method to evaluate population accuracy and bias of predictions for non-linear models 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.02.510518v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundThe linear regression method (LR) was proposed to estimate population bias and accuracy of predictions, while addressing the limitations of commonly used cross-validation methods. The validity and behavior of the LR method have been provided and studied for linear model predictions but not for non-linear models. The objectives of this study were to 1) provide a mathematical proof for the validity of the LR method when predictions are based on conditional mean, 2) explore the behavior of the LR method in estimating bias and accuracy of predictions when the model fitted is different from the true model, and 3) provide guidelines on how to appropriately partition the data into training and validation such that the LR method can identify presence of bias and accuracy in predictions.

ResultsWe present a mathematical proof for the validity of the LR method to estimate bias and accuracy of predictions based on the conditional mean, including for non-linear models. Using simulated data, we show that the LR method can accurately detect bias and estimate accuracy of predictions when an incorrect model is fitted when the data is partitioned such that the values of relevant predictor variables differ in the training and validation sets. But the LR method fails when the data are not partitioned in that manner.

ConclusionsThe LR method was proven to be a valid method to evaluate the population bias and accuracy of predictions based on the conditional mean, regardless of whether it is a linear or non-linear function of the data. The ability of the LR method to detect bias and estimate accuracy of predictions when the model fitted is incorrect depends on how the data are partitioned. To appropriately test the predictive ability of a model using the LR method, the values of the relevant predictor variables need to be different between the training and validation sets.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernando, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dekkers, J. C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.02.510518</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Validation of the linear regression method to evaluate population accuracy and bias of predictions for non-linear models]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.05.510963v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Functional genomics of cattle through integration of multi-omics data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.05.510963v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Functional annotation of the bovine genome was performed by characterizing the spectrum of RNA transcription using a multi-omics approach, combining long- and short-read transcript sequencing and orthogonal data to identify promoters and enhancers and to determine boundaries of open chromatin. A total number of 171,985 unique transcripts (50% protein-coding) representing 35,150 unique genes (64% protein-coding) were identified across tissues. Among them, 159,033 transcripts (92% of the total) were structurally validated by independent datasets such as PacBio Iso-seq, ONT-seq, de novo assembled transcripts from RNA-seq, or Ensembl and NCBI gene sets. In addition, all transcripts were supported by extensive independent data from different technologies such as WTTS-seq, RAMPAGE, ChIP-seq, and ATAC-seq. A large proportion of identified transcripts (69%) were novel, of which 87% were produced by known genes and 13% by novel genes. A median of two 5 untranslated regions was detected per gene, an increase from Ensembl and NCBI annotations (single). Around 50% of protein-coding genes in each tissue were bifunctional and transcribed both coding and noncoding isoforms. Furthermore, we identified 3,744 genes that functioned as non-coding genes in fetal tissues, but as protein coding genes in adult tissues. Our new bovine genome annotation extended more than 11,000 known gene borders compared to Ensembl or NCBI annotations. The resulting bovine transcriptome was integrated with publicly available QTL data to study tissue-tissue interconnection involved in different traits and construct the first bovine trait similarity network. These validated results show significant improvement over current bovine genome annotations.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Beiki, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Murdoch, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Park, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kern, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kontechy, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Becker, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rincon, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thorne, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koltes, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Michal, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Davenport, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rijnkels, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Corum, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McKay, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, T. P. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ma, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, Z.-L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reecy, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.05.510963</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Functional genomics of cattle through integration of multi-omics data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.05.510972v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Disentangling positive vs. relaxed selection in animal mitochondrial genomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.05.510972v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Disentangling different types of selection is a common goal in molecular evolution. Elevated dN/dS ratios (the ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous substitution rates) in focal lineages are often interpreted as signs of positive selection. Paradoxically, relaxed purifying selection can also result in elevated dN/dS ratios, but tests to distinguish these two causes are seldomly implemented. Here, we reevaluated seven case studies describing elevated dN/dS ratios in animal mtDNA and their accompanying hypotheses regarding selection. They included flightless vs. flighted lineages in birds, bats, and insects, and physiological adaptations in snakes, two groups of electric fishes, and primates. We found that elevated dN/dS ratios were often not caused by the predicted mechanism, and we sometimes found strong support for the opposite mechanism. We discuss reasons why energetic hypotheses may be confounded by other selective forces acting on mtDNA and caution against overinterpreting molecular "spandrels", including elevated dN/dS ratios.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zwonitzer, K. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Iverson, E. N. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sterling, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weaver, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maclaine, B. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Havird, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.05.510972</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Disentangling positive vs. relaxed selection in animal mitochondrial genomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.07.511331v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Chromosome-scale genome assembly of the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella, a global pest of cotton 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.07.511331v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), is a major global pest of cotton. Current management practices include chemical insecticides, cultural strategies, sterile insect releases, and transgenic cotton producing crystalline (Cry) protein toxins of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). These strategies have contributed to eradication of P. gossypiella from the cotton growing areas of the United States and northern Mexico. However, this pest has evolved resistance to Bt cotton in Asia, where it remains a critical pest, and the benefits of using transgenic Bt crops have been lost. A complete annotated reference genome is needed to improve global Bt resistance management of the pink bollworm. We generated the first chromosome-level genome assembly for pink bollworm from a Bt-susceptible laboratory strain (APHIS-S) using PacBio continuous long reads for contig generation, Illumina Hi-C for scaffolding, and Illumina whole-genome re-sequencing for error-correction. The psuedohaploid assembly consists of 29 autosomes and the Z sex chromosome. The assembly exceeds the minimum Earth BioGenome Project quality standards, has a low error-rate, is highly contiguous at both the contig and scaffold level (L/N50 of 18/8.26 MB and 14/16.44 MB, respectively), and complete, with 98.6% of lepidopteran single-copy orthologs represented without duplication. The genome was annotated with 50% repeat content and 14,107 protein-coding genes, further assigned to 41,666 functional annotations. This assembly represents the first publicly available complete annotated genome of pink bollworm and will serve as the foundation for advancing molecular genetics of this important pest species.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Stahlke, A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chudalayandi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heu, C. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Geib, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Scheffler, B. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Childers, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fabrick, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.07.511331</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Chromosome-scale genome assembly of the pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella, a global pest of cotton]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.09.511471v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Differences in activity and stability drive transposable element variation in tropical and temperate maize. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.09.511471v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Much of the profound interspecific variation in genome content has been attributed to transposable elements (TEs). To explore the extent of TE variation within species, we developed an optimized open-source algorithm, panEDTA, to de novo annotate TEs in a pan-genome context. We then generated a unified TE annotation for a maize pan-genome derived from 26 reference-quality genomes, which revealed an excess of 35.1 Mb of TE sequences per genome in tropical maize relative to temperate maize. A small number (n = 216) of TE families, mainly LTR retrotransposons, drive these differences. Evidence from the methylome, transcriptome, LTR age distribution, and LTR insertional polymorphisms revealed that 64.7% of the variability was contributed by LTR families that were young, less methylated, and more expressed in tropical maize, while 18.5% was driven by LTR families with removal or loss in temperate maize. This study demonstrates the use of a comprehensive pan-TE annotation to reveal the driving role of TEs in within-species genomic variation via their ongoing amplification and purging.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ou, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Collins, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Menard, C. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Manchanda, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gent, J. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schatz, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirsch, C. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.09.511471</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Differences in activity and stability drive transposable element variation in tropical and temperate maize.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.13.511954v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A human DCC variant causing mirror movement disorder reveals an essential role for the Wave regulatory complex in Netrin/DCC signaling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.13.511954v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The axon guidance cue, Netrin-1, signals through its receptor DCC to attract commissural axons to the midline. Pathogenic variants in DCC frequently lead to congenital mirror movements (CMM), but how these variants impact DCC function is largely unknown. Screening of DCC in individuals with CMM recently revealed a novel variant located in a conserved motif in the cytoplasmic tail of DCC that is predicted to bind to a central actin nucleation promoting factor, the WAVE regulatory complex (WRC). Here, we use biochemical and axon guidance assays to show that this CMM-associated DCC variant is pathogenic by disrupting the interaction between DCC and the WRC. This DCC-WRC interaction is evolutionarily conserved and is required for Netrin-1 mediated commissural axon outgrowth and guidance. Together, we identify the WRC as a pivotal component of Netrin-1/DCC signaling and further provide a molecular mechanism explaining how genetic variants in DCC may lead to CMM.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chaudhari, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yam, P. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schlienger, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Calabretta, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Collins, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srour, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charron, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bashaw, G. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.13.511954</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A human DCC variant causing mirror movement disorder reveals an essential role for the Wave regulatory complex in Netrin/DCC signaling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.19.512983v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Gene regulatory network inference in soybean upon infection by Phytophthora sojae 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.19.512983v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Phytophthora sojae is a soil-borne oomycete and the causal agent of Phytophthora root and stem rot (PRR) in soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merrill). Yield losses attributed to P. sojae are devastating in disease-conducive environments, with global estimates surpassing 1.1 million tonnes annually. Historically, management of PRR has entailed host genetic resistance (both vertical and horizontal) complemented by disease-suppressive cultural practices (e.g., oomicide application). However, the vast expansion of complex and/or diverse P. sojae pathotypes necessitates developing novel technologies to attenuate PRR in field environments. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to couple high-throughput sequencing data and deep learning to elucidate molecular features in soybean following infection by P. sojae. In doing so, we generated transcriptomes to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) during compatible and incompatible interactions with P. sojae and a mock inoculation. The expression data were then used to select two defense-related transcription factors (TFs) belonging to WRKY and RAV families. DNA Affinity Purification and sequencing (DAP-seq) data were obtained for each TF, providing putative DNA binding sites in the soybean genome. These bound sites were used to train Deep Neural Networks with convolutional and recurrent layers to predict new target sites of WRKY and RAV family members in the DEG set. Moreover, we leveraged publicly available Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) DAP-seq data for five TF families enriched in our transcriptome analysis to train similar models. These Arabidopsis data-based models were used for cross-species TF binding site prediction on soybean. Finally, we created a gene regulatory network depicting TF-target gene interactions that orchestrate an immune response against P. sojae. Information herein provides novel insight into molecular plant-pathogen interaction and may prove useful in developing soybean cultivars with more durable resistance to P. sojae.

Author SummaryGlobal food security is threatened continually by plant pathogens. One approach to circumvent these disease-causing agents entails understanding how hosts balance primary growth and defense upon pathogen perception. Molecular signatures of perception-rendered defense may be leveraged subsequently to develop resistant/tolerant crop plants. Additionally, evidence suggests that the plant immune system is characterized by tuning primary and secondary metabolic activity via transcription factor-mediated transcriptional reprogramming. Therefore, we investigated transcription factor-target gene interactions in soybean upon infection by compatible and incompatible races of Phytophthora sojae. Through transcriptome analysis, we found that the interactions elicited vast, overlapping transcriptional responses and identified overrepresented, defense-related transcription factor families. We then generated/acquired DNA-protein interactome data for the most represented transcription factor families in the transcriptome analysis and trained deep learning-based models to predict novel transcription factor targets. Transcription factor/target gene metrics were used to construct a gene regulatory network with prioritized components. We identified hub transcription factors belonging to WRKY and ERF families, the majority of which function in response to various biotic and abiotic stressors. These findings propose novel regulators in the soybean defense response to Phytophthora sojae and provide an avenue for the investigation of transcription factor-target gene interactions in plants.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hale, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ratnayake, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Flory, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wijeratne, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmidt, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robertson, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wijeratne, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.19.512983</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Gene regulatory network inference in soybean upon infection by Phytophthora sojae]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.26.513953v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SiPhyNetwork: An R package for Simulating Phylogenetic Networks 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.26.513953v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
O_LIGene flow is increasingly recognized as an important macroevolutionary process. The many mechanisms that contribute to gene flow (e.g., introgression, hybridization, lateral gene transfer) uniquely affect the diversification of dynamics of species, making it important to be able to account for these idiosyncrasies when constructing phylogenetic models. Existing phylogenetic-network simulators for macroevolution are limited in the ways they model gene flow.
C_LIO_LIWe present SiPhyNetwork, an R package for simulating phylogenetic networks under a birth-death-hybridization process.
C_LIO_LIOur package unifies the existing birth-death-hybridization models while also extending the toolkit for modeling gene flow. This tool can create patterns of reticulation such as hybridization, lateral gene transfer, and introgression.
C_LIO_LISpecifically, we model different reticulate events by allowing events to either add, remove, or keep constant the number of lineages. Additionally, we allow reticulation events to be trait-dependent, creating the ability to model the expanse of isolating mechanisms that prevent gene flow. This tool makes it possible for researchers to model many of the complex biological factors associated with gene flow in a phylogenetic context.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Justison, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Solis-Lemus, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heath, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-10-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.10.26.513953</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SiPhyNetwork: An R package for Simulating Phylogenetic Networks]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-10-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.04.515139v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evasive spike variants elucidate the preservation of T cell immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.04.515139v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Omicron variants boast the highest infectivity rates among all SARS-CoV-2 variants. Despite their lower disease severity, they can reinfect COVID-19 patients and infect vaccinated individuals as well. The high number of mutations in these variants render them resistant to antibodies that otherwise neutralize the spike protein of the original SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Recent research has shown that despite its strong immune evasion, Omicron still induces strong T Cell responses similar to the original variant. This work investigates the molecular basis for this observation using the neural network tools NetMHCpan-4.1 and NetMHCiipan-4.0. The antigens presented through the MHC Class I and Class II pathways from all the notable SARS-CoV-2 variants were compared across numerous high frequency HLAs. All variants were observed to have equivalent T cell antigenicity. A novel positive control system was engineered in the form of spike variants that did evade T Cell responses, unlike Omicron. These evasive spike proteins were used to statistically confirm that the Omicron variants did not exhibit lower antigenicity in the MHC pathways. These results suggest that T Cell immunity mounts a strong defense against COVID-19 which is difficult for SARS-CoV-2 to overcome through mere evolution.

Author summary
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Solanki, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cornette, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Udell, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vasmatzis, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riedel, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.04.515139</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evasive spike variants elucidate the preservation of T cell immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.09.515877v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Rickettsia parkeri Hijacks Tick Hemocytes to Manipulate Cellular and Humoral Transcriptional Responses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.09.515877v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Blood-feeding arthropods rely on robust cellular and humoral immunity to control pathogen invasion and replication. Tick hemocytes produce factors that can facilitate or suppress microbial infection and pathogenesis. Despite the importance of hemocytes in regulating microbial infection, understanding of their basic biology and molecular mechanisms remains limited. Here we combined histomorphology and functional analysis to identify five distinct phagocytic and non-phagocytic hemocyte populations circulating within the Gulf Coast tick Amblyomma maculatum. Depletion of phagocytic hemocytes using clodronate liposomes revealed their function in eliminating bacterial infection. We provide the first direct evidence that an intracellular tick-borne pathogen, Rickettsia parkeri, infects phagocytic hemocytes in Am. maculatum to modify tick cellular immune responses. A massive RNA-seq dataset generated from hemocytes isolated from uninfected and R. parkeri-infected partially blood-fed ticks generated [~]40,000 differentially regulated transcripts, >11,000 of which were immune genes. Silencing two differentially regulated phagocytic immune marker genes (nimrod B2 and eater) significantly reduced hemocyte phagocytosis. Together, these findings represent a significant step forward in understanding how hemocytes regulate microbial homeostasis and vector competence.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Adegoke, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ribeiro, J. M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karim, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.09.515877</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Rickettsia parkeri Hijacks Tick Hemocytes to Manipulate Cellular and Humoral Transcriptional Responses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.11.516073v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A compendium of genetic regulatory effects across pig tissues 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.11.516073v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Farm animal Genotype-Tissue Expression (FarmGTEx, https://www.farmgtex.org/) project has been established to develop a comprehensive public resource of genetic regulatory variants in domestic animal species, which is essential for linking genetic polymorphisms to variation in phenotypes, helping fundamental biology discovery and exploitation in animal breeding and human biomedicine. Here we present results from the pilot phase of PigGTEx (http://piggtex.farmgtex.org/), where we processed 9,530 RNA-sequencing and 1,602 whole-genome sequencing samples from pigs. We build a pig genotype imputation panel, characterize the transcriptional landscape across over 100 tissues, and associate millions of genetic variants with five types of transcriptomic phenotypes in 34 tissues. We study interactions between genotype and breed/cell type, evaluate tissue specificity of regulatory effects, and elucidate the molecular mechanisms of their action using multi-omics data. Leveraging this resource, we decipher regulatory mechanisms underlying about 80% of the genetic associations for 207 pig complex phenotypes, and demonstrate the similarity of pigs to humans in gene expression and the genetic regulation behind complex phenotypes, corroborating the importance of pigs as a human biomedical model.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jinyan, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zeng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cai, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lin, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pan, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hou, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Keel, B. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rohrer, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lindholm-Perry, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Oliver, W. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ballester, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crespo-Piazuelo, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Quintanilla, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Canela-Xandri, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rawlik, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xia, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yao, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liao, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karlskov-Mortensen, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fredholm, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Amills, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clop, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Giuffra, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cai, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diao, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pan, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wei, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Su, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahana, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lund, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dekkers, J. C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer,</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.11.516073</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A compendium of genetic regulatory effects across pig tissues]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.10.516033v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Exploring the distribution of phylogenetic networks generated under a birth-death-hybridization process 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.10.516033v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Gene-flow processes such as hybridization and introgression play important roles in shaping diversity across the tree of life. Recent studies extending birth-death models have made it possible to investigate patterns of reticulation in a macroevolutionary context. These models allow for different macroevolutionary patterns of gene flow events that can either add, maintain, or remove lineages--with the gene flow itself possibly being dependent on the relatedness between species--thus creating complex diversification scenarios. Further, many reticulate phylogenetic inference methods assume specific reticulation structures or phylogenies belonging to certain network classes. However, the distributions of phylogenetic networks under reticulate birth-death processes are poorly characterized, and it is unknown whether they violate common methodological assumptions. We use simulation techniques to explore phylogenetic network space under a birth-death-hybridization process where the hybridization rate can have a linear dependence on genetic distance. Specifically, we measured the number of lineages through time and role of hybridization in diversification along with the proportion of phylogenetic networks that belong to commonly used network classes (e.g., tree-child, tree-based, or level-1 networks). We find that the growth of phylogenetic networks and class membership are largely affected by assumptions about macroevolutionary patterns of gene flow. In accordance with previous studies, a lower proportion of networks belonged to these classes based on type and density of reticulate events. However, under a birth-death-hybridization process, these factors form an antagonistic relationship; the type of reticulation events that cause high membership proportions also lead to the highest reticulation density, consequently lowering the overall proportion of phylogenies in some classes. Further, we observed that genetic distance-dependent gene flow and incomplete sampling increase the proportion of class membership, primarily due to having fewer reticulate events. Our results can inform studies if their biological expectations of gene flow are associated with evolutionary histories that satisfy the assumptions of current methodology and aid in finding phylogenetic classes that are relevant for methods development.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Justison, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heath, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.10.516033</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Exploring the distribution of phylogenetic networks generated under a birth-death-hybridization process]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.10.516002v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
FASSO: An AlphaFold based method to assign functional annotations by combining sequence and structure orthology 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.10.516002v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Methods to predict orthology play an important role in bioinformatics for phylogenetic analysis by identifying orthologs within or across any level of biological classification. Sequence-based reciprocal best hit approaches are commonly used in functional annotation since orthologous genes are expected to share functions. The process is limited as it relies solely on sequence data and does not consider structural information and its role in function. Previously, determining protein structure was highly time-consuming, inaccurate, and limited to the size of the protein, all of which resulted in a structural biology bottleneck. With the release of AlphaFold, there are now over 200 million predicted protein structures, including full proteomes for dozens of key organisms. The reciprocal best structural hit approach uses protein structure alignments to identify structural orthologs. We propose combining both sequence- and structure-based reciprocal best hit approaches to obtain a more accurate and complete set of orthologs across diverse species, called Functional Annotations using Sequence and Structure Orthology (FASSO). Using FASSO, we annotated orthologs between five plant species (maize, sorghum, rice, soybean, Arabidopsis) and three distance outgroups (human, budding yeast, and fission yeast). We inferred over 270,000 functional annotations across the eight proteomes including annotations for over 5,600 uncharacterized proteins. FASSO provides confidence labels on ortholog predictions and flags potential misannotations in existing proteomes. We further demonstrate the utility of the approach by exploring the annotation of the maize proteome.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hayford, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Portwwod, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, E. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harper, L. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gardiner, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sen, T. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.10.516002</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[FASSO: An AlphaFold based method to assign functional annotations by combining sequence and structure orthology]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.14.516497v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Breakthrough: A First-In-Class Virtual Simulator for Dose Optimization of ACE Inhibitors in Veterinary Cardiology 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.14.516497v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWThe human and canine renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-systems (RAAS) play a central role in the pathophysiology of congestive heart failure (CHF), justifying the use of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors inhibitors (ACEi) in this indication. Seminal studies in canine CHF had suggested that the pharmacological action of benazepril was relatively independent of doses > 0.25 mg/kg P.O, thereby providing a rationale for the European label dose of 0.25 mg/kg P.O q24h in dogs with cardiovascular diseases. However, most of these earlier studies on benazepril pharmacodynamics relied on measures of ACE activity - a sub-optimal endpoint to characterize the effect of benazepril on the RAAS.

Nonlinear mixed-effects (NLME) modeling is an established framework for characterizing the effect of therapeutics on complex biological systems, such as the RAAS cascade. Importantly for therapeutic schedule optimization, one can use such a model to predict the outcomes of various hypothetical dosing schedules via simulation.

The objectives of this study were (i) to expand on previous NLME modeling efforts of the dose-exposure-response relationship of benazepril on biomarkers of the RAAS which are relevant to CHF pathophysiology and disease prognosis {angiotensins I, II, III, IV, (1-7)} by using a quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) modeling approach; and (ii) to develop a software implementation of the model capable of simulating clinical trials in benazepril in dogs bedside dose optimization.

This study expands on previous modeling efforts to characterize the changes in RAAS pharmacodynamics in response to benazepril administration and showcase how QSP modeling can be used for efficient dose optimization of ACEis at the bedside. Our results suggest that 0.5 mg/kg PO q12h of benazepril produced the most robust reduction in AngII and upregulation of RAAS alternative pathway biomarkers. This model will eventually be expanded to include relevant clinical endpoints, which will be evaluated in an upcoming prospective trial in canine patients with CHF.

AO_SCPLOWUTHORC_SCPLOW SO_SCPLOWUMMARYC_SCPLOWCongestive heart failure (CHF) is a disease of the heart, common to both dogs and humans, where the heart is not healthy enough to pump blood around the body efficiently. Because the blood isnt moving around the body as efficiently, it tends to get congested in various areas of the body and increases strain on the heart. Benazepril is a drug for CHF used in both dogs and humans to reduce congestion and improve the functioning of the cardiovascular system. Although benazepril is effective, theres evidence that suggests the dosing could be improved if the therapeutic was further studied.

In this experiment, we tested benazepril at several safe dosages in well-cared for and healthy dogs to collect data on the relationship between dose size, dosing frequency, and effect on the cardiovascular system. Using this data, we built computer models of benazepril to simulate many clinical trials. By studying these simulations, we were able to make several predictions about the optimal dosing schedule of benazepril in dogs. Weve also built a web-app version of the computer model for veterinary researchers to use, modify, and study. This work also provides a platform and roadmap for optimizing benazepril dosages in human CHF.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schneider, B. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ward, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sotillo, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garelli-Paar, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guillot, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Prikazsky, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.14.516497</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Breakthrough: A First-In-Class Virtual Simulator for Dose Optimization of ACE Inhibitors in Veterinary Cardiology]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.19.517153v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nod1-dependent NF-kB activation initiates hematopoietic stem cell specification in response to small Rho GTPases 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.19.517153v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The possibility of specifying functional hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) would overcome current limitations related to HSPC transplantation. However, generating hPSC-derived HSPCs has been elusive, necessitating a better understanding of the native developmental mechanisms that trigger HSPC specification. Here, we revealed in vivo an intrinsic inflammatory mechanism triggered by Nod1 that drives early hemogenic endothelium (HE) patterning to specify HSPCs. Our genetic and chemical experiments showed that HSPCs failed to specify in the absence of Nod1 and its downstream kinase Ripk2. Rescue experiments demonstrated that Nod1 and Ripk2 acted through NF-kB, and that small Rho GTPases are at the apex of this mechanism. Manipulation of NOD1 in a human system of hPSCs differentiation towards the definitive hematopoietic lineage indicated functional conservation. This work establishes the RAC1-NOD1-RIPK2-NFkB axis as the earliest inflammatory inductor that intrinsically primes the HE for proper HSPC specification. Manipulation of this pathway could help derive a competent HE amenable to specify functional patient specific HSPCs for the treatment of blood disorders.

HighlightsO_LINod1 specifies HSPCs in vivo through the early induction of hemogenic endothelium.
C_LIO_LINod1-Ripk2 controls HSPC specification by activating the inflammatory master TF NF-kB.
C_LIO_LINod1 links small Rho GTPases with pro-inflammatory signaling during the genesis of HSPCs.
C_LIO_LIThe function of NOD1 is conserved in the development of definitive human HSPCs.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cheng, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barakat, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gorden, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snella, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fidanza, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Campbell, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Espin Palazon, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.19.517153</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nod1-dependent NF-kB activation initiates hematopoietic stem cell specification in response to small Rho GTPases]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.25.517990v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Self-Supervised Maize Kernel Classification and Segmentation for Embryo Identification 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.25.517990v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Computer vision and deep learning (DL) techniques have succeeded in a wide range of diverse fields. Recently, these techniques have been successfully deployed in plant science applications to address food security, productivity, and environmental sustainability problems for a growing global population. However, training these DL models often necessitates the large-scale manual annotation of data which frequently becomes a tedious and time-and-resource-intensive process. Recent advances in self-supervised learning (SSL) methods have proven instrumental in overcoming these obstacles, using purely unlabeled datasets to pre-train DL models. Here, we implement the popular self-supervised contrastive learning methods of NNCLR (Nearest neighbor Contrastive Learning of visual Representations) and SimCLR (Simple framework for Contrastive Learning of visual Representations) for the classification of spatial orientation and segmentation of embryos of maize kernels. Maize kernels are imaged using a commercial high-throughput imaging system. This image data is often used in multiple downstream applications across both production and breeding applications, for instance, sorting for oil content based on segmenting and quantifying the scutellums size and for classifying haploid and diploid kernels. We show that in both classification and segmentation problems, SSL techniques outperform their purely supervised transfer learning-based counterparts and are significantly more annotation efficient. Additionally, we show that a single SSL pre-trained model can be efficiently finetuned for both classification and segmentation, indicating good transferability across multiple downstream applications. Segmentation models with SSL-pretrained backbones produce DICE similarity coefficients of 0.81, higher than the 0.78 and 0.73 of those with ImageNet-pretrained and randomly initialized backbones, respectively. We observe that finetuning classification and segmentation models on as little as 1% annotation produces competitive results. These results show SSL provides a meaningful step forward in data efficiency with agricultural deep learning and computer vision.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dong, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nagasubramanian, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frei, U. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jubery, T. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lübberstedt, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganapathysubramanian, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.25.517990</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Self-Supervised Maize Kernel Classification and Segmentation for Embryo Identification]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.28.518148v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evolution along allometric lines of least resistance: Morphological differentiation in Pristurus geckos 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.28.518148v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Species living in distinct habitats often experience unique ecological selective pressures, which can drive phenotypic divergence. However, how ecophenotypic patterns are affected by allometric trends and trait integration levels is less well understood. Here we evaluate the role of allometry in shaping body size and shape diversity in Pristurus geckos utilizing differing habitats. We found that patterns of body shape allometry and integration were distinct in species with different habitat preferences, with ground-dwelling Pristurus displaying the most divergent allometric trend and the strongest integration. There was also strong concordance between static allometry across individuals and evolutionary allometry among species, revealing that body shape differences among individuals were predictive of evolutionary changes across the phylogeny at macroevolutionary scales. This suggested that phenotypic evolution occurred along allometric lines of least resistance, with allometric trajectories imposing a strong influence on the magnitude and direction of size and shape changes across the phylogeny. When viewed in phylomorphospace, the largest rock-dwelling species were most similar in body shape to the smallest ground-dwelling species, and vice versa. Thus, in Pristurus, phenotypic evolution along the differing habitat-based allometric trajectories resulted in similar body shapes at differing body sizes in distinct ecological habitats.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tejero-Cicuendez, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Menendez, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Talavera, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riano, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burriel-Carranza, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Simo-Riudalbas, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carranza, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adams, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.28.518148</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evolution along allometric lines of least resistance: Morphological differentiation in Pristurus geckos]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.28.518265v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Rethinking bacterial relationships in light of their molecular abilities 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.28.518265v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Determining the repertoire of a microbes molecular functions is a central question in microbial biology. Modern techniques achieve this goal by comparing microbial genetic material against reference databases of functionally annotated genes/proteins or known taxonomic markers such as 16S rRNA. Here we describe a novel approach to exploring bacterial functional repertoires without reference databases. Our Fusion scheme establishes functional relationships between bacteria and assigns organisms to Fusion-taxa that differ from otherwise defined taxonomic clades. Three key findings of our work stand out. First, bacterial functional comparisons outperform marker genes in assigning taxonomic clades. Fusion profiles are also better for this task than other functional annotation schemes. Second, Fusion-taxa are robust to addition of novel organisms and are, arguably, able to capture the environment-driven bacterial diversity. Finally, our alignment-free nucleic acid-based Siamese Neural Network model, created using Fusion functions, enables finding shared functionality of very distant, possibly structurally different, microbial homologs. Our work can thus help annotate functional repertoires of bacterial organisms and further guide our understanding of microbial communities.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mahlich, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhu, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chung, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Velaga, P. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Paolis Kaluza, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Radivojac, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bromberg, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-11-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.28.518265</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Rethinking bacterial relationships in light of their molecular abilities]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-11-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.30.506803v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
GOThresher: a program to remove annotation biases from protein function annotation datasets 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.30.506803v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationAdvances in sequencing technologies have led to a surge in genomic data, although the functions of many gene products coded by these genes remain unknown. While in-depth, targeted experiments that determine the functions of these gene products are crucial and routinely performed, they fail to keep up with the inflow of novel genomic data. In an attempt to address this gap, high-throughput experiments are being conducted in which a large number of genes are investigated in a single study. The annotations generated as a result of these experiments are generally biased towards a small subset of less informative Gene Ontology (GO) terms. Identifying and removing biases from protein function annotation databases is important since biases impact our understanding of protein function by providing a poor picture of the annotation landscape. Additionally, as machine learning methods for predicting protein function are becoming increasingly prevalent, it is essential that they are trained on unbiased datasets. Therefore, it is not only crucial to be aware of biases, but also to judiciously remove them from annotation datasets.

ResultsWe introduce GOThresher, a Python tool that identifies and removes biases in function annotations from protein function annotation databases.

Implementation and AvailabilityGOThresher is written in Python and released via PyPI https://pypi.org/project/gothresher/ and on the Bioconda Anaconda channel https://anaconda.org/bioconda/gothresher. The source code is hosted on GitHub https://github.com/FriedbergLab/GOThresher and distributed under the GPL 3.0 license.

Contact{idoerg@iastate.edu | parnal@iastate.edu}
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Joshi, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khade, P. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.30.506803</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[GOThresher: a program to remove annotation biases from protein function annotation datasets]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.30.518567v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Class VIII myosin ATM1 is required for root apical meristem function 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.30.518567v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Myosins are evolutionarily conserved motor proteins that interact with actin filaments to regulate organelle transport, cytoplasmic streaming and cell growth. Plant-specific Class XI myosin proteins direct cell division and root organogenesis. However, the roles of plantspecific Class VIII myosin proteins in plant growth and development are less understood. Here, we investigated the function of an auxin-regulated Class VIII myosin, Arabidopsis thaliana Myosin 1 (ATM1), using genetics, transcriptomics, and live cell microscopy. ATM1 is expressed in the primary root, adventitious roots and throughout lateral root development. ATM1 is a plasma membrane localized protein that is enriched in actively dividing cells in the root apical meristem (RAM). Loss of ATM1 function results in impaired primary root growth due to decreased RAM size and reduced cell proliferation in a sugar-dependent manner. In ATM1 loss-of-function roots, columella reporter gene expression is diminished, and fewer columella stem cell divisions occur. In addition, atm1-1 roots displayed reduced auxin responses and auxin marker gene expression. Complementation of atm1-1 with a tagged ATM1 driven under the native ATM1 promoter restored root growth and cell cycle progression in the root meristem. Collectively, these results provide novel evidence that ATM1 functions to influence cell proliferation and columella differentiation in primary roots in response to auxin and sugar cues.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Olatunji, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.11.30.518567</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Class VIII myosin ATM1 is required for root apical meristem function]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.03.518986v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Activation loop phosphorylation tunes conformational dynamics underlying Pyk2 tyrosine kinase activation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.03.518986v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Pyk2 is a multidomain non-receptor tyrosine kinase that undergoes a multistage activation mechanism. Activation is instigated by conformational rearrangements relieving autoinhibitory FERM domain interactions. The kinase autophosphorylates a central linker residue to recruit Src kinase. Pyk2 and Src mutually phosphorylate activation loops to confer full activation. While the mechanisms of autoinhibition are established, the conformational dynamics associated with autophosphorylation and Src recruitment remain unclear. We employ hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) and kinase activity profiling to map the conformational dynamics associated with substrate binding and Src-mediated activation loop phosphorylation. Nucleotide engagement stabilizes the autoinhibitory interface, while phosphorylation deprotects both FERM and kinase regulatory surfaces. Phosphorylation organizes active site motifs linking catalytic loop with activation segment. Dynamics of the activation segment anchor propagate to EF/G-helices to prevent reversion of the autoinhibitory FERM interaction. We employ targeted mutagenesis to dissect how phosphorylation-induced conformational rearrangements elevate kinase activity above the basal autophosphorylation rate.

O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=197 SRC="FIGDIR/small/518986v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
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]]></description>
<dc:creator>Palhano Zanela, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woudenberg, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romero Bello, K. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Underbakke, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.12.03.518986</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Activation loop phosphorylation tunes conformational dynamics underlying Pyk2 tyrosine kinase activation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.09.519822v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Cuticle development and underlying transcriptome-metabolome associations during early seedling establishment 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.09.519822v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The plant cuticle is a complex extracellular lipid barrier that provides protection from numerous environmental stressors and is critical for normal organ development. In this study, we investigated cuticle deposition by integrating metabolomics and transcriptomics data gathered from six different maize seedling organs of four genotypes, the inbred lines B73 and Mo17, and their reciprocal hybrids. These datasets captured the developmental transition of the seedling from heterotrophic skotomorphogenic growth to autotrophic photomorphogenic growth, which is a transition that is highly vulnerable to environmental stresses. Statistical interrogation of these data reveals that the predominant determinant of cuticle composition is seedling organ type, whereas the seedling genotype has a smaller effect on this phenotype. Gene-to-metabolite associations assessed by joint statistical analyses of transcriptome and metabolome datasets identified three gene networks connected with the deposition of different fractions of the cuticle: a) cuticular waxes; b) cutin of aerial organs and suberin of roots; and c) both of these fractions. These networks consist of genes that encode known components of the machinery that supports cuticle deposition, demonstrating the utility of this integrated omics approach. Moreover, these gene networks reveal three additional metabolic programs that appear to support cuticle deposition, including processes of a) chloroplast biogenesis, b) lipid metabolism, and c) molecular regulation (e.g., transcription factors, post-translational regulators and phytohormones). This study demonstrates the wider physiological metabolic context that can determine cuticle deposition and lays the groundwork for new targets for modulating properties of this protective barrier.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chen, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhunia, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McNinch, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Campidilli, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hassan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yandeau-Nelson, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.12.09.519822</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Cuticle development and underlying transcriptome-metabolome associations during early seedling establishment]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.520472v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genomic loci involved in sensing environmental cues and metabolism affect seasonal coat shedding in Bos taurus and Bos indicus cattle 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.14.520472v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Seasonal shedding of winter hair at the start of summer is well studied in wild and domesticated populations. However, the genetic influences on this trait and their interactions are poorly understood. We use data from 13,364 cattle with 36,899 repeated phenotypes to investigate the relationship between hair shedding and environmental variables, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and their interactions to understand quantitative differences in seasonal shedding. Using deregressed estimated breeding values from a repeated records model in a genome-wide association analysis (GWAA) and meta-analysis of year-specific GWAA gave remarkably similar results.

These GWAA identified hundreds of variants associated with seasonal hair shedding. There were especially strong associations on chromosomes 5 and 23. Genotype-by- environment interaction GWAA identified 1,040 day length-by-genotype interaction associations and 17 apparent temperature-by-genotype interaction associations with hair shedding, highlighting the importance of day length on hair shedding. Accurate genomic predictions of hair shedding were created for the entire dataset, Angus, Hereford, Brangus, and multi-breed datasets. Loci related to metabolism and light- sensing have a large influence on seasonal hair shedding. This is one of the largest genetic analyses of a phenological trait and provides insight for both agriculture production and basic science.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Durbin, H. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yampara, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rowan, T. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnabel, R. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koltes, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Powell, J. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Decker, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.12.14.520472</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genomic loci involved in sensing environmental cues and metabolism affect seasonal coat shedding in Bos taurus and Bos indicus cattle]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.15.520479v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Reverse-zoonoses of 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza A viruses and evolution in United States swine results in viruses with zoonotic potential 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.15.520479v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The 2009 H1N1 pandemic (pdm09) lineage of influenza A virus (IAV) crosses interspecies barriers with frequent human-to-swine spillovers each year. These spillovers reassort and drift within swine populations, leading to genetically and antigenically novel IAV that represent a zoonotic threat. We quantified interspecies transmission of the pdm09 lineage, persistence in swine, and identified how evolution in swine impacted zoonotic risk. Human and swine pdm09 case counts between 2010 and 2020 were correlated and human pdm09 burden and circulation directly impacted the detection of pdm09 in pigs. However, there was a relative absence of pdm09 circulation in humans during the 2020-21 season that was not reflected in swine. During the 2020-21 season, most swine pdm09 detections originated from human-to-swine spillovers from the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons that persisted in swine. We identified contemporary swine pdm09 representatives of each persistent spillover and quantified cross-reactivity between human seasonal H1 vaccine strains and the swine strains using a panel of monovalent ferret antisera in hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assays. The swine pdm09s had variable antigenic reactivity to vaccine antisera, but each swine pdm09 clade exhibited significant reduction in cross-reactivity to one or more of the human seasonal vaccine strains. Further supporting zoonotic risk, we showed phylogenetic evidence for 17 swine-to-human transmission events of pdm09 from 2010 to 2021, 11 of which were not previously classified as variants, with each of the zoonotic cases associated with persistent circulation of pdm09 in pigs. These data demonstrate that reverse-zoonoses and evolution of pdm09 in swine results in viruses that are capable of zoonotic transmission and represent a potential pandemic threat.

Author SummaryThe diversity and evolution of influenza A virus (IAV) in pigs is linked to the emergence of IAV with pandemic potential. Human-to-swine transmission of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic (pdm09) IAV lineage repeatedly occurred across the past decade and has increased genetic diversity in pigs: sporadic swine-to-human cases are associated with these viruses. We measured the frequency of human-to-swine transmission of the H1N1 pandemic IAV lineage between 2009 and 2021 and determined how this affected the diversity of IAV in swine and zoonotic risk. We detected 371 separate human-to-swine spillovers, with the frequency of interspecies transmission increasing when the burden of IAV was highest in the human population. Most spillovers were single events without sustained transmission, but a small subset resulted in the emergence, persistence, and cocirculation of different pdm09 genetic clades in US pigs. Each of the pdm09 representative of different persistent spillovers was genetically and antigenically different from human seasonal vaccine strains. The persistence of pdm09 within pigs resulted in at least five recent swine-to-human transmission events. These data suggest that controlling IAV infection in humans working with swine can minimize spillover into pigs, reduce resulting genetic diversity of IAV in pigs, and proactively reduce the potential for swine-to-human transmission of IAV with pandemic potential.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Markin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ciacci Zanella, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arendsee, Z. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krueger, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vincent Baker, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.12.15.520479</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Reverse-zoonoses of 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza A viruses and evolution in United States swine results in viruses with zoonotic potential]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.20.521257v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dissecting Complexity: The Hidden Impact of Application Parameters on Bioinformatics Research 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.20.521257v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Biology is a quest; an ongoing inquiry about the nature of life. How do the different forms of life interact? What makes up an ecosystem? How does a tiny bacterium work? To answer these questions biologists turn increasingly to sophisticated computational tools. Many of these tools are highly configurable, allowing customization in support of a wide range of uses. For example, algorithms can be tuned for precision, efficiency, type of inquiry, or for specific categories of organisms or their component subsystems. Ideally, configurability provides useful flexibility. However, the complex landscape of configurability may be fraught with pitfalls. This paper examines that landscape in bioinformatics tools. We propose a methodology, SOMATA, to facilitate systematic exploration of the vast choice of application parameters, and apply it to three different tools on a range of scientific inquires. We further argue that the tools themselves are complex ecosystems. If biologists explore these, ask questions, and experiment just as they do with their biological counterparts, they will benefit by both finding improved solutions to their problems as well as increasing repeatability and transparency. We end with a call to the community for an increase in shared responsibility and communication between tool developers and the biologists that use them in the context of complex system decomposition.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cashman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cohen, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marsh, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cottingham, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.12.20.521257</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dissecting Complexity: The Hidden Impact of Application Parameters on Bioinformatics Research]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.521591v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic characterization of the zoonotic parasite Ancylostoma caninum in the central and eastern USA 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.521591v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Ancylostoma caninum is the most common nematode parasite of dogs in the United States. This study aimed to describe the molecular epidemiology of A. caninum isolates from the central and eastern states of the U.S. using the partial mitochondrial cox1 gene and to compare them with those reported globally. We isolated eggs from fecal samples of dogs and characterized each isolate based on cox1 sequences. A total of 60 samples originating from Kansas, Iowa, New York, Florida, and Massachusetts were included. 25 haplotypes were identified in the U.S. dataset with high haplotype diversity (0.904). Sequence data were compared to sequences from other world regions available in GenBank. Global haplotype analysis demonstrated 35 haplotypes with a haplotype diversity of 0.931. Phylogenetic and network analysis provide evidence for the existence of moderate geographical structuring of A. caninum haplotypes. Our results provide an updated summary of A. caninum haplotypes and data for neutral genetic markers with utility for tracking hookworm populations. Sequences have been deposited in GenBank (ON980650 - ON980674). Further studies of isolates from other regions are essential to understand the genetic diversity of this parasite.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Quintana, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnson, W. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ritchie, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McMahan, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brewer, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jesudoss Chelladurai, J. R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.12.22.521591</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic characterization of the zoonotic parasite Ancylostoma caninum in the central and eastern USA]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.28.522153v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Accuracy of functional gene community detection in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by maximizing Generalized Modularity Density 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.28.522153v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Identifying functionally-cohesive gene communities from large data sets of expression data for individual genes is a key approach to understanding the molecular components of biological processes. Here, we compare the accuracy of twelve different approaches to infer gene co-expression networks and then find gene communities within the networks. Among the approaches used are ones involving a recently developed clustering method that identifies communities by maximizing Generalized Modularity Density (Qg). RNA-Seq data from 691 samples of S. cerevisiae (yeast) are analyzed. These data have been obtained from organisms grown under diverse environmental and developmental conditions and encompass varied mutant lines. To assess the accuracy of different approaches, we introduce a statistical measure, the Average Adjusted Rand Index (AARI) score, which compares their results to Gene Ontology (GO) term associations. Inferring gene networks using the Context Likelihood of Relatedness (CLR) and subsequently clustering by maximizing Generalized Modularity Density is found to identify the most significant functional communities. Also, to quantify the extent to which the identified communities are biologically relevant, a GO term enrichment analysis is performed. The results indicate that many of the communities found by maximizing Generalized Modularity Density are enriched in genes with known biological functions. Furthermore, some of the communities contain genes of unknown function, enabling inference of potentially novel functional interactions involving these genes. Furthermore, some genes are species-specific orphan genes; assignment of these orphan genes to communities enriched in a particular biological process provides a method to infer the biological process in which they are involved. We focus on a few communities that are highly significantly enriched in a particular biological process, and develop experimentally-testable predictions about the orphan genes in these communities.

Author summaryFinding gene communities that are of biological relevance from expression profiles of individual genes is a critical approach to understanding biological processes and their molecular components. Various computational methods have been developed to infer underlying metabolic and regulatory networks and to identify functional communities of genes. Which network inference and clustering methods works best to achieve this goal has largely remained an open question. Here, using genome-wide transcriptomic data for S. cerevisiae, we systematically compare the effectiveness of several commonly used network inference and clustering methods. We rank these methods by comparing the clusters obtained by different methods to Gene Ontology (GO) terms. We find that inferring gene networks using a method known as the Context Likelihood of Relatedness (CLR) and subsequently clustering by maximizing Generalized Modularity Density identifies the most significant functional communities.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Singh, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bassler, K. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2022-12-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2022.12.28.522153</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Accuracy of functional gene community detection in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by maximizing Generalized Modularity Density]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2022-12-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.02.522497v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Temperature-Sensitive Contact Modes Allosterically Gate TRPV3 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.02.522497v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
TRPV Ion channels are sophisticated molecular sensors designed to respond to distinct temperature thresholds. The recent surge in cryo-EM structures has provided numerous insights into the structural rearrangements accompanying their opening and closing; however, the molecular mechanisms by which TRPV channels establish precise and robust temperature sensing remain elusive. In this work we employ molecular simulations, multi-ensemble contact analysis, graph theory, and machine learning techniques to reveal the temperature-sensitive residue-residue interactions driving allostery in TRPV3. We find that groups of residues exhibiting similar temperature-dependent contact frequency profiles cluster at specific regions of the channel. The dominant mode clusters on the ankyrin repeat domain and displays a linear melting trend while others display non-linear trends. These modes describe the residue-level temperature response patterns that underlie the channels functional dynamics. With network analysis, we find that the community structure of the channel changes with temperature. And that a network of high centrality contacts connects distant regions of the protomer to the gate, serving as a means for the temperature-sensitive contact modes to allosterically regulate channel gating. Using a random forest model, we show that the contact states of specific temperature-sensitive modes are indeed predictive of the channel gates state. Supporting the physical validity of these modes and networks are several residues identified with our analyses that are reported in literature to be functionally critical. Our results offer high resolution insight into thermo-TRP channel function and demonstrate the utility of temperature-sensitive contact analysis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Burns, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Venditti, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-01-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.01.02.522497</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Temperature-Sensitive Contact Modes Allosterically Gate TRPV3]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-01-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.07.523108v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Unsupervised Contrastive Peak Caller for ATAC-seq 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.07.523108v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing (ATAC-seq) is a common assay to identify chromatin accessible regions by using a Tn5 transposase that can access, cut, and ligate adapters to DNA fragments for subsequent amplification and sequencing. These sequenced regions are quantified and tested for enrichment in a process referred to as "peak calling". Most unsupervised peak calling methods are based on simple statistical models and suffer from elevated false positive rates. Newly developed supervised deep learning methods can be successful, but they rely on high quality labeled data for training, which can be difficult to obtain. Moreover, though biological replicates are recognized to be important, there are no established approaches for using replicates in the deep learning tools, and the approaches available for traditional methods either cannot be applied to ATAC-seq, where control samples may be unavailable, or are post-hoc and do not capitalize on potentially complex, but reproducible signal in the read enrichment data. Here, we propose a novel peak caller that uses unsupervised contrastive learning to extract shared signals from multiple replicates. Raw coverage data are encoded to obtain low-dimensional embeddings and optimized to minimize a contrastive loss over biological replicates. These embeddings are passed to another contrastive loss for learning and predicting peaks and decoded to denoised data under an autoencoder loss. We compared our Replicative Contrastive Learner (RCL) method with other existing methods on ATAC-seq data, using annotations from ChromHMM genome and transcription factor ChIP-seq as noisy truth. RCL consistently achieved the best performance.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Vu, H. T. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuteja, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-01-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.01.07.523108</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Unsupervised Contrastive Peak Caller for ATAC-seq]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-01-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.16.524327v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Efficiency enhancement of microparticles seeding density on the inner surface of polymer hollow microfibers using microfluidics 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.16.524327v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lateral displacement of microparticles suspended in a viscoelastic fluid flowing through a microfluidic channel occurs due to an imbalance in the first (N1) and second (N2) normal stress differences. Here, we studied the lateral displacement of fluorescent microparticles suspended in a polyethylene glycol (PEG) solution in a two-phase flow with aqueous sodium alginate, flowing through a unique microfluidic device that manufactures microparticles seeded alginate-based hollow microfibers. Parameters such as concentration of the aqueous sodium alginate and flow rate ratios were optimized to enhance microparticle seeding density and minimize their loss to the collection bath. 4 % w/v aqueous sodium alginate was observed to confine the suspended microparticles within the hollow region of microfibers as compared to 2 % w/v. Moreover, the higher flow rate ratio of the core fluid, 250 L min-1 resulted in about 192 % increase in the microparticle seeding density as compared to its lower flow rate of 100 L min-1. The shear thinning index (m) was measured to be 0.91 for 2 % w/v and 0.75 for 4 % w/v sodium alginate solutions. These results help gain insights into understanding the microparticle displacement within a viscoelastic polymer solution flowing through a microfluidic channel and motivate further studies to investigate the cellular response with the optimized parameters.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Aykar, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hashemi, N. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-01-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.01.16.524327</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Efficiency enhancement of microparticles seeding density on the inner surface of polymer hollow microfibers using microfluidics]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-01-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.25.525557v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Characterizing the Interactions of Cell Membrane-Disrupting Peptides with Lipid-Functionalized Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Systems for Antimicrobial Screening 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.25.525557v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lipid-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have garnered significant interest for their potential use in a wide range of biomedical applications. In this work, we used molecular dynamics simulations to study the equilibrium properties of SWNTs surrounded by the phosphatidylcholine (POPC) corona phase, and their interactions with three cell membrane disruptor peptides: colistin, TAT peptide, and crotamine-derived peptide. Our results show that SWNTs favor asymmetrical positioning within the POPC corona, so that one side of the SWNT, covered by the thinnest part of the corona, comes in contact with charged and polar functional groups of POPC and water. We also observed that colistin and TAT insert deeply into POPC corona, while crotamine-derived peptide only adsorbs to the corona surface. Compared to crotamine-derived peptide, colistin and TAT also induce larger perturbations in the thinnest region of the corona, by allowing more water molecules to directly contact the SWNT surface. In separate simulations, we show that three examined peptides exhibit similar insertion and adsorption behaviors when interacting with POPC bilayers, confirming that peptide-induced perturbations to POPC in conjugates and bilayers are similar in nature and magnitude. Furthermore, we observed correlations between the peptide-induced structural perturbations and the near-infrared emission of the lipid-functionalized SWNTs, which suggest that the optical signal of the conjugates transduces the morphological changes in the lipid corona. Overall, our findings indicate that lipid-functionalized SWNTs could serve as simplified cell membrane model systems for pre-screening of new antimicrobial compounds that disrupt cell membranes.



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]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yadav, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelich, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kallmyer, N. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reuel, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vukovic, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-01-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.01.25.525557</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Characterizing the Interactions of Cell Membrane-Disrupting Peptides with Lipid-Functionalized Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Systems for Antimicrobial Screening]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-01-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.05.527183v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Host-specific subtelomere: structural variation and horizontal transfer in asexual filamentous fungal pathogens 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.05.527183v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Several asexual filamentous fungal pathogens contain supernumerary chromosomes carrying secondary metabolite (SM) or pathogenicity genes as well as transposons. Supernumerary chromosomes have been shown in in vitro experiments to transfer from pathogenic isolates to non-pathogenic ones and between isolates whose fusion can result in vegetative or heterokaryon incompatibility (HET). However, much is still unknown about the extent of horizontal transfer of supernumerary chromosomes within and between asexual pathogenic populations in adaptation to their hosts. We investigated several asexual fungal pathogens for genomic elements involved in maintaining telomeres for supernumerary and core chromosomes during vegetative reproduction. We found that in vegetative populations or lineages with a nearly complete telomere-to-telomere genome assembly (e.g. Fusarium equiseti and five formae speciales of the F. oxysporum species complex), core and supernumerary chromosomes were flanked by highly similar subtelomeric sequences on the 3 side and by their reverse complements on the 5 side. This subtelomere sequence structure was specific to the host. We detected instances of recent horizontal transfer of regions of a supernumerary chromosome between distant populations in the F. oxysporum species complex, and we also found field isolates with two structurally different copies of a supernumerary chromosome in a young asexual population, raising the possibility that those copies originated from different lineages by intrastrain anastomosis. A large number of HET domain genes were located in SM/pathogenicity gene clusters, with a potential role in marking these gene clusters during vegetative reproduction. The emergence of novel asexual pathogenic populations by horizontal transfer of transposon-rich supernumerary chromosomes within and between populations poses challenges to the control and management of these pathogens.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Huang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.05.527183</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Host-specific subtelomere: structural variation and horizontal transfer in asexual filamentous fungal pathogens]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.07.527497v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
GAUT10 is required for Arabidopsis root cell differentiation and elongation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.07.527497v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
O_LICell wall properties of the root apical meristem (RAM) are poorly understood compared to the elongation and maturation zones of the developing root. GAUT10 is a pectin biosynthesizing enzyme that is post-transcriptionally regulated by auxin that influences Arabidopsis RAM size in a sucrose-dependent manner.
C_LIO_LIUsing live-cell microscopy, we have determined the short root phenotype of the gaut10 loss of function allele is due to a reduction in both RAM cell number and epidermal cell elongation. In addition, the absence of GAUT10 leads to a reduction in lateral root cap and epidermal cell marker line expression, indicating root cell differentiation defects in this mutant.
C_LIO_LIGAUT10 is required for normal pectin and hemicellulose composition in primary Arabidopsis roots. Loss of GAUT10 leads to a reduction in galacturonic acid and xylose in primary cell walls and alters the presence of rhamnogalacturonan (RG) I and homogalacturonan (HG) polymers in the root.
C_LIO_LIAuxin mediated gene expression and metabolism is altered in gaut10 roots, suggesting that cell wall composition may influence auxin pathways.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dash, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swaminathan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Simura, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Solanki, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mejia, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ljung, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zabotina, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.07.527497</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[GAUT10 is required for Arabidopsis root cell differentiation and elongation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.08.523653v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The E. coli pathobiont LF82 encodes a unique variant of σ70 that results in specific gene expression changes and altered phenotypes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.08.523653v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
LF82, an adherent invasive Escherichia coli pathobiont, is associated with ileal Crohns disease, an inflammatory bowel disease of unknown etiology. Although LF82 contains no virulence genes, it carries several genetic differences, including single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), that distinguish it from nonpathogenic E. coli. We have identified and investigated an extremely rare SNP that is within the highly conserved rpoD gene, encoding {sigma}70, the primary sigma factor for RNA polymerase. We demonstrate that this single residue change (D445V) results in specific transcriptome and phenotypic changes that are consistent with multiple phenotypes observed in LF82, including increased antibiotic resistance and biofilm formation, modulation of motility, and increased capacity for methionine biosynthesis. Our work demonstrates that a single residue change within the bacterial primary sigma factor can lead to multiple alterations in gene expression and phenotypic changes, suggesting an underrecognized mechanism by which pathobionts and other strain variants with new phenotypes can emerge.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Arroyo-Mendoza, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Proctor, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Correa-Medina, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brand, M. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rosas, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wannemuehler, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phillips, G. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hinton, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.08.523653</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The E. coli pathobiont LF82 encodes a unique variant of σ70 that results in specific gene expression changes and altered phenotypes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.08.527623v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Spanve: an Effective Statistical Method to Detect Spatially Variable Genes in Large-scale Spatial Transcriptomics Data 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.08.527623v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Depicting gene expression in a spatial context through spatial transcriptomics would be beneficial for inferring cell function mechanisms. The identification of spatially variable genes is a crucial step in leveraging the spatial transcriptome to understand intricate spatial dynamics. In this study, we developed Spanve, a nonparametric statistical method for detecting spatially variable genes in large-scale ST data by quantifying expression differences between spots and their spatial neighbours. This method offers a nonparametric approach to identifying spatial dependencies in gene expression without assuming specific distributions. Compared to traditional methods, Spanve decreases the number of false-positive outcomes, leading to more accurate identification of spatially variable genes. Furthermore, Spanve could facilitate downstream spatial transcriptomics analyses, including spatial domain detection and cell type deconvolution. These results show the broad applications of Spanve in advancing our understanding of spatial gene expression patterns within complex tissue microenvironments.

Graphical abstract

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]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cai, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.08.527623</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Spanve: an Effective Statistical Method to Detect Spatially Variable Genes in Large-scale Spatial Transcriptomics Data]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.08.527764v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Root associated bacterial communities and root metabolite composition are linked to nitrogen use efficiency in sorghum 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.08.527764v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Development of cereal crops with high nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) is a priority for worldwide agriculture. In addition to conventional plant breeding and genetic engineering, the use of the plant microbiome offers another approach to improve crop NUE. To gain insight into the bacterial communities associated with sorghum lines that differ in NUE, a field experiment was designed comparing 24 diverse sorghum lines under sufficient and deficient nitrogen (N). Amplicon sequencing and untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) were used to characterize the bacterial communities and the root metabolome associated with sorghum genotypes varying in sensitivity to low N. We demonstrated that N stress and sorghum type (energy, sweet, and grain sorghum) significantly influenced the root-associated bacterial communities and root metabolite composition of sorghum. Sorghum NUE was positively correlated with the bacterial richness and diversity in the rhizosphere. The greater alpha diversity in high NUE lines was associated with the decreased abundance of a dominant bacterial taxa, Pseudomonas. Multiple strong correlations were detected between root metabolites and rhizosphere bacterial communities in response to N stress and indicate that the shift in the sorghum microbiome due to low-N is associated with the root metabolites of the host plant. Taken together, our study provides new insight into the links between host genetic regulation of root metabolites and root-associated microbiome of sorghum genotypes differing in NUE and tolerance to low-N stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chai, Y. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goren, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sheflin, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tringe, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Prenni, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schachtman, D. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.08.527764</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Root associated bacterial communities and root metabolite composition are linked to nitrogen use efficiency in sorghum]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.11.527743v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Streamline unsupervised machine learning to survey and graph indel-based haplotypes from pan-genomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.11.527743v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Identification and visualization of large insertion and deletion (indel) polymorphisms, which contribute significantly to natural phenotypic variation, are challenge from a pan-genome. Here, through streamlining two unsupervised machine learning algorithms, we developed a BRIDGEcereal webapp for surveying and graphing indel-based haplotypes for genes of interest from publicly accessible pangenomes. Over hundreds of assemblies from five major cereals were compiled. We demonstrated the potential of BRIDGEcereal in exploring natural variation with wheat candidate genes within QTLs and GWAS intervals. BRIDGEcereal is available from https://bridgecereal.scinet.usda.gov.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhang, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tibbs-Cortes, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vanous, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanguinet, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Garland-Campbell, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.11.527743</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Streamline unsupervised machine learning to survey and graph indel-based haplotypes from pan-genomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.13.528393v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
DeepTAP: an RNN-based method of TAP-binding peptide prediction in the selection of tumor neoantigens 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.13.528393v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The transport of antigenic peptides from cytoplasm to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) via transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) is a critical step during the presentation of tumor neoantigens. The application of computational approaches significantly speed up the analysis of this biological process. Here, we present a tool named DeepTAP for TAP-binding peptide prediction, which employs a sequence-based multilayered recurrent neural network (RNN). Compared with traditional machine learning and other available prediction tools, DeepTAP achieves state-of-the-art performance on the benchmark datasets. The source code and dataset of DeepTAP are available freely via GitHub at https://github.com/zjupgx/DeepTAP.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baeza, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gu, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.13.528393</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[DeepTAP: an RNN-based method of TAP-binding peptide prediction in the selection of tumor neoantigens]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.20.527070v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Characterization of the First Turtle Organoids: A Model for Investigating Unique Adaptations with Biomedical Potential 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.20.527070v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Painted turtles are remarkable for their well-developed freeze tolerance and associated resilience to hypoxia/anoxia, oxidative stress, and ability to supercool. They are, therefore, an ideal model for biomedical research on hypoxia-induced injuries (including strokes), tissue cooling during extensive surgeries, and organ cryopreservation. Yet, the seasonal reproduction and slow maturation of turtles hinder basic and applied biomedical research. To overcome these limitations, we developed the first adult stem cell-derived turtle hepatic organoids, which provide 3D self-assembled structures that mimic their original tissue and allow for in vitro testing and experimentation without constantly harvesting donor tissue and screening offspring. Our pioneering work with turtles represents the first for this vertebrate Order and complements the only other organoid lines from non-avian reptiles, derived from snake venom glands. Here we report the isolation and characterization of hepatic organoids derived from painted, snapping, and spiny softshell turtles spanning [~]175 million years of evolution, with a subset being preserved in a biobank. Morphological and transcriptomics revealed organoid cells resembling cholangiocytes, which was then compared to the tissue of origin. Deriving turtle organoids from multiple species and life stages demonstrates that our techniques are broadly applicable to chelonians, permitting the development of functional genomic tools currently missing in most herpetological research. When combined with genetic editing, this platform will further support studies of genome-to-phenome mapping, gene function, genome architecture, and adaptive responses to climate change, among others. We discuss the unique abilities of turtles, including their overwintering potential, which has implications for ecological, evolutionary, and biomedical research.

SIGNIFICANCEHere we developed the first turtle-derived organoid biobank from the liver of multiple chelonians with a subset characterized via histology, RNA sequencing transcriptomics, single-nuclei RNA sequencing, and transmission electron microscopy. Furthermore, we discuss the potential of the 3D organoid model to investigate unique physiological adaptations of turtles which could unravel the molecular mechanisms underlying their overwintering capacity, opening the door for in vitro biomedical studies relevant to hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury to organ cryopreservation, beyond fundamental ecology and evolution. This organoid biobank represents a novel resource for the scientific community to support research regarding the unique adaptations of this understudied Order of vertebrates.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zdyrski, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gabriel, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gessler, T. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ralston, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sifuentes-Romero, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kundu, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Honold, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wickham, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Topping, N. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahoo, D. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bista, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tamplin, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ospina, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pineyro, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meyerholz, D. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allenspach, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Valenzuela, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.20.527070</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Characterization of the First Turtle Organoids: A Model for Investigating Unique Adaptations with Biomedical Potential]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.20.529187v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Assessment of long-term trends in genetic mean and variance after the introduction of genomic selection in layers: a simulation study 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.20.529187v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Nucleus-based breeding programs are characterized by intense selection that results in high genetic gain, which inevitably means reduction of genetic variation in the breeding population. Therefore, genetic variation in such breeding systems is typically managed systematically, for example, by avoiding mating the closest relatives to limit progeny inbreeding. However, intense selection requires maximum effort to make such breeding programs sustainable in the long-term. The objective of this study was to use simulation to evaluate the long-term impact of genomic selection on genetic mean and variance in an intense layer chicken breeding program. We developed a large-scale stochastic simulation of an intense layer chicken breeding program to compare conventional truncation selection to genomic truncation selection optimized with either minimization of progeny inbreeding or full-scale optimal contribution selection. We compared the programs in terms of genetic mean, genic variance, conversion efficiency, rate of inbreeding, effective population size, and accuracy of selection. Our results confirmed that genomic truncation selection has immediate benefits compared to conventional truncation selection in all specified metrics. A simple minimization of progeny inbreeding after genomic truncation selection did not provide any significant improvements. Optimal contribution selection was successful in having better conversion efficiency and effective population size compared to genomic truncation selection, but it must be fine-tuned for balance between loss of genetic variance and genetic gain. In our simulation, we measured this balance using trigonometric penalty degrees between truncation selection and a balanced solution and concluded that the best results were between 45{degrees} and 65{degrees}. This balance is specific to the breeding program and depends on how much immediate genetic gain a breeding program may risk vs. save for the future. Furthermore, our results show that the persistence of accuracy is better with optimal contribution selection compared to truncation selection. In general, our results show that optimal contribution selection can ensure long-term success in intensive breeding programs using genomic selection.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pocrnic, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Obsteter, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gaynor, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wolc, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gorjanc, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.20.529187</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Assessment of long-term trends in genetic mean and variance after the introduction of genomic selection in layers: a simulation study]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.23.529665v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Rapid genotyping of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) using MinION nanopore sequencing 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.23.529665v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The global distribution and constant evolution are challenges for the control of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), one of the most important viruses affecting swine worldwide. Effective control of PRRSV benefits from genotyping, which currently relies on Sanger sequencing. Here we developed and optimized procedures for real-time genotyping and whole genome sequencing of PRRSV directly from clinical samples based on targeted amplicon- and long amplicon tiling sequencing using the MinION Oxford Nanopore platform. Procedures were developed and tested on 154 clinical samples (including lung, serum, oral fluid and processing fluid) with RT-PCR Ct values ranging from 15 to 35. The targeted amplicon sequencing (TAS) approach was developed to obtain sequences of the complete ORF5 (main target gene for PRRSV genotyping) and partial ORF4 and ORF6 sequences of both PRRSV-1 and PRRSV-2 species. After only 5 min of sequencing, PRRSV consensus sequences with identities to reference sequences above 99% were obtained, enabling rapid identification and genotyping of clinical PRRSV samples into lineages 1, 5 and 8. The long amplicon tiling sequencing (LATS) approach targets type 2 PRRSV, the most prevalent viral species in the U.S. and China. Complete PRRSV genomes were obtained within the first hour of sequencing for samples with Ct values below 24.9. Ninety-two whole genome sequences were obtained using the LATS procedure. Fifty out of 60 sera (83.3%) and 18 out of 20 lung samples (90%) had at least 80% of genome covered at a minimum of 20X sequence depth per position. The procedures developed and optimized in this study here are valuable tools with potential for field application during PRRSV elimination programs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Caserta, L. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pineyro, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diel, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.02.23.529665</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Rapid genotyping of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) using MinION nanopore sequencing]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.03.530969v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Litter Matters: The Importance of Decomposition Products for Soil Bacterial Diversity and abundance of key groups of the N cycle in Tropical Areas 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.03.530969v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
This study investigated the contribution of soil organic layers to bacterial diversity evaluations. We used a forest in the eastern Amazon and an adjacent pasture as model systems. Distinct organic and organo-mineral layers were identified in the forest and pasture floors, including the litter, partially and wholly decomposed organic material, and the mineral and rhizospheric soils. DNA was extracted, and 16S rRNA gene sequencing and qPCR were performed to assess bacterial community structure and the abundance of critical groups of the N cycle. We observed a clear vertical gradient in bacterial community composition. Species followed a log-normal distribution, with the highest richness and diversity observed in transitional organic layers of both land uses. Generally, critical groups of the N cycle were more abundant in these transitional layers, especially in the pastures fragmented litter and in the forests partially decomposed organic material. Considering the organic layers increased diversity estimates significantly, with the highest alpha and gamma bacterial diversity observed on the pasture floor and the highest beta diversity on the forest floor. The results show that organic layers harbor significant bacterial diversity in natural and anthropized systems and suggest that they can be crucial for maintaining the N cycle in these ecosystems, highlighting the need to consider them when studying soil bacterial diversity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Diniz, P. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borges, B. M. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Oliveira, A. P. d.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coelho, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aragao, O. O. d. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ribeiro, T. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rocha, F. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coelho, M. R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dias, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cole, J. R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mui, T. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jesus, E. d. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-03-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.03.03.530969</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Litter Matters: The Importance of Decomposition Products for Soil Bacterial Diversity and abundance of key groups of the N cycle in Tropical Areas]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-03-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.07.531630v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transcription Factor Dynamics in Cross-Regulation of Plant Hormone Signaling Pathways 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.07.531630v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cross-regulation between hormone signaling pathways is indispensable for plant growth and development. However, the molecular mechanisms by which multiple hormones interact and co-ordinate activity need to be understood. Here, we generated a cross-regulation network explaining how hormone signals are integrated from multiple pathways in etiolated Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) seedlings. To do so we comprehensively characterized transcription factor activity during plant hormone responses and reconstructed dynamic transcriptional regulatory models for six hormones; abscisic acid, brassinosteroid, ethylene, jasmonic acid, salicylic acid and strigolactone/karrikin. These models incorporated target data for hundreds of transcription factors and thousands of protein-protein interactions. Each hormone recruited different combinations of transcription factors, a subset of which were shared between hormones. Hub target genes existed within hormone transcriptional networks, exhibiting transcription factor activity themselves. In addition, a group of MITOGEN-ACTIVATED PROTEIN KINASES (MPKs) were identified as potential key points of cross-regulation between multiple hormones. Accordingly, the loss of function of one of these (MPK6) disrupted the global proteome, phosphoproteome and transcriptome during hormone responses. Lastly, we determined that all hormones drive substantial alternative splicing that has distinct effects on the transcriptome compared with differential gene expression, acting in early hormone responses. These results provide a comprehensive understanding of the common features of plant transcriptional regulatory pathways and how cross-regulation between hormones acts upon gene expression.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yin, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zander, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, S.-s. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xie, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saldierna Guzman, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hann, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shanbhag, B. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ng, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jain, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janssen, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beddoe, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bar-Joseph, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lewsey, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ecker, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-03-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.03.07.531630</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transcription Factor Dynamics in Cross-Regulation of Plant Hormone Signaling Pathways]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-03-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.10.532068v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Pathology of natural infection with highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b in wild terrestrial mammals in the United States in 2022 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.10.532068v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
This article describes the first detections of disease due to natural infection with highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIv) H5N1 of the Eurasian lineage goose/Guangdong clade 2.3.4.4b in wild terrestrial mammals throughout the United States during 2021-2022. Affected mammalian species include 50 red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), 6 striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis), 4 raccoons (Procyon lotor), 2 bobcats (Lynx rufus), 2 Virginia opossums (Didelphis virginiana), 1 coyote (Canis latrans), 1 fisher (Pekania pennanti), and 1 gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). Infected mammals primarily exhibited neurological signs. Necrotizing meningoencephalitis, interstitial pneumonia, and myocardial necrosis were the most common lesions; however, species variations in lesion distribution were observed. Genotype analysis of sequences from 48 animals indicates that these cases represent spillover infections from wild birds.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Elsmo, E. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wunschmann, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beckmen, K. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Broughton-Neiswanger, L. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckles, E. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ellis, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fitzgerald, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gerlach, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hawkins, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ip, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lankton, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lemley, E. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lenoch, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Killian, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lantz, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Long, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maes, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mainenti, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Melotti, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moriarty, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakagun, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ruden, R. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shearn-Bochsler, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thompson, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Torchetti, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Van Wettere, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lim, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-03-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.03.10.532068</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Pathology of natural infection with highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b in wild terrestrial mammals in the United States in 2022]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-03-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.11.532212v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
In vitro comparison of SARS-CoV-2 variants 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.11.532212v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Coronaviridae family hosts various coronaviruses responsible for many diseases, from the common cold, severe lung infections to pneumonia. SARS-CoV-2 was discovered to be the etiologic agent of the Coronavirus pandemic, and numerous basic and applied laboratory techniques were utilized in virus culture and examination of the disease. Understanding the replication kinetics and characterizing the virus effect on different cell lines is crucial for developing in vitro studies. With the emergence of multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2, a comparison between their infectivity and replication in common cell lines will give us a clear understanding of the characteristic differences in pathogenicity. In this study, we compared the cytopathic effect (CPE) and replication of Wild Type (WT), Omicron (B.1.1.529), and Delta (B.1.617.2) variants on 5 different cell lines; VeroE6, VeroE6 expressing high endogenous ACE2, VeroE6 highly expressing human ACE2 (VeroE6/ACE2) and TMPRSS2 (VeroE6/hACE2/ TMPRSS2), Calu3 cells highly expressing human ACE2 and A549 cells. All 3 VeroE6 cell lines were susceptible to WT strain, where CPE and replication were observed. Along with being susceptible to Wild type, VeroE6/hACE2/TMPRSS2 cells were susceptible to both omicron and delta strains, whereas VeroE6/ACE2 cells were only susceptible to omicron in a dose-dependent manner. No CPE was observed in both human lung cell lines, A549 and Calu3/hACE2, but Wild type and omicron replication was observed. As SAR-CoV-2 continues to evolve, this data will benefit researchers in experimental planning, viral pathogenicity analysis, and providing a baseline for testing future variants.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Phadke, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Higdon, N. B. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bellaire, B. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-03-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.03.11.532212</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[In vitro comparison of SARS-CoV-2 variants]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-03-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.18.533264v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Uncovering the Environmental Conditions Required for Phyllachora maydis Infection and Tar Spot Development on Corn in the United States for Use as Predictive Models for Future Epidemics 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.18.533264v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Phyllachora maydis is a fungal pathogen causing tar spot of corn (Zea mays L.), a new and emerging, yield-limiting disease in the United States. Since being first reported in Illinois and Indiana in 2015, P. maydis can now be found across much of the corn growing of the United States. Knowledge of the epidemiology of P. maydis is limited but could be useful in developing tar spot prediction tools. The research presented here aims to elucidate the environmental conditions necessary for the development of tar spot in the field and the creation of predictive models to anticipate future tar spot epidemics. Extended periods (30-day windowpanes) of moderate ambient temperature were most significant for explaining the development of tar spot. Shorter periods (14- to 21-day windowpanes) of moisture (relative humidity, dew point, number of hours with predicted leaf wetness) were negatively correlated with tar spot development. These weather variables were used to develop multiple logistic regression models, an ensembled model, and two machine learning models for the prediction of tar spot development. This work has improved the understanding of P. maydis epidemiology and provided the foundation for the development of a predictive tool for anticipating future tar spot epidemics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Webster, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nicolli, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allen, T. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bish, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bissonette, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Check, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chilvers, M. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kleczewski, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mueller, B. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Price, P. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Paul, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robertson, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmidt, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmidt, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmidt, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shim, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Telenko, D. E. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, D. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-03-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.03.18.533264</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Uncovering the Environmental Conditions Required for Phyllachora maydis Infection and Tar Spot Development on Corn in the United States for Use as Predictive Models for Future Epidemics]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-03-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.30.534962v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CORE CONSERVED TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATORY NETWORKS DEFINE THE INVASIVE TROPHOBLAST CELL LINEAGE 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.30.534962v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The invasive trophoblast cell lineage in rat and human share crucial responsibilities in establishing the uterine-placental interface of the hemochorial placenta. These observations have led to the rat becoming an especially useful animal model to study hemochorial placentation. However, our understanding of similarities or differences between regulatory mechanisms governing rat and human invasive trophoblast cell populations is limited. In this study, we generated single-nucleus (sn) ATAC-seq data from gestation day (gd) 15.5 and 19.5 rat uterine-placental interface tissues and integrated the data with single-cell RNA-seq data generated at the same stages. We determined the chromatin accessibility profiles of invasive trophoblast, natural killer, macrophage, endothelial, and smooth muscle cells, and compared invasive trophoblast chromatin accessibility to extravillous trophoblast (EVT) cell accessibility. In comparing chromatin accessibility profiles between species, we found similarities in patterns of gene regulation and groups of motifs enriched in accessible regions. Finally, we identified a conserved gene regulatory network in invasive trophoblast cells. Our data, findings and analysis will facilitate future studies investigating regulatory mechanisms essential for the invasive trophoblast cell lineage.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Vu, H. T. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Scott, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Iqbal, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Soares, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuteja, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-04-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.03.30.534962</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CORE CONSERVED TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATORY NETWORKS DEFINE THE INVASIVE TROPHOBLAST CELL LINEAGE]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-04-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.04.535565v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A soybean pattern recognition receptor conferring broad-spectrum pathogen and pest resistance regulates expression of several NLR receptor proteins 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.04.535565v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Overexpressors of Glycine max disease resistant 1 (GmDR1) exhibits broad-spectrum resistance against Fusarium virguliforme, soybean cyst nematode (SCN), spider mites, and soybean aphids in soybean. To understand the mechanisms of broad-spectrum immunity mediated by GmDR1, we investigated the transcriptomes of a strong and a weak GmDR1-overexpressors following treatment with chitin, a pathogen- and pest-associated molecular pattern (PAMP) found in these organisms. The strong and weak GmDR1-overexpressors exhibited altered expression of 6,098 and 992 genes, respectively, as compared to the nontransgenic control following chitin treatment. However, only 192 of these genes exhibited over two-fold changes in expression levels in both strong and weak GmDR1-overexpressors as compared to the control. MapMan analysis of the 192 genes revealed 64 biotic stress-related genes, of which 53 were induced and 11 repressed as compared to the control. The 53 chitin-induced genes include nine that encode receptor kinases, 13 encode nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) receptor proteins, seven encoding WRKY transcription factors, four ethylene response factors, and three MYB-like transcription factors. Investigation of a subset of these genes revealed three receptor protein kinases, seven NLR proteins, and one WRKY transcription factor genes that are induced following F. virguliforme and SCN infection. The integral plasma membrane GmDR1 protein most likely recognizes PAMPs including chitin and activates transcription of genes encoding receptor kinases and NLR proteins. GmDR1 could be a pattern recognition receptor that regulates the expression of several NLRs for expression of PAMP-triggered immunity and/or priming the effector triggered immunity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ngaki, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srivastava, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bhattacharyya, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-04-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.04.04.535565</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A soybean pattern recognition receptor conferring broad-spectrum pathogen and pest resistance regulates expression of several NLR receptor proteins]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-04-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.05.535771v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A single amino acid substitution in MdLAZY1A dominantly impairs shoot gravitropism in Malus 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.05.535771v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plant architecture is one of the most important factors that determines crop yield potential and productivity. In apple (Malus), genetic improvement of tree architecture has been challenging due to a long juvenile phase and their growth as complex trees composed of a distinct scion and a rootstock. To better understand the genetic control of apple tree architecture, the dominant weeping growth phenotype was investigated. We report the identification of MdLAZY1A (MD13G1122400) as the genetic determinant underpinning the Weeping (W) locus that largely controls weeping growth in Malus. MdLAZY1A is one of the four paralogs in apple that are most closely related to AtLAZY1 involved in gravitropism in Arabidopsis. The weeping allele (MdLAZY1A-W) contains a single nucleotide mutation c.584T>C that leads to a leucine to proline (L195P) substitution within a predicted transmembrane domain that co-localizes with Region III, one of the five conserved regions in LAZY1-like proteins. Subcellular localization revealed that MdLAZY1A localizes to the plasma membrane and nucleus in plant cells. Over-expressing the weeping allele in apple cultivar Royal Gala (RG) with standard growth habit impaired its gravitropic response and altered the growth to weeping-like. Suppressing the standard allele (MdLAZY1A-S) by RNA interference (RNAi) in RG similarly changed the branch growth direction to downward. Overall, the L195P mutation in MdLAZY1A is genetically causal for weeping growth, underscoring not only the crucial roles of residue L195 and Region III in MdLAZY1A-mediated gravitropic response, but also a potential DNA base editing target for tree architecture improvement in Malus and other crops.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dougherty, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borejsza-Wysocka, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miaule, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zheng, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jansen, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>BROWN, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pineros, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dardick, C. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-04-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.04.05.535771</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A single amino acid substitution in MdLAZY1A dominantly impairs shoot gravitropism in Malus]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-04-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.09.535952v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Clathrin Light Chains are essential in negative regulation of cell death and immunity in Arabidopsis through interacting with autophagy pathway 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.09.535952v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Clathrin plays a critical role in clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) in plants, and it is required for autophagy in mammals. However, the functional interconnection of clathrin with autophagy has not been firmly established in plants. Here, we demonstrate that loss of function of clathrin light chain (CLC) subunit 2 and 3 results in salicylic acid (SA)- and H2O2-dependent accelerated senescence and activated defense responses in Arabidopsis, which are hallmarks of the autophagy-related gene (ATG) mutants. Similar to atg mutants, the clc2-1clc3-1 double mutant has enhanced sensitivity to both carbon and nitrogen starvation and enhanced resistance to biotrophic bacterial and fungal pathogens. In addition, the autophagy flux was significantly reduced in the roots of clc2-1clc3-1 mutant plants relative to Col-0 plants under carbon starvation conditions. Furthermore, our Yeast-2-hybrid (Y2H) and Luciferase complementation assays showed that CLC2 directly interacted with ATG8h and ATG8i. Mutations within the unique ATG8-interacting motif (AIM) of CLC2 as well as at the LIR/AIM-docking site (LDS) of ATG8h abolished the interaction between CLC2 and ATG8h. As anticipated, both GFP-ATG8h/GFP-ATG8i and CLC2 were subjected to autophagic degradation in the vacuoles. Together, our data revealed that the accelerated senescence and activated immune responses observed in Arabidopsis clc2-1clc3-1 mutant plants result from impaired autophagy, and CLC2 participates in autophagy through direct interactions with ATG8h and ATG8i in an AIM1- and LDS-dependent manner. Our results unveil a previously unidentified link between the function of CLCs and autophagy.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lan, H.-J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ran, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wu, N.-N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, W.-X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ni, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakata, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pan, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-04-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.04.09.535952</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Clathrin Light Chains are essential in negative regulation of cell death and immunity in Arabidopsis through interacting with autophagy pathway]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-04-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.10.536248v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Diethylcarbamazine elicits Ca2+ signals through TRP-2 channels that are potentiated by emodepside in Brugia malayi muscles 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.10.536248v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Filarial nematode infections are a major health concern in several countries. Lymphatic filariasis is caused by Wucheria bancrofti and Brugia spp. affecting over 120 million people. Heavy infections can lead to elephantiasis having serious effects on individuals lives. Although current anthelmintics are effective at killing the microfilariae in the bloodstream, they have little to no effect against adult parasites found in the lymphatic system. The anthelmintic diethylcarbamazine is one of the central pillars of lymphatic filariasis control. Recent studies have reported that diethylcarbamazine can open Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) channels on the muscles of adult female Brugia malayi leading to contraction and paralysis. Diethylcarbamazine has synergistic effects in combination with emodepside on Brugia inhibiting motility: emodepside is an anthelmintic that has effects on filarial nematodes and is under trials for treatment of river blindness. Here we have studied the effects of diethylcarbamazine on single Brugia muscle cells by measuring the change in Ca2+ fluorescence in the muscle using Ca2+-imaging techniques. Diethylcarbamazine interacts with the TRPC orthologue receptor TRP-2 to promote Ca2+ entry into the Brugia muscle cells which can activate SLO-1 Ca2+ activated K+ channels, the putative target of emodepside. A combination of diethylcarbamazine and emodepside leads to a bigger Ca2+ signal than when either compound is applied alone. Our study shows that diethylcarbamazine targets TRP channels to promote Ca2+ entry that is increased by emodepside activation of SLO-1 channels.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Williams, P. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kashyap, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robertson, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-04-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.04.10.536248</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Diethylcarbamazine elicits Ca2+ signals through TRP-2 channels that are potentiated by emodepside in Brugia malayi muscles]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-04-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.18.537400v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An accurate and interpretable model to predict antimicrobial resistance in One Health settings 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.18.537400v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Understanding the microbial genomic contributors to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is essential for early detection of emerging AMR infections, a pressing global health threat in human and veterinary medicine. Here we used whole genome sequencing and antibiotic susceptibility test data from 980 disease causing Escherichia coli isolated from companion and farm animals to model AMR genotypes and phenotypes for 24 antibiotics. We determined the strength of genotype-to-phenotype relationships for 197 AMR genes with elastic net logistic regression. Model predictors were designed to evaluate different potential modes of AMR genotype translation into resistance phenotypes. Our results show a model that considers the presence of individual AMR genes and total number of AMR genes present from a set of genes known to confer resistance was able to accurately predict isolate resistance on average (mean F1 score = 98.0%, SD = 2.3%, mean accuracy = 98.2%, SD = 2.7%). However, fitted models sometimes varied for antibiotics in the same class and for the same antibiotic across animal hosts, suggesting heterogeneity in the genetic determinants of AMR resistance. We conclude that an interpretable AMR prediction model can be used to accurately predict resistance phenotypes across multiple host species and reveal testable hypotheses about how the mechanism of resistance may vary across antibiotics within the same class and across animal hosts for the same antibiotic.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chung, H. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foxx, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hicks, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stuber, T. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, B. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-04-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.04.18.537400</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An accurate and interpretable model to predict antimicrobial resistance in One Health settings]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-04-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.24.538130v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
How Do Deer Respiratory Epithelial Cells Weather The Initial Storm of SARS-CoV-2? 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.24.538130v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The potential infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 in animals raises a public health and economic concern, particularly the high susceptibility of white-tailed deer (WTD) to SARS-CoV-2. The disparity in the disease outcome between humans and WTD is very intriguing, as the latter are often asymptomatic, subclinical carriers of SARS-CoV-2. To date, no studies have evaluated the innate immune factors responsible for the contrasting SARS-CoV-2-associated disease outcomes in these mammalian species. A comparative transcriptomic analysis in primary respiratory epithelial cells of human (HRECs) and WTD (Deer-RECs) infected with SARS-CoV-2 was assessed throughout 48 hours post inoculation (hpi). Both HRECs and Deer-RECs were susceptible to SARS-COV-2, with significantly (P < 0.001) lower virus replication in Deer-RECs. The number of differentially expressed genes (DEG) gradually increased in Deer-RECs but decreased in HRECs throughout the infection. The ingenuity pathway analysis of DEGs further identified that genes commonly altered during SARS-CoV-2 infection mainly belong to cytokine and chemokine response pathways mediated via IL-17 and NF-{kappa}B signaling pathways. Inhibition of the NF-{kappa}B signaling in the Deer-RECs pathway was predicted as early as 6 hpi. The findings from this study could explain the lack of clinical signs reported in WTD in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection as opposed to the severe clinical outcomes reported in humans.

HIGHLIGHTSO_LIWhite-tailed deer primary respiratory epithelial cells are susceptible to SARS- CoV-2 without causing hyper cytokine gene expression.
C_LIO_LIDownregulation of IL-17 and NF-{kappa}B signaling pathways after SARS-CoV-2 infection could be key to the regulated cytokine response in deer cells.
C_LIO_LIDeer innate immune system could play a critical role in early antiviral and tissue repair response following SARS-CoV-2 infection.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Davila, K. M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelli, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phadke, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ruden, R. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bellaire, B. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gimenez-Lirola, L. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, L. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-04-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.04.24.538130</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[How Do Deer Respiratory Epithelial Cells Weather The Initial Storm of SARS-CoV-2?]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-04-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.10.540250v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Mammalian orthoreovirus infection in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 positive (HER2+) breast cancer cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.10.540250v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mammalian orthoreovirus (MRV) is a clinically benign oncolytic virus which has been investigated for use in multiple cancer types, including breast cancer (BC). In human clinical trials, MRV has been shown to be safe, and multiple BC patients have shown partial responses to intratumoral and intravenous virus delivery. Combination therapies inclusive of MRV and current FDA approved BC chemotherapies are being investigated to target metastatic, early BC, and triple negative BC. Though MRV is being tested clinically, we still do not fully understand the highly variable patient responses to MRV therapy. One of the most aggressive BC subtypes is HER2+ BC, in which human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) is dysregulated, resulting in increased growth, survival, and metastasis of cancer cells. FDA approved therapies, trastuzumab and pertuzumab, target HER2 to prevent signaling of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway. However, recent findings show that accumulation of hypoxia inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1) in HER2+ BC cells contributes to trastuzumab resistance. In this work, we provide evidence that MRV infects, replicates in, and kills HER2 overexpressing cells. MRV infection is also found to have variable effects on signaling pathways that activate or are activated by HER2 expression. Finally, we show that MRV reduces HIF-1 accumulation in all the cell lines tested, including a HER2+ BC cell line. These studies provide further evidence that MRV holds promise for use in conjunction with trastuzumab to treat HER2+ BC patients.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jandick, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kirner, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-05-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.05.10.540250</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Mammalian orthoreovirus infection in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 positive (HER2+) breast cancer cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-05-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.12.540518v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Conformational landscape of the transcription factor ATF4 is dominated by disordered-mediated inter-domain coupling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.12.540518v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Transient intramolecular interactions between transactivation domain and DNA binding domain of transcription factors are known to play important functional roles, including modulation of DNA binding affinity and specificity. Similar type of inter-domain interactions has recently been reported for the transcription factor ATF4/CREB-2, a key regulator of the Integral Stress Response. In the case of ATF4, transient coupling between the transactivation and basic-leucine zipper (bZip) domains regulates the degree of phosphorylation of the disordered transactivation domain achievable by the casein kinase CK2. Despite the crucial importance of these inter-domain interactions, their structural and molecular basis remain ill-determined. In the present study, we use a combination of experimental and computational techniques to determine the precise nature of the long-range contacts established between the transactivation and bZip domains of ATF4 prior to its association with protein partners and DNA. Solution NMR spectroscopy experiments reveal that the isolated bZip domain of ATF4 is predominantly disordered and display evidence of conformational dynamics over a wide range of timescales. These experimental findings are supported by multi-microsecond timescale all-atom molecular simulations that unveil the molecular basis of the long-range interactions between the transactivation and bZip domains of ATF4. We found that inter-domain coupling is primarily driven by disorder-mediated interactions between a leucine-rich region of the transactivation domain and the leucine-zipper region of the bZip domain. This study uncovers the role played by structural disorder in facilitating the formation of long-range intramolecular interactions that shape the conformational ensemble of ATF4 in a critical manner.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Patel, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roche, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-05-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.05.12.540518</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Conformational landscape of the transcription factor ATF4 is dominated by disordered-mediated inter-domain coupling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-05-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.13.540664v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Models to Estimate Genetic Gain of Soybean Seed Yield from Annual Multi-Environment Field Trials 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.13.540664v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1Genetic improvements of discrete characteristics such as flower color, the genetic improvements are obvious and easy to demonstrate; however, for characteristics that are measured on continuous scales, the genetic contributions are incremental and less obvious. Reliable and accurate methods are required to disentangle the confounding genetic and non-genetic components of quantitative traits. Stochastic simulations of soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) breeding programs were performed to evaluate models to estimate the realized genetic gain (RGG) from 30 years of multi-environment trials (MET). True breeding values were simulated under an infinitesimal model to represent the genetic contributions to soybean seed yield under various MET conditions. Estimators were evaluated using objective criteria of bias and linearity. Results indicated all estimation models were biased. Covariance modeling as well as direct versus indirect estimation resulted in substantial differences in RGG estimation. Although there were no unbiased models, the three best-performing models resulted in an average bias of {+/-}7.41 kg/ha-1/yr-1 ({+/-}0.11 bu/ac-1/yr-1). Rather than relying on a single model to estimate RGG, we recommend the application of multiple models and consider the range of the estimated values. Further, based on our simulations parameters, we do not think it is appropriate to use any single models to compare breeding programs or quantify the efficiency of proposed new breeding strategies. Lastly, for public soybean programs breeding for maturity groups II and III in North America from 1989 to 2019, the range of estimated RGG values was from 18.16 to 39.68 kg/ha-1/yr-1 (0.27 to 0.59 bu/ac-1/yr-1).
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dalsente Krause, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Piepho, H.-P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dias Olimpio das Gracas, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beavis, W. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-05-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.05.13.540664</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Models to Estimate Genetic Gain of Soybean Seed Yield from Annual Multi-Environment Field Trials]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-05-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.17.540811v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The emergence and diversification of a zoonotic pathogen from within the microbiota of intensively farmed pigs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.17.540811v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The expansion and intensification of livestock production is predicted to promote the emergence of pathogens. As pathogens sometimes jump between species this can affect the health of humans as well as livestock. Here we investigate how livestock microbiota can act as a source of these emerging pathogens through analysis of Streptococcus suis, a ubiquitous component of the respiratory microbiota of pigs that is also a major cause of disease on pig farms and an important zoonotic pathogen. Combining molecular dating, phylogeography and comparative genomic analyses of a large collection of isolates, we find that several pathogenic lineages of S. suis emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries, during an early period of growth in pig farming. These lineages have since spread between countries and continents, mirroring trade in live pigs. They are distinguished by the presence of three genomic islands with putative roles in metabolism and cell adhesion, and an ongoing reduction in genome size, which may reflect their recent shift to a more pathogenic ecology. Reconstructions of the evolutionary histories of these islands reveal constraints on pathogen emergence that could inform control strategies, with pathogenic lineages consistently emerging from one subpopulation of S. suis and acquiring genes through horizontal transfer from other pathogenic lineages. These results shed light on the capacity of the microbiota to rapidly evolve to exploit changes in their host population and suggest that the impact of changes in farming on the pathogenicity and zoonotic potential of S. suis is yet to be fully realised.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Murray, G. G. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hossain, A. S. M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bruchmann, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Balmer, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matuszewska, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Herbert, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hadjirin, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mugabi, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferrando, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernades de Oliveira, I. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yen, P. L. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moe, A. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wai, T. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gottschalk, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aragon, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Valentin-Weigand, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heegaard, P. M. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vrieling, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maw, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Myint, H. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Win, Y. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hoa, N. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bentley, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clavijo, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wells, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tucker, A. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weinert, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-05-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.05.17.540811</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The emergence and diversification of a zoonotic pathogen from within the microbiota of intensively farmed pigs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-05-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.25.542362v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Sequences at gene segment termini inclusive of untranslated regions and partial open reading frames play a critical role in mammalianorthoreovirus S gene packaging 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.25.542362v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mammalian orthoreovirus (MRV) is a prototypic member of the Spinareoviridae family and has ten double-stranded RNA segments. One copy of each segment must be faithfully packaged into the mature virion, and prior literature suggests that nucleotides (nts) at the terminal ends of each gene likely facilitate their packaging. However, little is known about the precise packaging sequences required or how the packaging process is coordinated. Using a novel approach, we have determined that 200 nts at each terminus, inclusive of untranslated regions (UTR) and parts of the open reading frame (ORF), are sufficient for packaging each S gene segment (S1-S4) individually and together into replicating virus. Further, we mapped the minimal sequences required for packaging the S1 gene segment to 25 5' nts and 50 3' nts. The S1 UTRs alone are not sufficient, but are necessary for packaging, as mutations of the 5' or 3' UTRs led to a complete loss of virus recovery. Using a second novel assay, we determined that 50 5'nts and 50 3' nts of S1 are sufficient to package a non-viral gene segment into MRV. The 5' and 3' termini of the S1 gene are predicted to form a panhandle structure and specific mutations within the predicted stem of the panhandle region led to a significant decrease in viral recovery. Additionally, mutation of six nts that are conserved in the three major serotypes of MRV and are predicted to form an unpaired loop in the S1 3'UTR, led to a complete loss of viral recovery. Overall, our data provide strong experimental proof that MRV packaging signals lie at the terminal ends of the S gene segments and offer support that the sequence requirements for efficient packaging of the S1 segment include a predicted panhandle structure and specific sequences within an unpaired loop in the 3' UTR.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dhar, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mehanovic, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-05-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.05.25.542362</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Sequences at gene segment termini inclusive of untranslated regions and partial open reading frames play a critical role in mammalianorthoreovirus S gene packaging]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-05-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.02.543453v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Conformational heterogeneity of the BTK PHTH domain drives multiple regulatory states 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.02.543453v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Full-length BTK has been refractory to structural analysis. The nearest full-length structure of BTK to date consists of the autoinhibited SH3-SH2-kinase core. Precisely how the BTK N-terminal domains (the Pleckstrin homology/Tec homology (PHTH) domain and proline-rich regions (PRR) contain linker) contribute to BTK regulation remains unclear. We have produced crystals of full-length BTK for the first time but despite efforts to stabilize the autoinhibited state, the diffraction data still reveals only the SH3-SH2-kinase core with no electron density visible for the PHTH-PRR segment. CryoEM data of full-length BTK, on the other hand, provide the first view of the PHTH domain within full-length BTK. CryoEM reconstructions support conformational heterogeneity in the PHTH-PRR region wherein the globular PHTH domain adopts a range of states arrayed around the autoinhibited SH3-SH2-kinase core. On the way to activation, disassembly of the SH3-SH2-kinase core opens a new autoinhibitory site on the kinase domain for PHTH domain binding that is ultimately released upon interaction of PHTH with PIP 3. Membrane-induced dimerization activates BTK and we present here a crystal structure of an activation loop swapped BTK kinase domain dimer that likely represents the conformational state leading to trans-autophosphorylation. Together, these data provide the first structural elucidation of full-length BTK and allow a deeper understanding of allosteric control over the BTK kinase domain during distinct stages of activation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lin, D. Y.-w.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kueffer, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Juneja, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wales, T. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Engen, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andreotti, A. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.02.543453</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Conformational heterogeneity of the BTK PHTH domain drives multiple regulatory states]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.05.543779v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Cas4/1 dual nuclease activities enable prespacer maturation and directional integration in a type I-G CRISPR-Cas system 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.05.543779v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
CRISPR-Cas adaptive immune systems uptake short  spacer sequences from foreign DNA and incorporate them into the host genome to serve as templates for crRNAs that guide interference against future infections. Adaptation in CRISPR systems is mediated by Cas1-Cas2 complexes that catalyze integration of prespacer substrates into the CRISPR array. Many DNA targeting systems also require Cas4 endonucleases for functional spacer acquisition. Cas4 selects prespacers containing a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) and removes the PAM prior to integration, both of which are required to ensure host immunization. Cas1 has also been shown to function as a nuclease in some systems, but a role for this nuclease activity in adaptation has not been demonstrated. We identified a type I-G Cas4/1 fusion with a nucleolytically active Cas1 domain that can directly participate in prespacer processing. The Cas1 domain is both an integrase and a sequence-independent nuclease that cleaves the non-PAM end of a prespacer, generating optimal overhang lengths that enable integration at the leader side. The Cas4 domain sequence-specifically cleaves the PAM end of the prespacer, ensuring integration of the PAM end at the spacer side. The two domains have varying metal ion requirements. While Cas4 activity is Mn2+ dependent, Cas1 preferentially uses Mg2+ over Mn2+. The dual nuclease activity of Cas4/1 eliminates the need for additional factors in prespacer processing, making the adaptation module self-reliant for prespacer maturation and directional integration.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dhingra, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sashital, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.05.543779</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Cas4/1 dual nuclease activities enable prespacer maturation and directional integration in a type I-G CRISPR-Cas system]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.04.543631v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phylomitogenomics bolsters the high-level classification of Demospongiae (phylum Porifera) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.04.543631v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Class Demospongiae - the largest in the phylum Porifera (Sponges) - encompasses nearly 8,000 accepted species in three subclasses: Keratosa, Verongimorpha, and Heteroscleromorpha. Subclass Heteroscleromorpha contains [~]90% of demosponge species and is subdivided into 17 orders. The higher level classification of demosponges underwent major revision as the result of nearly three decades of molecular studies. However, because most of the previous molecular work only utilized partial data from a small number of nuclear and mitochondrial (mt) genes, this classification scheme needs to be tested by larger datasets. Here we compiled a mt dataset for 136 demosponge species - including 64 complete or nearly complete and six partial mt-genome sequences determined or assembled for this study - and used it to test phylogenetic relationships among Demospongiae in general and Heteroscleromorpha in particular. We also investigated the phylogenetic position of Myceliospongia araneosa - a highly unusual demosponge without spicules and spongin fibers, currently classified as Demospongiae incertae sedis, for which molecular data were not available. Our results support the previously inferred sister-group relationship between Heteroscleromorpha and Keratosa + Verongimorpha and suggest five main clades within Heteroscleromorpha: Clade C0 composed of order Haplosclerida; Clade C1 composed of Scopalinida, Sphaerocladina, and Spongillida; Clade C2 composed of Axinellida, Biemnida, Bubarida; Clade C3 composed of Tetractinellida; and Clade C4 composed of Agelasida, Clionaida, Desmacellida, Merliida, Suberitida, Poecilosclerida, Polymastiida, and Tethyida. The inferred relationships among these clades were (C0(C1(C2(C3+C4)))). Analysis of molecular data from M. araneosa placed it in the C3 clade as a sister taxon to the highly skeletonized tetractinellids Microscleroderma sp. and Leiodermatium sp. Molecular clock analysis dated divergences among the major clades in Heteroscleromorpha from the Cambrian to the Early Silurian, the origins of most heteroscleromorph orders in the middle Paleozoic, and the most basal splits within these orders around the Paleozoic to Mesozoic transition. Overall, the results of this study are mostly congruent with the accepted classification of Heteroscleromorpha, but add temporal perspective and new resolution to phylogenetic relationships within this subclass.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lavrov, D. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diaz, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maldonado, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morrow, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perez, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pomponi, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thucker, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.04.543631</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phylomitogenomics bolsters the high-level classification of Demospongiae (phylum Porifera)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.06.543888v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Structural Organization of the Retriever-CCC Endosomal Recycling Complex 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.06.543888v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The recycling of membrane proteins from endosomes to the cell surface is vital for cell signaling and survival. Retriever, a trimeric complex of VPS35L, VPS26C and VPS29, together with the CCC complex comprising CCDC22, CCDC93, and COMMD proteins, plays a crucial role in this process. The precise mechanisms underlying Retriever assembly and its interaction with CCC have remained elusive. Here, we present the first high-resolution structure of Retriever determined using cryogenic electron microscopy. The structure reveals a unique assembly mechanism, distinguishing it from its remotely related paralog, Retromer. By combining AlphaFold predictions and biochemical, cellular, and proteomic analyses, we further elucidate the structural organization of the entire Retriever-CCC complex and uncover how cancer-associated mutations disrupt complex formation and impair membrane protein homeostasis. These findings provide a fundamental framework for understanding the biological and pathological implications associated with Retriever-CCC-mediated endosomal recycling.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Boesch, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singla, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Suzuki, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Juneja, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Long, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Medlyn, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Billadeau, D. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burstein, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.06.543888</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Structural Organization of the Retriever-CCC Endosomal Recycling Complex]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.12.544530v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Construction of a multi-tissue cell atlas reveals cell-type-specific regulation of molecular and complex phenotypes in pigs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.12.544530v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The systematic characterization of cellular heterogeneity among tissues and cell-type-specific regulation underlying complex phenotypes remains elusive in pigs. Within the Pig Genotype-Tissue Expression (PigGTEx) project, we present a single-cell transcriptome atlas of adult pigs encompassing 229,268 high-quality nuclei from 19 tissues, annotated to 67 major cell types. Besides cellular heterogeneity within and across tissues, we further characterize prominent tissue-specific features and functions of muscle, epithelial, and immune cells. Through deconvoluting 3,921 bulk RNA-seq samples from 17 matching tissues, we dissect thousands of genetic variants with cell-type interaction effects on gene expression (ieQTL). By colocalizing these ieQTL with variants associated with 268 complex traits, we provide new insights into the cellular mechanisms behind these traits. Moreover, we highlight that orthologous genes with cell-type-specific regulation in pigs exhibit significant heritability enrichment for some human complex phenotypes. Altogether, our work provides a valuable resource and highlights novel insights in cellular regulation of complex traits for accelerating pig precision breeding and human biomedical research.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chen, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Teng, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cai, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zeng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pan, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yan, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lin, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahana, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lund, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ballester, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crespo-Piazuelo, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karlskov-Mortensen, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fredholm, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clop, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Amills, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loving, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuggle, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Madsen, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fang, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yi, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.12.544530</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Construction of a multi-tissue cell atlas reveals cell-type-specific regulation of molecular and complex phenotypes in pigs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.12.544655v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CREATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A RECOMBINANT MAMMALIAN ORTHOREOVIRUS EXPRESSING HUMAN EPIDERMAL GROWTH FACTOR RECEPTOR 2 PEPTIDES 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.12.544655v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mammalian orthoreovirus (MRV) is an oncolytic virus that has been tested in over 30 clinical trials. Increased clinical success has been achieved when MRV is used in combination with other onco-immunotherapies. This has led the field to explore the creation of recombinant MRVs which incorporate immunotherapeutic sequences into the virus genome. This work focuses on creation and characterization of a recombinant MRV, S1/HER2nhd, which expresses three human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) peptides (E75, AE36, and GP2) known to induce HER2 specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cells. We show S1/HER2nhd expresses HER2 peptides in infected cells and on the virion, and infects, replicates, and reduces HER2+ breast cancer cell survival. The oncolytic properties of MRV combined with HER2 peptide expression holds potential as a vaccine to prevent recurrences of HER2 expressing cancers.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jandick, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.12.544655</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CREATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A RECOMBINANT MAMMALIAN ORTHOREOVIRUS EXPRESSING HUMAN EPIDERMAL GROWTH FACTOR RECEPTOR 2 PEPTIDES]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.14.544995v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Evidence of Disrupted-in Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) as an arsenic binding protein and implications regarding its role as a translational activator 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.14.544995v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Disrupted-in-schizophrenia-1 (DISC1) is a scaffold protein that plays a pivotal role in orchestrating signaling pathways involved in neurodevelopment, neural migration, and synaptogenesis. Among those, it has recently been reported that the role DISC1 in the Akt/mTOR pathway can shift from a global translational repressor to a translational activator in response to oxidative stress induced by arsenic. In this study we are providing evidence that DISC1 can directly bind arsenic via a C-terminal cysteine motif (C-X-C-X-C). A series of fluorescence-based binding assays were conducted with a truncated C-terminal domain construct of DISC1 and a of series of single, double, and triple cysteine mutants. We found that arsenous acid, a trivalent arsenic derivative, specifically binds to the C-terminal cysteine motif of DISC1 with low micromolar affinity. All three cysteines of the motif are required for high-affinity binding. Electron microscopy experiments combined with in silico structural predictions revealed that that the C-terminal of DISC1 forms an elongated tetrameric complex. The cysteine motif is consistently predicted to be located within a loop, fully exposed to solvent, providing a simple molecular framework to explain the high-affinity of DISC1 toward arsenous acid. This study sheds light on a novel functional facet of DISC1 as an arsenic binding protein and highlights its potential role as both a sensor and translational modulator within the Akt/mTOR pathway.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Watanabe, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khu, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warren, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shin, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stewart, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roche, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.14.544995</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Evidence of Disrupted-in Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) as an arsenic binding protein and implications regarding its role as a translational activator]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.27.546670v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The ChickenGTEx pilot analysis: a reference of regulatory variants across 28 chicken tissues 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.27.546670v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Chicken is a valuable model for understanding fundamental biology, vertebrate evolution and diseases, as well as a major source of nutrient-dense and lean-protein-enriched food globally. Although it is the first non-mammalian amniote genome to be sequenced, the chicken genome still lacks a systematic characterization of functional impacts of genetic variants. Here, through integrating 7,015 RNA-Seq and 2,869 whole-genome sequence data, the Chicken Genotype- Tissue Expression (ChickenGTEx) project presents the pilot reference of regulatory variants in 28 chicken tissue transcriptomes, including millions of regulatory effects on primary expression (including protein-coding genes, lncRNA and exon) and post-transcriptional modifications (alternative splicing and 3 untranslated region alternative polyadenylation). We explored the tissue-sharing and context-specificity of these regulatory variants, their underlying molecular mechanisms of action, and their utility in interpreting adaptation and genome-wide associations of 108 chicken complex traits. Finally, we illustrated shared and lineage-specific features of gene regulation between chickens and mammals, and demonstrated how the ChickenGTEx resource can further assist with translating genetic findings across species.

One-Sentence SummaryThe ChickenGTEx provides a multi-tissue reference of regulatory variants for chicken genetics and genomics, functional genomics, precision breeding, veterinary medicine, vertebrate evolution and even human biomedicine.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Guan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhong, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hou, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lan, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diao, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhu, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pan, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zou, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sun, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Teng, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lin, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shao, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Degalez, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lagarrigue, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peng, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rocha, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charles, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Watson, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buitenhuis, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sahana, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lund, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warren, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frantz, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Larson, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lamont, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Si, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shu, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nie, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, G. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhou, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fang</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.27.546670</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The ChickenGTEx pilot analysis: a reference of regulatory variants across 28 chicken tissues]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.28.546976v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A Molecular Communication model for cellular metabolism 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.28.546976v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Understanding cellular engagement with its environment is essential to control and monitor metabolism. Molecular Communication theory (MC) offers a computational means to identify environmental perturbations that direct or signify cellular behaviors by quantifying the information about a molecular environment that is transmitted through a metabolic system. We developed an model that integrates conventional flux balance analysis metabolic modeling (FBA) and MC to mechanistically expand the scope of MC, and thereby uniquely blends mechanistic biology and information theory to understand how substrate consumption is captured reaction activity, metabolite excretion, and biomass growth. This is enabled by defining several channels through which environmental information transmits in a metabolic network. The information flow in bits that is calculated through this workflow further determines the maximal metabolic effect of environmental perturbations on cellular metabolism and behaviors, since FBA simulates maximal efficiency of the metabolic system. We exemplify this method on two intestinal symbionts - Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Methanobrevibacter smithii - and visually consolidated the results into constellation diagrams that facilitate interpretation of information flow from given environments and thereby cultivate the design of controllable biological systems. The unique confluence of metabolic modeling and information theory in this model advances basic understanding of cellular metabolism and has applied value for the Internet of Bio-Nano Things, synthetic biology, microbial ecology, and autonomous laboratories.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sakkaff, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Freiburger, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Catlett, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cashman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Immaneni, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buan, N. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cohen, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Henry, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pierobon, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-06-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.28.546976</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Molecular Communication model for cellular metabolism]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-06-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.30.547164v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Concise functional enrichment of ranked gene lists 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.30.547164v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Genome-wide expression data has become ubiquitous within the last two decades. Given such data, functional enrichment methods identify functional categories (e.g., biological processes) that preferentially annotate differentially expressed genes. However, many existing methods operate in a binary manner, disregarding valuable information contained in the gene ranking. The few methods that consider the ranking often return redundant or non-specific functional categories.

To address these limitations, we developed a novel method called Concise Ranked Functional Enrichment (CRFE), which effectively leverages the ranking information in gene expression data to compute a non-redundant set of specific functional categories that are notably enriched for highly ranked genes. A particularly useful feature of CRFE is a tunable parameter that defines how much focus should be given to the most highly ranked genes. Using four treatment-control RNA-seq datasets, we compared the performance of CRFE with the two most widely used types of functional enrichment methods, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis and over-representation analysis. We evaluated the methods based on their ability to utilize ranking information, generate non-redundant results, and return functional categories with high information content. CRFE excelled in all evaluated criteria, outperforming the existing methods, each of which exhibits deficiencies in at least one aspect. Using lung adenocarcinoma data, we further showed that the functional categories identified by CRFE are biologically meaningful.

In conclusion, CRFE computes an informative set of functional categories that summarizes genome-wide expression data. With its superior performance over existing methods, CRFE harbors great promise to become a widely used functional enrichment method.

Author summaryGiven a list of differentially expressed genes as input, functional enrichment methods reveal which functional categories (e.g., biological processes) were likely activated by the cell and are responsible for the differential expression. We developed a new such method, called Concise Ranked Functional Enrichment (CRFE), which addresses the limitations of current approaches by incorporating gene ranking information to compute a concise and specific set of enriched functional categories. Using four treatment-control RNA-seq datasets, we evaluate how well CRFE and the two currently most widely used methods perform in three criteria. We find that CRFE outperforms each of the alternative methods in at least one of the evaluated criteria, demonstrating its superiority. A high-level interpretation of the functional categories identified by CRFE for lung adenocarcinoma datasets highlights its usefulness for experimentalists. Overall, CRFE harnesses the power of ranked gene lists to generate a focused and non-redundant set of enriched functional categories. Our study positions CRFE as a promising method for functional enrichment analysis, with the potential to advance research in this field.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jia, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kadelka, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-07-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.06.30.547164</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Concise functional enrichment of ranked gene lists]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-07-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.03.545230v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transcriptome brings variations of gene expression, alternative splicing, and structural variations into gene-scale trait dissection in soybean 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.03.545230v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Genome-wide association study (GWAS) identifies trait-associated loci, but due in part to slow decay of linkage disequilibrium (LD), identifying the causal genes can be a bottleneck. Transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) addresses this by identifying gene expression-phenotype associations or integrating gene expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) with GWAS results. Here, we used self-pollinated soybean as a model to evaluate the application of TWAS in the genetic dissection of traits in plant species that exhibit slow LD decay. The first RNA-Seq analysis of a soybean diversity panel was conducted, which identified the genetic regulation of 29,286 genes. Different TWAS solutions were less affected by LD and robust with source of expression that identified known genes related to traits from different development stages and tissues. A novel gene named pod color L2 was identified via TWAS and functionally validated by genome editing. Our introduction of the new exon proportion feature significantly improves the capture of expression variations resulting from structural variations and alternative splicing. As a result, the genes identified by our TWAS approach exhibited a diverse range of causal variations, including SNP, insertion/deletion, gene fusion, copy number variation, and alternative splicing. Using our TWAS approach, we identified genes associated with flowering time, including both previously known candidates and novel genes that had not been linked to this trait before, providing complementary insights with GWAS. In summary, this study supports the application of TWAS for candidate gene identification in species with low rates of LD decay.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tian, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lyu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sun, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hong, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gao, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, Y.-F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiu, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-07-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.07.03.545230</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transcriptome brings variations of gene expression, alternative splicing, and structural variations into gene-scale trait dissection in soybean]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-07-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.09.548275v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Multi-organ Metabolic Model of Zea mays Connects Temperature Stress with Thermodynamics-Reducing Power-Energy Generation Axis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.09.548275v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Global climate change has severely impacted maize productivity. A holistic understanding of metabolic crosstalk among its organs is essential to address this issue. Thus, we reconstructed the first multi-organ maize genome-scale metabolic model, iZMA6517, and contextualized it with heat and cold stress-related transcriptomics data using the novel EXpression disTributed REAction flux Measurement (EXTREAM) algorithm. Furthermore, implementing metabolic bottleneck analysis on contextualized models revealed fundamental differences between these stresses. While both stresses had reducing power bottlenecks, heat stress had additional energy generation bottlenecks. To tie these signatures, we performed thermodynamic driving force analysis, revealing thermodynamics-reducing power-energy generation axis dictating the nature of temperature stress responses. Thus, for global food security, a temperature-tolerant maize ideotype can be engineered by leveraging the proposed thermodynamics-reducing power-energy generation axis. We experimentally inoculated maize root with a beneficial mycorrhizal fungus, Rhizophagus irregularis, and as a proof of concept demonstrated its potential to alleviate temperature stress. In summary, this study will guide the engineering effort of temperature stress-tolerant maize ideotypes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, N. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Decouard, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Quillere, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rigault, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sajeevan, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Acharya, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hirel, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dellagi, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maranas, C. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saha, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-07-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.07.09.548275</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Multi-organ Metabolic Model of Zea mays Connects Temperature Stress with Thermodynamics-Reducing Power-Energy Generation Axis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-07-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.12.548774v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PEXEL is a proteolytic maturation site for both exported and non-exported Plasmodium proteins 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.12.548774v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Obligate intracellular malaria parasites dramatically remodel their erythrocyte host through effector protein export to create a niche for survival. Most exported proteins contain a pentameric Plasmodium export element (PEXEL)/Host Targeting Motif that is cleaved in the parasite ER by the aspartic protease Plasmepsin V (PMV). This processing event exposes a mature N-terminus required for translocation into the host cell and is not known to occur in non-exported proteins. Here we report that the non-exported parasitophorous vacuole protein UIS2 contains a bona fide PEXEL motif that is processed in the P. falciparum blood-stage. While the N-termini of exported proteins containing the PEXEL and immediately downstream [~]10 residues is sufficient to mediate translocation into the RBC, the equivalent UIS2 N-terminus does not promote export of a reporter. Curiously, the UIS2 PEXEL contains an unusual aspartic acid at the fourth position which constitutes the extreme N-terminal residue following PEXEL cleavage (P1, RIL{tau}DE). Using a series of chimeric reporter fusions, we show that Asp at P1 is permissive for PMV processing but abrogates export. Moreover, mutation of this single UIS2 residue to alanine enables export, reinforcing that the mature N-terminus mediates export, not PEXEL processing per se. Prompted by this observation, we further show that PEXEL sequences in the N-termini of other non-exported rhoptry proteins are also processed, suggesting that PMV may be a more general secretory maturase than previously appreciated, similar to orthologs in related apicomplexans. Our findings provide new insight into the unique N-terminal constraints that mark proteins for export.

ImportanceHost erythrocyte remodeling by malaria parasite exported effector proteins is critical to parasite survival and disease pathogenesis. In the deadliest malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, most exported proteins undergo proteolytic maturation via recognition of the pentameric Plasmodium export element (PEXEL)/Host Targeting motif by the aspartic protease Plasmepsin V (PMV) which exposes a mature N-terminus that is conducive for export into the erythrocyte host cell. While PEXEL processing is considered a unique mark of exported proteins, we demonstrate PEXEL motifs are present and processed in non-exported proteins. Importantly, we show that specific residues at the variable fourth position of the PEXEL motif inhibit export despite being permissive for processing by PMV, reinforcing that features of the mature N-terminus, and not PEXEL cleavage, identify cargo for export cargo. This opens the door to further inquiry into the nature and evolution of the PEXEL motif.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fierro, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muheljic, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sha, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wohlschlegel, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-07-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.07.12.548774</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PEXEL is a proteolytic maturation site for both exported and non-exported Plasmodium proteins]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-07-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.14.548968v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Reinforcement learning-guided control strategies for CAR T-cell activation and expansion: Simulation study with a virtual cell culture environment 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.14.548968v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Reinforcement learning (RL), a subset of machine learning (ML), can potentially optimize and control biomanufacturing processes, such as improved production of therapeutic cells. Here, the process of CAR-T cell activation by antigen presenting beads and their subsequent expansion is formulated in-silico. The simulation is used as an environment to train RL-agents to dynamically control the number of beads in culture with the objective of maximizing the population of robust effector cells at the end of the culture. We make periodic decisions of incremental bead addition or complete removal. The simulation is designed to operate in OpenAI Gym which enables testing of different environments, cell types, agent algorithms and state-inputs to the RL-agent. Agent training is demonstrated with three different algorithms (PPO, A2C and DQN) each sampling three different state input types (tabular, image, mixed); PPO-tabular performs best for this simulation environment. Using this approach, training of the RL-agent on different cell types is demonstrated, resulting in unique control strategies for each type. Sensitivity to input noise (sensor performance), number of control step interventions, and advantage of pre-trained agents are also evaluated. Therefore, we present a general computational framework to maximize the population of robust effector cells in CAR-T cell therapy production.

Author SummaryCustom control strategies for expansion and activation of patient-specific CAR T-cell therapies resolved by reinforcement learning using a simulation environment and updatable cell growth parameters.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ferdous, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shihab, I. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reuel, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-07-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.07.14.548968</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Reinforcement learning-guided control strategies for CAR T-cell activation and expansion: Simulation study with a virtual cell culture environment]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-07-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.15.549137v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
GIS-FA: An approach to integrate thematic maps, factor-analytic and envirotyping for cultivar targeting 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.15.549137v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Key message: We propose an enviromics prediction model for cultivar recommendation based on thematic maps for decision-makers.

Parsimonious methods that capture genotype-by-environment interaction (GEI) in multi-environment trials (MET) are important in breeding programs. Understanding the causes and factors of GEI allows the utilization of genotype adaptations in the target population of environments through environmental features and Factor-Analytic (FA) models. Here, we present a novel predictive breeding approach called GIS-FA that integrates geographic information systems (GIS) techniques, FA models, Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression, and Enviromics to predict phenotypic performance in untested environments. The GIS-FA approach allows: (i) predict the phenotypic performance of tested genotypes in untested environments; (ii) select the best-ranking genotypes based on their over-all performance and stability using the FA selection tools; (iii) draw thematic maps showing overall or pairwise performance and stability for decision-making. We exemplify the usage of GIS-FA approach using two datasets of rice [Oryza sativa (L.)] and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] in MET spread over tropical areas. In summary, our novel predictive method allows the identification of new breeding scenarios by pinpointing groups of environments where genotypes have superior predicted performance and facilitates/optimizes the cultivar recommendation by utilizing thematic maps.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Araujo, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chaves, S. F. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dias, L. A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferreira, F. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pereira, G. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bezerra, A. R. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alves, R. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heinemann, A. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Breseghello, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carneiro, P. C. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krause, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Costa-Neto, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dias, K. O. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-07-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.07.15.549137</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[GIS-FA: An approach to integrate thematic maps, factor-analytic and envirotyping for cultivar targeting]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-07-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.01.551510v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
ZmPILS6 is an auxin efflux carrier required for maize root morphogenesis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.01.551510v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plant root systems play a pivotal role in plant physiology and exhibit diverse phenotypic traits. Understanding the genetic mechanisms governing root growth and development in model plants like maize is crucial for enhancing crop resilience to drought and nutrient limitations. This study focused on identifying and characterizing ZmPILS6, an annotated auxin efflux carrier, as a key regulator of various crown root traits in maize. ZmPILS6-modified roots displayed reduced network area and suppressed lateral root formation, desirable traits during drought and low phosphate conditions. The research revealed that ZmPILS6 localizes to the endoplasmic reticulum and plays a vital role in controlling the spatial distribution of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA or "auxin") in primary roots. The study also demonstrated that ZmPILS6 can actively efflux IAA when expressed in yeast. Furthermore, the loss of ZmPILS6 resulted in significant proteome remodeling in maize roots, particularly affecting hormone signaling pathways. To identify potential interacting partners of ZmPILS6, a weighted gene co-expression analysis (WGNA) was performed. Altogether, this research contributes to the growing knowledge of essential genetic determinants governing maize root morphogenesis, which is crucial for guiding agricultural improvement strategies.

Significance StatementCrop yield and stress resilience are significantly influenced by crown root architecture. A reverse genetic screen aimed at identifying novel regulators of maize root morphogenesis led to the discovery of ZmPILS6, an auxin efflux carrier. The loss of ZmPILS6 negatively impacts numerous root traits that are linked to plant physiology and function. Proteomic characterization of pils6-1 roots revealed that this evolutionarily conserved transporter is required for the proper expression of numerous phytohormone pathways, including abscisic acid, gibberellins, and jasmonic acid. Notably, ZmPILS6 appears to have a contrasting role in regulating root morphogenesis compared to its Arabidopsis ortholog, PILS6. This finding emphasizes the need for functional characterization of candidate genes directly within key crops of interest, which cannot always be correctly inferred from other model plants.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cowling, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Homayouni, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Callwood, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McReynolds, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khor, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ke, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Draves, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dehesh, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Strader, L. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-08-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.01.551510</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[ZmPILS6 is an auxin efflux carrier required for maize root morphogenesis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-08-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.02.551740v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CONDITIONALLY MUTANT ANIMAL MODEL FOR INVESTIGATING THE INVASIVE TROPHOBLAST CELL LINEAGE 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.02.551740v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Placental development involves coordinated expansion and differentiation of trophoblast cell lineages possessing specialized functions. Among the differentiated trophoblast cell lineages are invasive trophoblast cells, which exit the placenta and invade into the uterus where they restructure the uterine parenchyma and facilitate remodeling of uterine spiral arteries. The rat exhibits deep intrauterine trophoblast cell invasion, a feature shared with human placentation, and is also amenable to gene manipulation using genome editing techniques. In this investigation, we generated a conditional rat model targeting the invasive trophoblast cell lineage. Prolactin family 7, subfamily b, member 1 (Prl7b1) is uniquely and abundantly expressed in the rat invasive trophoblast cell lineage. Disruption of Prl7b1 did not adversely affect placental development. We demonstrated that the Prl7b1 locus could be effectively used to drive the expression of Cre recombinase in invasive trophoblast cells. Our rat model represents a new tool for investigating candidate genes contributing to the regulation of invasive trophoblast cells and their contributions to trophoblast-guided uterine spiral artery remodeling.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Iqbal, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nixon, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crnkovich, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dominguez, E. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moreno Irusta, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Scott, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>vu, h.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuteja, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vivian, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Soares, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-08-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.02.551740</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CONDITIONALLY MUTANT ANIMAL MODEL FOR INVESTIGATING THE INVASIVE TROPHOBLAST CELL LINEAGE]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-08-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.05.552112v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Molecularly imprinted nanoparticles reveal new insights into Pyk2 tyrosine kinase regulatory features 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.05.552112v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Pyk2 is a multi-domain non-receptor tyrosine kinase that serves dual roles as signaling enzyme and scaffold. Pyk2 activation involves a multi-stage cascade of conformational rearrangements and protein interactions initiated by autophosphorylation of a linker site. Linker phosphorylation recruits Src kinase, and Src-mediated phosphorylation of the Pyk2 activation loop confers full activation. The regulation and accessibility of the initial Pyk2 autophosphorylation site remains unclear. We employed peptide-binding molecularly imprinted nanoparticles (MINPs) to probe the regulatory conformations controlling Pyk2 activation. MINPs differentiating local structure and phosphorylation state revealed that the Pyk2 autophosphorylation site is protected in the autoinhibited state. Activity profiling of Pyk2 variants implicated FERM and linker residues responsible for constraining the autophosphorylation site. MINPs targeting each Src docking site disrupt the higher-order kinase interactions critical for activation complex maturation. Ultimately, MINPs targeting key regulatory motifs establish a useful toolkit for probing successive activational stages in the higher-order Pyk2 signaling complex.



O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=102 SRC="FIGDIR/small/552112v2_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
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org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@148d26borg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1eea6daorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@10c571borg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@12ab033_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG C_FIG
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Palhano Zanela, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zangiabadi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Underbakke, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-08-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.05.552112</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Molecularly imprinted nanoparticles reveal new insights into Pyk2 tyrosine kinase regulatory features]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-08-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.08.551183v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phenotypic variation in maize can be largely explained by genetic variation at transcription factor binding sites 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.08.551183v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Comprehensive maps of functional variation at transcription factor (TF) binding sites (cis-elements) are crucial for elucidating how genotype shapes phenotype. Here we report the construction of a pan-cistrome of the maize leaf under well-watered and drought conditions. We quantified haplotype-specific TF footprints across a pan-genome of 25 maize hybrids and mapped over two-hundred thousand genetic variants (termed binding-QTL) linked to cis-element occupancy. Three lines of evidence support the functional significance of binding-QTL: i) they coincide with numerous known causative loci that regulate traits, including VGT1, Trehalase1, and the MITE transposon near ZmNAC111 under drought; ii) their footprint bias is mirrored between inbred parents and by ChIP-seq; iii) partitioning genetic variation across genomic regions demonstrates that binding-QTL capture the majority of heritable trait variation across [~]70% of 143 phenotypes. Our study provides a promising approach to make previously hidden cis-variation more accessible for genetic studies and multi-target engineering of complex traits.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Engelhorn, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snodgrass, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kok, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schneider, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kiwit, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Banf, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khaipho-Burch, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Runcie, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Camargo, V. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Torres-Rodriguez, J. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sun, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stam, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fiorani, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bass, H. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stich, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frommer, W. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hartwig, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-08-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.08.551183</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phenotypic variation in maize can be largely explained by genetic variation at transcription factor binding sites]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-08-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.15.553439v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Auxin Response Factor ARF27 is required for maize root morphogenesis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.15.553439v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Crop root systems are central to nutrition acquisition and water usage. Root hairs and lateral roots contribute to fine-scale patterning of root systems and can offer many advantages for improving root function without drastically impacting overall system architecture. Key genetic regulators underpinning root hair morphogenesis have been well characterized in the model plant Arabidopsis but are less understood in maize. Here, we identify a novel determinant of root hair morphogenesis and auxin responses in maize, AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR27 (ARF27), using both reverse and quantitative genetic approaches. ARF27 is enriched in maize primary root tissues at both the transcript and protein level. Loss of ARF27 leads to short primary roots and reduced root hair formation, while lateral root density is unaltered. In arf27 roots, auxin-responsive gene expression is dysregulated, which is consistent with the predicted function of this transcription factor. Moreover, a genome wide association study (GWAS) to uncover genetic determinants of auxin-dependent root traits identified ARF27 as a candidate gene. Furthermore, auxin hypersensitive maize genotypes exhibit altered crown root length and surface area in field-grown plants. A gene regulatory network (GRN) was reconstructed and an ARF27 subnetwork was integrated with DAP-seq and GWAS data to identify ARF27 target genes. The ARF27 GRN includes known maize root development genes, such as ROOTLESS CONCERNING CROWN ROOTS (RTCS), ROOTHAIRLESS 3 (RTH3) and RTH6. Altogether this work identifies a novel genetic driver of auxin-mediated root morphogenesis in maize that can inform agricultural strategies for improved crop performance.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dash, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McReynolds, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Draves, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khangura, R. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muench, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khor, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cowling, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Callwood, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mejia, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lang, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dilkes, B. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-08-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.15.553439</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Auxin Response Factor ARF27 is required for maize root morphogenesis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-08-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.17.553700v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Thermodynamic Coupling of the tandem RRM domains of hnRNP A1 underlie its Pleiotropic RNA Binding Functions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.17.553700v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The functional properties of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) require allosteric regulation through inter-domain communication. Despite the foundational importance of allostery to biological regulation, almost no studies have been conducted to describe the biophysical nature by which inter-domain communication manifests in RBPs. Here, we show through high-pressure studies with hnRNP A1 that inter-domain communication is vital for the unique stability of its N- terminal domain containing a tandem of RNA Recognition Motifs (RRMs). Despite high sequence similarity and nearly identical tertiary structures, the two RRMs exhibit drastically different stability under pressure. RRM2 unfolds completely under high-pressure as an individual domain, but when appended to RRM1, it remains stable. Variants in which inter-domain communication is disrupted between the tandem RRMs show a large decrease in stability under pressure. Carrying these mutations over to the full-length protein for in vivo experiments revealed that the mutations affected the ability of the disordered C-terminus to engage in protein-protein interactions and more importantly, they also influenced the RNA binding capacity. Collectively, this work reveals that thermodynamic coupling between the tandem RRMs of hnRNP A1 accounts for its allosteric regulatory functions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Levengood, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Penumutchu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hansen, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kutluay, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roche, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tolbert, B. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-08-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.17.553700</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Thermodynamic Coupling of the tandem RRM domains of hnRNP A1 underlie its Pleiotropic RNA Binding Functions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-08-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.16.553597v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A future food boom rescues the negative effects of cumulative early-life adversity on lifespan in a small mammal 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.16.553597v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Adverse early-life conditions, even when transient, can have long-lasting effects on individual phenotypes and reduce lifespan across species. If these effects can be mitigated. by a high quality later-life environment, then differences in future resource access may explain variation in vulnerability and resilience to early-life adversity. Using 32 years of data on 1,000+ wild North American red squirrels, we tested the hypothesis that the negative effects of early-life adversity on lifespan can be buffered by later-life food abundance. We found that although cumulative early-life adversity was negatively associated with adult lifespan, this relationship was modified by future food abundance. Squirrels that experienced a naturally-occurring future food boom in the second year of life did not suffer reduced longevity despite early-life adversity. Experimental supplementation with additional food did not replicate this effect, though it did increase adult lifespan overall. Our results suggest a non-deterministic role for early-life conditions on later-life phenotypes, and highlight the importance of contextualizing the influence of harsh early-life conditions over an animals entire life course.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Petrullo, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Delaney, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boutin, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lane, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McAdam, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dantzer, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-08-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.16.553597</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A future food boom rescues the negative effects of cumulative early-life adversity on lifespan in a small mammal]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-08-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.17.553720v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
<Ehrlichia chaffeensis/> co-opts phagocytic hemocytes for systemic dissemination in the Lone Star tick, <Amblyomma americanum/>. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.17.553720v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Hematophagous arthropods can acquire and transmit several pathogens of medical importance. In ticks, the innate immune system is crucial in the outcome between vector-pathogen interaction and overall vector competence. However, the specific immune response(s) elicited by the immune cells known as hemocytes remains largely undefined in Ehrlichia chaffeensis and its competent tick vector, Amblyomma americanum. Here, we show that granulocytes, professional phagocytic cells, are integral in eliciting immune responses against commensal and pathogen infection. The chemical depletion of granulocytes led to decreased phagocytic efficiency of tissues-associated hemocytes. We demonstrate E. chaffeensis can infect circulating hemocytes, and both cell-free plasma and hemocytes from E. chaffeensis-infected ticks can establish Ehrlichia infection in recipient ticks. Lastly, we provide evidence to show granulocytes play a dual role in E. chaffeensis infection. Depleting granulocytic hemocytes increased Ehrlichia load in the salivary gland and midgut tissues. In contrast, granulocyte depletion led to a reduced systemic load of Ehrlichia. This study has identified multiple roles for granulocytic hemocytes in the control and systemic dissemination of E. chaffeensis infection.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Adegoke, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hanson, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karim, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-08-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.17.553720</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[<Ehrlichia chaffeensis/> co-opts phagocytic hemocytes for systemic dissemination in the Lone Star tick, <Amblyomma americanum/>.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-08-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.30.555440v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Insights into Phakopsora pachyrhizi effector-effector interactions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.30.555440v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The multifaceted role of pathogen-encoded effectors in plant-pathogen interactions is complex and not fully understood. Effectors operate within intricate host environments, interacting with host proteins and other effectors to modulate virulence. The complex interplay between effectors raises the concept of metaeffectors, where some effectors regulate the activity of others. While previous research has demonstrated the importance of effector repertoires in pathogen virulence, only a limited number of studies have investigated the interactions between these effectors. This study explores the interactions among Phakopsora pachyrhizi effector candidates (PpECs). P. pachyrhizi haustorial transcriptome analysis identified a collection of predicted PpECs. Among these, PpEC23 was found to interact with PpEC48, prompting further exploration into their potential interaction with other effectors. Here, we utilized a yeast-two-hybrid screen to explore protein-protein interactions between PpECs. A split-luciferase complementation assay also demonstrated that these interactions could occur within soybean cells. Interestingly, PpEC48 displayed the ability to interact with several small cysteine-rich proteins (SCRP), suggesting its affinity for this specific class of effectors. We show that these interactions involve a histidine-rich domain within PpEC48, emphasizing the significance of structural motifs in mediating effector interactions. The unique nature of PpEC48, showing no sequence matches in other organisms, suggests its relatively recent evolution and potential orphan gene status. Our work reveals insights into the intricate network of interactions among P. pachyrhizi effector-effector interactions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Qi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bredow, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chicowski, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fields, L. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.08.30.555440</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Insights into Phakopsora pachyrhizi effector-effector interactions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.03.556092v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Geographically Biased Composition of NetMHCpan Training Datasets and Evaluation of MHC-Peptide Binding Prediction Accuracy on Novel Alleles 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.03.556092v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bias in neural network model training datasets has been observed to decrease prediction accuracy for groups underrepresented in training data. Thus, investigating the composition of training datasets used in machine learning models with health-care applications is vital to ensure equity. Two such machine learning models are NetMHCpan-4.1 and NetMHCIIpan-4.0, used to predict antigen binding scores to major histocompatibility complex class I and II molecules, respectively. As antigen presentation is a critical step in mounting the adaptive immune response, previous work has used these or similar predictions models in a broad array of applications, from explaining asymptomatic viral infection to cancer neoantigen prediction. However, these models have also been shown to be biased toward hydrophobic peptides, suggesting the network could also contain other sources of bias. Here, we report the composition of the networks training datasets are heavily biased toward European Caucasian individuals and against Asian and Pacific Islander individuals. We test the ability of NetMHCpan-4.1 and NetMHCpan-4.0 to distinguish true binders from randomly generated peptides on alleles not included in the training datasets. Unexpectedly, we fail to find evidence that the disparities in training data lead to a meaningful difference in prediction quality for alleles not present in the training data. We attempt to explain this result by mapping the HLA sequence space to determine the sequence diversity of the training dataset. Furthermore, we link the residues which have the greatest impact on NetMHCpan predictions to structural features for three alleles (HLA-A*34:01, HLA-C*04:03, HLA-DRB1*12:02).
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Atkins, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Solanki, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cornette, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vasmatzis, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riedel, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.03.556092</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Geographically Biased Composition of NetMHCpan Training Datasets and Evaluation of MHC-Peptide Binding Prediction Accuracy on Novel Alleles]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.07.556260v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A soybean rust effector protease suppresses host immunity and cleaves a 3-deoxy-7-phosphoheptulonate synthase 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.07.556260v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The devastating soybean rust (SBR) pathogen, Phakopsora pachyrhizi, encodes many secreted proteins, but only two have been functionally characterized for their roles in rust virulence. Here, we demonstrate that transient expression of P. pachyrhizi effector candidate 15 (PpEC15), an aspartic protease, leads to enhanced bacterial growth in planta, suppression of callose deposition, reduced expression of plant defense-related marker genes and suppression of pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP)-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS). Stable expression of PpEC15 in soybean suppresses PAMP-induced ROS production and enhances bacterial growth, indicating that, collectively, PpEC15 suppresses host and non-host innate immune responses. Yeast-two-hybrid and proximity labeling identified putative PpEC15 interacting partners including a peptide-chain release factor (PCRF), a NAC83 (NAM, ATAF, and CUC) transcription factor, and a DAHP (3-deoxy-7-phosphoheptulonate) synthase. We further show that PpEC15 can cleave DAHP but does not cleave PCRF or NAC83. Virus-induced gene silencing of NAC83, PCRF and DAHP altered PAMP-induced ROS production and salicylic acid production, indicating that these proteins may be involved in immune signaling. Collectively, our data show that PpEC15 is conserved across P. pachyrhizi isolates and other economically important rust species and is involved in the suppression of plant basal defense responses. Understanding the role of PpEC15 in P. pachyrhizi virulence will provide a foundation for designing targeted intervention strategies to generate rust-resistant crops.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chicowski, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Variz, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bredow, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes-Serey, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Caiazza, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dong, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Margets, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mejias, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Craik, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pedley, K. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aung, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Innes, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.07.556260</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A soybean rust effector protease suppresses host immunity and cleaves a 3-deoxy-7-phosphoheptulonate synthase]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.08.556947v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Improved Super-Resolution Ribosome Profiling Revealed Prevalent Translation of Upstream ORFs and Small ORFs in Arabidopsis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.08.556947v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A crucial step in functional genomics is identifying actively translated open reading frames (ORFs) that link biological functions. The challenge lies in identifying short ORFs, as they are greatly impacted by data quality and depth. Here, we improved the coverage of super-resolution Ribo-seq in Arabidopsis, revealing uncharacterized translation events in nucleus-, chloroplast-, and mitochondria-encoded genes. We identified 7,751 unconventional translation events, including 6,996 upstream ORFs (uORFs) and 209 downstream ORFs on annotated protein-coding genes, as well as 546 ncORFs on presumed non-coding RNAs. Proteomics data confirmed the production of stable proteins from some of the unannotated translation events. We present evidence of active translation on primary transcripts of tasiRNAs (TAS1-4) and microRNAs (pri-miR163, pri-miR169), and periodic ribosome stalling supporting co-translational decay. Additionally, we developed a method for identifying extremely short uORFs, including 370 minimum uORF (AUG-stop), and 2,984 tiny uORFs (2-10 aa), as well as 681 uORFs that overlap with each other. Remarkably, these short uORFs exhibit strong translational repression as longer uORFs. We also systematically discovered 594 uORFs regulated by alternative splicing, suggesting widespread isoform-specific translational control. Finally, these prevalent uORFs are associated with numerous important pathways. In summary, our improved Arabidopsis translational landscape provides valuable resources to study gene expression regulation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wu, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ai, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Teixeira, R. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes-Serey, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elmore, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, P. Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.08.556947</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Improved Super-Resolution Ribosome Profiling Revealed Prevalent Translation of Upstream ORFs and Small ORFs in Arabidopsis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.08.556783v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dissecting Metabolic Landscape of Alveolar Macrophage 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.08.556783v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The highly plastic nature of Alveolar Macrophage (AM) plays a crucial role in the defense against inhaled particulates and pathogens in the lungs. Depending upon the signal, AM acquires either classically activated M1 phenotype or alternatively activated M2 phenotype. These phenotypes have specific functions and unique metabolic traits such as upregulated glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway in M1 phase and enhanced oxidative phosphorylation and tricarboxylic acid cycle during M2 phase that help maintain the sterility of the lungs. In this study, we investigate the metabolic shift in the activated phases of AM (M1 and M2 phase) and highlight the roles of pathways other than the typical players of central carbon metabolism. Pathogenesis is a complex and elongated process where the heightened requirement for energy is matched by metabolic shifts that supplement immune response and maintain homeostasis. The first step of pathogenesis is fever; however, analyzing the role of physical parameters such as temperature is challenging. Here, we observe the effect of an increase in temperature on pathways such as glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway, oxidative phosphorylation, tricarboxylic acid cycle, amino acid metabolism, and leukotriene metabolism. We report the role of temperature as a catalyst to the immune response of the cell. The activity of pathways such as pyruvate metabolism, arachidonic acid metabolism, chondroitin/heparan sulfate biosynthesis, and heparan sulfate degradation are found to be important driving forces in the M1/M2 phenotype. We have also identified a list of 34 reactions such as nitric oxide production from arginine and the conversion of glycogenin to UDP which play major roles in the metabolic models and prompt the shift of the M2 phenotype to M1 and vice versa. In future, these reactions could further be probed as major contributors in designing effective therapeutic targets against severe respiratory diseases.

Author SummaryAlveolar macrophage (AM) is highly plastic in nature and has a wide range of functions including invasion/killing of bacteria to maintaining the homeostasis in the lungs. The regulatory mechanism involved in the alveolar macrophage polarization is essential to fight against severe respiratory conditions (pathogens and particulates). Over the years, experiments on mouse/rat models have been used to draw insightful inferences. However, recent advances have highlighted the lack of transmission from non-human models to successful in vivo human experiments. Hence using genome-scale metabolic (GSM) models to understand the unique metabolic traits of human alveolar macrophages and comprehend the complex metabolic underpinnings that govern the polarization can lead to novel therapeutic strategies. The GSM models of AMs thus far, has not incorporated the activated phases of AM. Here, we aim to exhaustively dissect the metabolic landscape and capabilities of AM in its healthy and activated stages. We carefully explore the changes in reaction fluxes under each of the conditions to understand the role and function of all the pathways with special attention to pathways away from central carbon metabolism. Understanding the characteristics of each phase of AM has applications that could help improve the therapeutic approaches against respiratory conditions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Malla, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sajeevan, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Acharya, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saha, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.08.556783</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dissecting Metabolic Landscape of Alveolar Macrophage]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.11.557227v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Modularity of biological systems: a link between structure and function 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.11.557227v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
This paper addresses two topics in systems biology, the hypothesis that biological systems are modular and the problem of relating structure and function of biological systems. The focus here is on gene regulatory networks, represented by Boolean network models, a commonly used tool. Most of the research on gene regulatory network modularity has focused on network structure, typically represented through either directed or undirected graphs. But since gene regulation is a highly dynamic process as it determines the function of cells over time, it is natural to consider functional modularity as well. One of the main results is that the structural decomposition of a network into modules induces an analogous decomposition of the dynamic structure, exhibiting a strong relationship between network structure and function. An extensive simulation study provides evidence for the hypothesis that modularity might have evolved to increase phenotypic complexity while maintaining maximal dynamic robustness to external perturbations.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kadelka, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wheeler, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Veliz-Cuba, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Murrugarra, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Laubenbacher, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.11.557227</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Modularity of biological systems: a link between structure and function]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.08.556874v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Endocannabinoid and psychological responses to acute resistance exercise in trained and untrained adults 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.08.556874v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
ObjectiveThis study examined the effects of acute resistance exercise on circulating endocannabinoid (eCB) and mood responses in trained and untrained healthy adults. Methods: Thirty-two healthy adults (22.1 {+/-} 2.9 years) were recruited from trained (reporting resistance exercise at least twice per week for [&ge;] previous three months) and untrained (performing no resistance exercise for [&ge;] previous three months) groups. Participants completed three sets of resistance exercise (16 repetitions at 50% 1-repetition max, 12 repetitions at 70% 1-repetition max, 8 repetitions at 80% 1-repetition max). Mood states, affect, and circulating eCB concentrations were evaluated before and after resistance exercise.

ResultsThere were significant decreases in AEA, PEA, and OEA levels following acute resistance exercise (p <0.05), with no significant group differences or group by time interactions. 2-AG did not change significantly. Positive affect increased significantly following resistance exercise (p =0.009), while negative affect decreased (p <0.001). Depression, anger, confusion, and total mood disturbance decreased significantly (p <0.05), while vigor increased significantly following resistance exercise (p =0.005). There were no significant group differences or group by time interactions for any psychological outcomes.

ConclusionThese results indicate that acute resistance exercise may reduce eCB and related lipid concentrations, which is opposite to the increase in lipids typically observed with acute aerobic exercise. Furthermore, psychological improvements occur after resistance exercise regardless of decreases in eCBs, supporting the notion that psychological changes with exercise likely occur through a wide variety of biological and environmental mechanisms.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sirotiak, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gallagher, B. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith-Hernandez, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Showman, L. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hillard, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brellenthin, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.08.556874</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Endocannabinoid and psychological responses to acute resistance exercise in trained and untrained adults]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.19.558246v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Fishing for a reelGene: evaluating gene models with evolution and machine learning 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.19.558246v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Assembled genomes and their associated annotations have transformed our study of gene function. However, each new assembly generates new gene models. Inconsistencies between annotations likely arise from biological and technical causes, including pseudogene misclassification, transposon activity, and intron retention from sequencing of unspliced transcripts. To evaluate gene model predictions, we developed reelGene, a pipeline of machine learning models focused on (1) transcription boundaries, (2) mRNA integrity, and (3) protein structure. The first two models leverage sequence characteristics and evolutionary conservation across related taxa to learn the grammar of conserved transcription boundaries and mRNA sequences, while the third uses conserved evolutionary grammar of protein sequences to predict whether a gene can produce a protein. Evaluating 1.8 million gene models in maize, reelGene found that 28% were incorrectly annotated or nonfunctional. By leveraging a large cohort of related species and through learning the conserved grammar of proteins, reelGene provides a tool for both evaluating gene model accuracy and genome biology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schulz, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhai, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>AuBuchon-Elder, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>El-Walid, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferebee, T. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilmore, E. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnson, L. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kellogg, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>La, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Long, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, Z. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romay, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stitzer, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wrightsman, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckler, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Monier, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, S.-K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.19.558246</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Fishing for a reelGene: evaluating gene models with evolution and machine learning]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.18.558274v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transcriptome-based host epistasis and pathogen co-expression in barley-powdery mildew interactions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.18.558274v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mildew locus a (Mla) from the Triticeae grain crop barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) encodes a multi-allelic series of nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) immune receptors. These variable NLRs recognize complementary secreted effectors from the powdery mildew fungus, Blumeria hordei (Bh), to block disease progression. We used a dynamic time-course transcriptome of barley infected with Bh to infer gene effects and epistatic relationships governed by the Mla6 NLR, two other host loci critical to the interaction, Blufensin1 (Bln1) and Required for Mla6 resistance3 (Rar3), and genes that interact with them. Bln1 is an R-gene independent regulator of immunity and the resistant bln1 mutant exhibits enhanced basal defense to compatible Bh. Rar3 is required for MLA6-mediated generation of H2O2 and the hypersensitive reaction; the rar3 mutant contains an in-frame Lys-Leu deletion in the SGT1-specific domain that compromises immunity by a subset of Mla alleles. Interactions of Mla6 and Bln1 resulted in symmetric, suppression and masked epistasis on the Bh-induced barley transcriptome. Likewise, dominant or equal effects were caused by Mla6 and Sgt1. Of a total of 468 barley NLRs, 366 were expressed in our dataset and 115 of those were grouped under different gene effect models, which localized to several chromosome hotspots. The corresponding Bh infection transcriptome was classified into nine co-expressed modules, linking differential expression with pathogen development. Expression of most of 517 Bh effectors exhibited dependence on disease phenotype and was associated with appressorial or haustorial structures, suggesting that disease is regulated by a host-pathogen intercommunication network that diversifies the response.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Velasquez-Zapata, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Surana, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chapman, A. V. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wise, R. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.18.558274</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transcriptome-based host epistasis and pathogen co-expression in barley-powdery mildew interactions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.21.558819v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
4D Mesoscale liquid model of nucleus resolves chromatin's radial organization 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.21.558819v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Recent chromatin capture, imaging techniques, and polymer modeling advancements have dramatically enhanced our quantitative understanding of chromosomal folding. However, the dynamism inherent in genome architectures due to physical and biochemical forces and their impact on nuclear architecture and cellular functions remains elusive. While imaging techniques capable of probing the physical properties of chromatin in 4D are growing, there is a conspicuous lack of physics-based computational tools appropriate for revealing the underlying forces that shape nuclear architecture and dynamics. To this end, we have developed a multi-phase liquid model of the nucleus, which can resolve chromosomal territories, compartments, and nuclear lamina using a physics-based and data-informed free energy function. The model enables rapid hypothesis-driven prototyping of nuclear dynamics in 4D, thereby facilitating comparison with whole nucleus imaging experiments. As an application, we model the Drosophila nucleus spanning the interphase and map phase diagram of nuclear morphologies. We shed light on the interplay of adhesive and cohesive interactions within the nucleus, giving rise to distinct radial organization seen in conventional, inverted, and senescent nuclear architectures. The results also show the highly dynamic nature of the radial organization, the disruption of which leads to significant variability in domain coarsening dynamics and, consequently, variability of chromatin architecture. The model also highlights the impact of oblate nuclear geometry and heterochromatin sub-type interactions on the global chromatin architecture and local asymmetry of chromatin compartments.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Laghmach, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Di Pierro, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.21.558819</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[4D Mesoscale liquid model of nucleus resolves chromatin's radial organization]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.22.559060v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Synthetic control of actin polymerization and symmetry breaking in activeprotocells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.22.559060v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Non-linear biomolecular interactions on the membranes drive membrane remodeling that underlies fundamental biological processes including chemotaxis, cytokinesis, and endocytosis. The multitude of biomolecules, the redundancy in their interactions, and the importance of spatiotemporal context in membrane organization hampers understanding the physical principles governing membrane mechanics. A minimal, in vitro system that models the functional interactions between molecular signaling and membrane remodeling, while remaining faithful to cellular physiology and geometry is powerful yet remains unachieved. Here, inspired by the biophysical processes underpinning chemotaxis, we reconstituted externally-controlled actin polymerization inside giant unilamellar vesicles, guiding self-organization on the membrane. We show that applying undirected external chemical inputs to this system results in directed actin polymerization and membrane deformation that are uncorrelated with upstream biochemical cues, indicating symmetry breaking. A biophysical model of the dynamics and mechanics of both actin polymerization and membrane shape suggests that inhomogeneous distributions of actin generate membrane shape deformations in a non-linear fashion, a prediction consistent with experimental measurements and subsequent local perturbations. The active protocellular system demonstrates the interplay between actin dynamics and membrane shape in a symmetry breaking context that is relevant to chemotaxis and a suite of other biological processes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Razavi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wong, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Abubaker-Sharif, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matsubayashi, H. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakamura, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sandoval, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robinson, D. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Iglesias, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Inoue, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.22.559060</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Synthetic control of actin polymerization and symmetry breaking in activeprotocells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.25.559155v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PanEffect: A pan-genome visualization tool for variant effects in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.25.559155v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Understanding the effects of genetic variants is crucial for accurately predicting traits and phenotypic outcomes. Recent advances have utilized protein language models to score all possible missense variant effects at the proteome level for a single genome, but a reliable tool is needed to explore these effects at the pan-genome level. To address this gap, we introduce a new tool called PanEffect. We implemented PanEffect at MaizeGDB to enable a comprehensive examination of the potential effects of coding variants across 51 maize genomes. The tool allows users to visualize over 550 million possible amino acid substitutions in the B73 maize reference genome and also to observe the effects of the 2.3 million natural variations in the maize pan-genome. Each variant effect score, calculated from the Evolutionary Scale Modeling (ESM) protein language model, shows the log-likelihood ratio difference between B73 and all variants in the pan-genome. These scores are shown using heatmaps spanning benign outcomes to strong phenotypic consequences. Additionally, PanEffect displays secondary structures and functional domains along with the variant effects, offering additional functional and structural context. Using PanEffect, researchers now have a platform to explore protein variants and identify genetic targets for crop enhancement.

Availability and implementation: The PanEffect code is freely available on GitHub (https://github.com/Maize-Genetics-and-Genomics-Database/PanEffect). A maize implementation of PanEffect and underlying datasets are available at MaizeGDB (https://www.maizegdb.org/effect/maize/).
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haley, O. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hayford, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Portwood, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sen, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, E. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gardiner, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-09-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.25.559155</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PanEffect: A pan-genome visualization tool for variant effects in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-09-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.29.560160v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Rhythmic lipid and gene expression responses to chilling in panicoid grasses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.29.560160v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Chilling stress threatens plant growth and development, particularly affecting membrane fluidity and cellular integrity. Understanding plant membrane responses to chilling stress is important for unraveling the molecular mechanisms of stress tolerance. Whereas core transcriptional responses to chilling stress and stress tolerance are conserved across species, the associated changes in membrane lipids appear to be less conserved, as which lipids are affected by chilling stress varies by species. Here, we investigated changes in gene expression and membrane lipids in response to chilling stress during one diurnal cycle in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), Urochloa (browntop signal grass, Urochloa fusca) (lipids only), and foxtail millet (Setaria italica), leveraging their evolutionary relatedness and differing levels of chilling-stress tolerance. We show that most chilling-induced lipid changes are conserved across the three species, while we observed distinct, time-specific responses in chilling-tolerant foxtail millet, indicating the presence of a finely orchestrated adaptive mechanism. We detected diurnal rhythmicity in lipid responses to chilling stress in the three grasses, which were also present in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), suggesting the conservation of rhythmic patterns across species and highlighting the importance of accounting for diurnal effects. When integrating lipid datasets with gene expression profiles, we identified potential candidate genes that showed corresponding transcriptional changes in response to chilling stress, providing insights into the differences in regulatory mechanisms between chilling-sensitive sorghum and chilling-tolerant foxtail millet.

Significance StatementPlants respond to low-temperature stress in myriad ways. While core transcriptional changes are conserved across species, specific adaptive strategies do exist. However, membrane lipid responses during chilling do not appear to be conserved. Here, we collected samples from control and chilling stress-treated seedlings [PSC4] to assess gene expression and membrane lipids in three panicoid grasses to show that lipid metabolic changes follow a daily rhythm. Lipid changes in chilling-tolerant foxtail millet occurred at specific time points, partly explaining the difficulty in finding conserved chilling-induced lipid changes in previous reports. We identified specific orthologs in sorghum and foxtail millet that showed a correlation between gene expression and lipid metabolic changes; these orthologs may be used as potential target genes for developing chilling-tolerant sorghum varieties.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kenchanmane Raju, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mahboub, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ngu, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harmon, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roston, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.29.560160</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Rhythmic lipid and gene expression responses to chilling in panicoid grasses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.30.560323v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Ptth regulates lifespan through innate immunity pathway in Drosophila 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.30.560323v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH) is a well-known neuropeptide that regulates insect metamorphosis (the juvenile-to-adult transition) by inducing the biosynthesis of steroid hormones. However, the role of PTTH in adult physiology and longevity is largely unexplored. Here, we show that Ptth loss-of-function mutants are long-lived and exhibit increased resistance to oxidative stress in Drosophila. Intriguingly, we find that loss of Ptth blunt age-dependent upregulation of NF-{kappa}B signaling specifically in fly hepatocytes (oenocytes). We further show that oenocyte-specific overexpression of Relish/NF-{kappa}B blocks the lifespan extension of Ptth mutants, suggesting that PTTH regulates lifespan through oenocyte-specific NF-{kappa}B signaling. Surprisingly, adult-specific knockdown of Ptth did not prolong lifespan, indicating that PTTH controls longevity through developmental programs. Indeed, knockdown of PTTH receptor Torso in prothoracic gland (PG) during fly development prolongs lifespan. To uncover the developmental processes underlying PTTH-regulated lifespan, we perform a developmental transcriptomic analysis and identify an unexpected activation of NF-{kappa}B signaling in developing oenocytes during fly metamorphosis, which is blocked in Ptth mutants. Importantly, knockdown of Relish/NF-{kappa}B specifically in oenocytes during early pupal stages significantly prolongs the lifespan of adult flies. Thus, our findings uncover an unexpected role of PTTH in controlling adult lifespan through temporal and spatial activation of NF-{kappa}B signaling in developing hepatocytes and highlight the vital role of developmental NF-{kappa}B signaling in shaping adult physiology.

Significance StatementDespite the strong link between animal development and adult lifespan, we know little about how developmental programs impact adult longevity, and when and where such programs are activated during development. Here, we demonstrate that loss of insect hormone PTTH prolongs lifespan and healthspan by repressing chronic inflammation in Drosophila. Intriguingly, we demonstrate that PTTH regulates adult lifespan through temporal and spatial activation of NF-{kappa}B signaling in developing hepatocytes during insect metamorphosis. These findings provide novel insights into the developmental programs that impact adult longevity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bolton, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miao, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shimell, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Connor, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Powell-Coffman, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.09.30.560323</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Ptth regulates lifespan through innate immunity pathway in Drosophila]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.02.560565v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Tick Innate Immune Responses to Hematophagy and Ehrlichia Infection at Single-Cell Resolution 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.02.560565v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Ticks rely on robust cellular and humoral immune responses to control microbial infection. However, several aspects of the ticks innate immune system remain uncharacterized, most notably that of the immune cells (called hemocytes), which are known to play a significant role in cellular and humoral responses toward microbes. Despite the importance of hemocytes in regulating microbial infection, our understanding of their basic biology and molecular mechanisms remains limited. Therefore, we believe that a more detailed understanding of the role of hemocytes in the interactions between ticks and tick-borne microbes is crucial to illuminate their function in vector competence and to help identify novel targets for developing new strategies to block tick-borne pathogen transmission. This study examined hemocytes from the lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) at the transcriptomic level using the 10X genomics single-cell RNA sequencing platform to analyze hemocyte populations from unfed, partially blood-fed, and Ehrlichia chaffeensis-infected ticks. Our data exhibit the identification of twelve and nineteen distinct hemocyte populations, respectively, from uninfected and Ehrlichia-infected ticks. Our results show a significant increase of clusters representing granulocyte and oenocytoids populations with Ehrlichia infection. This work opens a new field of tick innate immunobiology to understand the role of hemocytes, particularly in response to prolonged blood-feeding (hematophagy) and tick-microbial interactions.

SignificanceThe immune response of ticks plays a crucial role in their ability to survive and transmit pathogens. Hemocytes, the primary immune cells in arthropods, are key mediators of ticks immune defense and provide deep insights into immune responses to microbial infection. However, tick hemocytes cellular complexity and heterogeneity have posed challenges for comprehensive characterization. This study employed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to profile tick hemocytes and elucidate their transcriptional diversity. We identified distinct subpopulations of hemocytes and characterized their unique gene expression profiles. We observed significant variation in immune-related gene expression between hemocyte subpopulations during hematophagy and in response to Ehrlichia infection, suggesting specialized functional roles. Our analysis revealed potential marker genes associated with specific hemocyte functions. Our study provides the first comprehensive single-cell atlas of tick hemocytes, shedding light on these cells molecular diversity and immune functions. The findings enhance our understanding of tick-host interactions and offer a step toward understanding arthropod immunobiology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Adegoke, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ribeiro, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karim, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.02.560565</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Tick Innate Immune Responses to Hematophagy and Ehrlichia Infection at Single-Cell Resolution]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.08.561395v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
LETHAL COVID-19 ASSOCIATES WITH RAAS-INDUCED INFLAMMATION FOR MULTIPLE ORGAN DAMAGE INCLUDING MEDIASTINAL LYMPH NODES 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.08.561395v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Lethal COVID-19 outcomes are most often attributed to classic cytokine storm and attendant excessive immune signaling. We re-visit this question using RNA sequencing in nasopharyngeal and 40 autopsy samples from COVID-19-positive and negative individuals. In nasal swabs, the top 100 genes which significantly correlated with COVID-19 viral load, include many canonical innate immune genes. However, 22 much less studied "non-canonical" genes are found and despite the absence of viral transcripts, subsets of these are upregulated in heart, lung, kidney, and liver, but not mediastinal lymph nodes. An important regulatory potential emerges for the non-canonical genes for over-activating the renin-angiotensin-activation-system (RAAS) pathway, resembling this phenomenon in hereditary angioedema (HAE) and its overlapping multiple features with lethal COVID-19 infections. Specifically, RAAS overactivation links increased fibrin deposition, leaky vessels, thrombotic tendency, and initiating the PANoptosis death pathway, as suggested in heart, lung, and especially mediastinal lymph nodes, with a tightly associated mitochondrial dysfunction linked to immune responses. For mediastinal lymph nodes, immunohistochemistry studies validate the transcriptomic findings showing abnormal architecture, excess fibrin and collagen deposition, and pathogenic fibroblasts. Further, our findings overlap findings in SARS-CoV-2 infected hamsters, C57BL/6 and BALB/c mouse models, and importantly peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) and whole blood samples from COVID-19 patients infected with early variants and later SARS-CoV-2 strains. We thus present cytokine storm in lethal COVID-19 disease as an interplay between upstream immune gene signaling producing downstream RAAS overactivation with resultant severe organ damage, especially compromising mediastinal lymph node function.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Guarnieri, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Topper, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beigel, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haltoom, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chadburn, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frere, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>An, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cope, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borczuk, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sinha, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lim, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kim, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Park, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meydan, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foox, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mozsary, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bram, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Richard, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Epsi, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Agan, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chenoweth, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Simons, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tribble, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burgess, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dalgard, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heise, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moorman, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baxter, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Madden, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taft-Benz, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanders, W. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dickmander, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Widjaja, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janssen, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lie, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Murdock, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Angelin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Albrecht, Y. E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Olali, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dybas, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Priebe, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Emmett, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Best, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnson, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Trovao, N. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cl</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.08.561395</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[LETHAL COVID-19 ASSOCIATES WITH RAAS-INDUCED INFLAMMATION FOR MULTIPLE ORGAN DAMAGE INCLUDING MEDIASTINAL LYMPH NODES]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.10.561750v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Mapping energy landscapes of homopolymeric RNAs via simulated tempering and deep unsupervised learning 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.10.561750v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Conformational dynamics plays crucial roles in RNA functions about sensing and responding to environmental signals. The liquid-liquid phase separation of RNAs and the formation of stress granules partly relies on RNAs conformational plasticity and its ability to engage in multivalent interactions. Recent experiments with homopolymeric and low-complexity RNAs have revealed significant differences in phase separations due to differences in base chemistry of RNA units. We hypothesize that differences in RNA phase-transition dynamics can be traced back to the differences in conformational dynamics of single RNA chains. In the present contribution, we utilize atomistic simulations with numerous unsupervised learning to map temperature dependence conformational free energy landscapes for homopolymeric RNA chains. These landscapes reveal a variety of metastable excited states influenced by the nature of base chemistry. We shed light on the distinct contributions of the polyphosphate backbone versus base chemistry in shaping conformational ensembles of different RNAs. We demonstrate that the experimentally observed temperature-driven shifts in metastable state populations align with experimental phase diagrams for homopolymeric RNAs. The work establishes a microscopic framework to reason about base-specific RNA propensity for phase separation. We believe our work will be valuable for designing novel RNA sensors for biological and synthetic applications.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramachandran, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.10.561750</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Mapping energy landscapes of homopolymeric RNAs via simulated tempering and deep unsupervised learning]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.10.561761v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Using encrypted genotypes and phenotypes for collaborative genomic analyses to maintain data confidentiality 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.10.561761v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
To adhere to and capitalize on the benefits of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles in agricultural genome-to-phenome studies, it is crucial to address privacy and intellectual property issues that prevent sharing and reuse of data in research and industry. Direct sharing of genotype and phenotype data is often prohibited due to intellectual property and privacy concerns. Thus there is a pressing need for encryption methods that obscure confidential aspects of the data, without affecting the outcomes of certain statistical analyses. A homomorphic encryption method for genotypes and phenotypes (HEGP) has been proposed for single-marker regression in genome-wide association studies using linear mixed models with Gaussian errors. This methodology permits frequentist likelihood-based parameter estimation and inference. In this paper, we extend HEGP to broader applications in genome-to-phenome analyses. We show that HEGP is suited to commonly used linear mixed models for genetic analyses of quantitative traits including GBLUP and RR-BLUP, as well as Bayesian variable selection methods (e.g., those in Bayesian Alphabet), for genetic parameter estimation, genomic prediction, and genome-wide association studies. By advancing the capabilities of HEGP, we offer researchers and industry professionals a secure and efficient approach for collaborative genomic analyses while preserving data confidentiality.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhao, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mott, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dekkers, J. C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.10.561761</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Using encrypted genotypes and phenotypes for collaborative genomic analyses to maintain data confidentiality]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.17.562213v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SydR, a redox-sensing MarR-type regulator of Sinorhizobium meliloti, is crucial for symbiotic infection of Medicago truncatula roots 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.17.562213v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Rhizobia associate with legumes and induce the formation of nitrogen-fixing nodules. The regulation of bacterial redox state plays a major role in symbiosis and Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) produced by the plant are known to activate signaling pathways. However, only a few redox-sensing transcriptional regulators (TRs) have been characterized in the microsymbiont. Here, we describe SydR, a novel redox-sensing TR of S. meliloti that is essential for the establishment of symbiosis with Medicago truncatula. SydR, a MarR-type TR, represses the expression of the adjacent gene SMa2023 in growing cultures, and this repression is alleviated by NaOCl, tert-butyl, or H2O2 treatment. Gels shift assays strongly suggest that SydR binds to TATCGCGATA motif in the sydR-SMa2023 intergenic region in a redox-dependent manner. Furthermore, site-directed mutagenesis demonstrated that the oxidative inhibition of SydR involves the formation of an intermolecular C16-C16 disulfide bond. The inactivation of sydR did not alter the sensitivity of S. meliloti to NaOCl, tert-butyl, or H2O2, nor did it affect the response to oxidants of the roGFP2-Orp1 redox biosensor expressed within bacteria. However, in planta, {Delta}sydR mutation impaired the formation of root nodules. Microscopic observations and analyses of marker gene expression showed that the {Delta}sydR mutant is arrested at an early stage of the bacterial infection process. Altogether, these results demonstrated that SydR is a redox sensing MarR-type TR that plays a key role in the regulation of symbiosis with M. truncatula.

IMPORTANCEThe nitrogen-fixing symbiosis between rhizobia and legumes has an important ecological role in the nitrogen cycle, contributes to nitrogen enrichment of soils, and can improve plant growth in agriculture. This interaction is initiated in the rhizosphere by a molecular dialog between the two partners, resulting in plant root infection and formation of root nodules, where bacteria reduce the atmospheric nitrogen into ammonium. This symbiosis involves modifications of the bacterial redox state in response to reactive oxygen species produced by the plant partner. Here, we show that SydR, a transcriptional regulator of the Medicago symbiont Sinorhizobium meliloti, acts as a redox-responsive repressor that is crucial for the development of root nodules and contributes to the regulation of bacterial infection in S. meliloti / Medicago truncatula symbiotic interaction.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>NAZARET, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Farajzadeh, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MEJIAS, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>PACOUD, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>COSI, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frendo, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>ALLOING, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MANDON, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.17.562213</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SydR, a redox-sensing MarR-type regulator of Sinorhizobium meliloti, is crucial for symbiotic infection of Medicago truncatula roots]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.17.562681v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A purine salvage bottleneck leads to bacterial adenine cross-feeding 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.17.562681v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Diverse ecosystems host microbial relationships that are stabilized by nutrient cross-feeding. Cross-feeding can involve metabolites that should hold value for the producer. Externalization of such communally valuable metabolites is often unexpected and difficult to predict. Previously, we fortuitously discovered purine externalization by Rhodopseudomonas palustris by its ability to rescue growth of an Escherichia coli purine auxotroph. Here we found that an E. coli purine auxotroph can stably coexist with R. palustris due to purine cross-feeding. We identified the cross-fed purine as adenine. Adenine was externalized by R. palustris under diverse growth conditions. Computational models suggested that adenine externalization occurs via passive diffusion across the cytoplasmic membrane. RNAseq analysis led us to hypothesize that accumulation and externalization of adenine stems from an adenine salvage bottleneck at the enzyme encoded by apt. Ectopic expression of apt eliminated adenine externalization, supporting our hypothesis. A comparison of 49 R. palustris strains suggested that purine externalization is relatively common, with 15 of the strains exhibiting the trait. Purine externalization was correlated with the genomic orientation of apt orientation, but apt orientation alone could not explain adenine externalization in some strains. Our results provide a mechanistic understanding of how a communally valuable metabolite can participate in cross-feeding. Our findings also highlight the challenge in identifying genetic signatures for metabolite externalization.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chuang, Y.-C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haas, N. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pepin, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Behringer, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Oda, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>LaSarre, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harwood, C. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McKinlay, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.17.562681</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A purine salvage bottleneck leads to bacterial adenine cross-feeding]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.24.563845v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Viral protease NIa-Pro increases MEDIATOR SUBUNIT16 cleavage and plant susceptibility to turnip mosaic virus and its aphid vector Myzus persicae. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.24.563845v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plant viruses, such turnip mosaic virus (TuMV), both trigger and inhibit host plant defense responses, including defenses that target their insect vectors, such as aphids. TuMV infection and its protein, NIa-Pro (nuclear inclusion protease a), suppress aphid-induced plant defenses, however the mechanisms of this suppression are still largely unknown. In this study, we determined that NIa-Pros protease activity is required to increase aphid performance on host plants and that 40 transcripts with predicted NIa-Pro cleavage sequences are regulated in Arabidopsis plants challenged with aphids and/or virus compared to healthy controls. One of the candidates, MEDIATOR 16 (MED16), regulates the transcription of ethylene (ET)/jasmonic acid (JA)-dependent defense responses against necrotrophic pathogens. Using immunoblots, mutants, bioassays, and qRT-PCR, we show that a nuclear localization signal is cleaved from MED16 in virus-infected plants and in the presence of NIa-Pro along with the presence of aphids, suggesting MED16 functions in the nucleus may be impacted. Consistent with this, aphid induction of the MED16-dependent transcript of PLANT DEFENSIN 1.2 (PDF1.2), was reduced in virus-infected plants and in plants expressing NIa-Pro compared to controls, and NIa-Pros protease activity was required for this reduction. Finally, we show performance of both the virus and the aphid vector was enhanced on med16 mutant Arabidopsis compared to controls. Overall, this study demonstrates MED16 regulates defense responses against both the virus and the aphid and provides insights into the mechanism by which TuMV suppresses anti-virus and anti-herbivore defenses.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ray, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Murad, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arena, G. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arshad, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arendsee, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Herath, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Casteel, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.24.563845</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Viral protease NIa-Pro increases MEDIATOR SUBUNIT16 cleavage and plant susceptibility to turnip mosaic virus and its aphid vector Myzus persicae.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.30.564250v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nucleoprotein reassortment enhanced transmissibility of H3 1990.4.a clade influenza A virus in swine 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.30.564250v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The increased detection of H3 C-IVA (1990.4.a) clade influenza A viruses (IAV) in U.S. swine in 2019 was associated with a reassortment event to acquire an H1N1pdm09 lineage nucleoprotein (pdmNP) gene, replacing a TRIG lineage NP (trigNP). We hypothesized that acquiring the pdmNP conferred a selective advantage over prior circulating H3 viruses with a trigNP. To investigate the role of the NP reassortment in transmission, we identified two contemporary 1990.4.a representative strains (NC/19 and MN/18) with different evolutionary origins of the NP gene. A reverse genetics system was used to generate wild-type (wt) strains and to swap the pdm and TRIG lineage NP genes, generating four viruses: wtNC/19-pdmNP, NC/19-trigNP, wtMN/18-trigNP, MN/18-pdmNP. Pathogenicity and transmission of the four viruses were compared in pigs. All four viruses infected 10 primary pigs and transmitted to 5 indirect contact pigs per group. Pigs infected via contact with MN/18-pdmNP shed virus two days earlier than pigs infected with wtMN/18-trigNP. The inverse did not occur for wtNC/19-pdmNP and NC/19-trigNP. These data suggest that reassortment to acquire a pdmNP gene improved transmission efficiency in the 1990.4.a, but this is likely a multigenic trait. Replacing a trigNP gene alone may not diminish the transmission of a wild-type virus sampled from the swine population. This study demonstrates how reassortment and subsequent evolutionary change of internal genes can result in more transmissible viruses that impact the detection frequency of specific HA clades. Thus, rapidly identifying novel reassortants paired with dominant HA/NA may improve prediction of strains to include in vaccines.

ImportanceInfluenza A viruses (IAV) are composed of eight non-continuous gene segments that can reassort during coinfection of a host, creating new combinations. Some gene combinations may convey a selective advantage and be paired together preferentially. A reassortment event was detected in swine in the United States that involved the exchange of two lineages of nucleoprotein (NP) genes (trigNP to pdmNP) that became a predominant genotype detected in surveillance. Using a transmission study, we demonstrated that exchanging the trigNP for a pdmNP caused the virus to shed from the nose at higher levels and transmit to other pigs more rapidly. Replacing a pdmNP with a trigNP did not hinder transmission, suggesting that transmission efficiency depends on interactions between multiple genes. This demonstrates how reassortment alters IAV transmission and that reassortment events can provide an explanation for why genetically related viruses with different internal gene combinations experience rapid fluxes in detection frequency.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Thomas, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ciacci Zanella, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cowan, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Caceres, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rajao, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perez, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baker, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-10-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.30.564250</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nucleoprotein reassortment enhanced transmissibility of H3 1990.4.a clade influenza A virus in swine]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-10-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.31.563566v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Small but significant genetic differentiation among populations of Phyllachora maydis in the midwestern United States revealed by microsatellite (SSR) markers. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.31.563566v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Phyllachora maydis Maubl, the causal pathogen of tar spot of corn (Zea mays L.), has emerged recently in the United States and Canada. Studies related to its genetic diversity and population structure are limited and are necessary to improve our understanding of this pathogens biology, ecology, epidemiology, and evolutionary potential within this region. This study developed and used 13 microsatellites (SSR markers) to assess the genetic population structure, diversity, gene flow and reproductive mode of 181 P. maydis samples across five states in the Midwest U.S. The polymorphic information content (PIC) of loci ranged from 0.32 to 0.72 per locus, indicating their high utility for assessing the dynamics of P. maydis populations. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) detected a significantly low, but statistically significant genetic differentiation (FST = 0.15) among populations, where 85% of the variance resided within populations. P. maydis populations were highly diverse (He = 0.55), with moderate gene flow (Nm = 2.80), and showed evidence of sexual recombination ([r]d; p = > 0.001). Structure analysis showed the samples were not geographically structured but rather grouped into two genetic clusters (k =2) of severe genetic admixture suggesting possible long-distance dispersal of aerial spores or infected corn materials among the five Midwest states. Both principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) and discriminate analysis of principal component (DAPC) supported the STRUCTURE analysis of the two clusters. These 13 highly polymorphic molecular markers could be used for future investigations of this pathogens population dynamics within the U.S., and possibly populations outside.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ross, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jumbam, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bonkowski, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chaky, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chilvers, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goodwin, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kleczewski, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mueller, D. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robertson, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, D. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Telenko, D. E. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-11-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.31.563566</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Small but significant genetic differentiation among populations of Phyllachora maydis in the midwestern United States revealed by microsatellite (SSR) markers.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-11-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.31.565016v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genome evolution and introgression in the New Zealand mud snails Potamopyrgus estuarinus and Potamopyrgus kaitunuparaoa 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.31.565016v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We have sequenced, assembled, and analyzed the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes and transcriptomes of Potamopyrgus estuarinus and Potamopyrgus kaitunuparaoa, two prosobranch snail species native to New Zealand that together span the continuum from estuary to freshwater. These two species are the closest known relatives of the freshwater species P. antipodarum--a model for studying the evolution of sex, host-parasite coevolution, and biological invasiveness--and thus provide key evolutionary context for understanding its unusual biology. The P. estuarinus and P. kaitunuparaoa genomes are very similar in size and overall gene content. Comparative analyses of genome content indicate that these two species harbor a near-identical set of genes involved in meiosis and sperm functions, including seven genes with meiosis-specific functions. These results are consistent with obligate sexual reproduction in these two species and provide a framework for future analyses of P. antipodarum--a species comprising both obligately sexual and obligately asexual lineages, each separately derived from a sexual ancestor. Genome-wide multigene phylogenetic analyses indicate that P. kaitunuparaoa is likely the closest relative to P. antipodarum. We nevertheless show that there has been considerable introgression between P. estuarinus and P. kaitunuparaoa. That introgression does not extend to the mitochondrial genome, which appears to serve as a barrier to hybridization between P. estuarinus and P. kaitunuparaoa. Nuclear-encoded genes whose products function in joint mitochondrial-nuclear enzyme complexes exhibit similar patterns of non-introgression, indicating that incompatibilities between the mitochondrial and the nuclear genome may have prevented more extensive gene flow between these two species.

Significance StatementNo whole-nuclear genome sequences are currently available for snails of the genus Potamopyrgus, best known for Potamopyrgus antipodarum, an invasive species of rivers and lakes worldwide, and a famous model for the study of the evolution of sex. We have sequenced and analyzed the genome of sexual P. estuarinus and P. kaitunuparaoa, the closest known relatives of P. antipodarum. We show that 1) the genomes are very similar in gene content and size, 2) P. kaitunuparaoa is the closest relative to P. antipodarum, 3) significant introgression has occurred between P. estuarinus and P. kaitunuparaoa; these genomes set the stage for powerful direct analyses of the genomic features, e.g., sex to asexual transitions and invasive success, that make P. antipodarum unique.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fields, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jalinsky, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bankers, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McElroy, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Higgins, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morgan-Richards, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boore, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Neiman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Logsdon, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-11-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.10.31.565016</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genome evolution and introgression in the New Zealand mud snails Potamopyrgus estuarinus and Potamopyrgus kaitunuparaoa]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-11-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.08.566278v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Little Evidence for Homoeologous Gene Conversion and Homoeologous Exchange Events in Gossypium Allopolyploids 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.08.566278v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A complicating factor in analyzing allopolyploid genomes is the possibility of physical interactions between homoeologous chromosomes during meiosis, resulting in either crossover (homoeologous exchanges) or non-crossover products (homoeologous gene conversion). This latter process was first described in cotton by comparing SNP patterns in sequences from two diploid progenitors with those from the allopolyploid subgenomes. These analyses, however, did not explicitly account for autapomorphic SNPs that may lead to similar patterns as homoeologous gene conversion, creating uncertainties about the reality of the inferred gene conversion events. Here, we use an expanded phylogenetic sampling of high-quality genome assemblies from seven allopolyploid Gossypium species (all derived from the same polyploidy event), four diploid species (two closely related to each subgenome), and a diploid outgroup to derive a robust method for identifying potential genomic regions of gene conversion and homoeologous exchange. Using this new method, we find little evidence for homoeologous gene conversion in allopolyploid cottons and that only two of the forty best-supported events are shared by more than one species. We do, however, reveal a single, shared homoeologous exchange event at one end of chromosome 1, which occurred shortly after allopolyploidization but prior to divergence of the descendant species. Overall, our analyses demonstrate that homoeologous gene conversion and homoeologous exchanges are uncommon in Gossypium, affecting between zero and 24 genes per subgenome (0.0 - 0.065%) across the seven species. More generally, we highlight the potential problems of using simple four-taxon tests to investigate patterns of homoeologous gene conversion in established allopolyploids.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTAllopolyploidy is a prominent process in plant diversification, involving the union of two divergent genomes in a single nucleus via interspecific hybridization and genome doubling. The merger of genomes sets in motion a variety of inter-genomic and epigenomic interactions that are thought to lead to the origin of new phenotypes. Among these is recombinational exchange between duplicated chromosomes, which can involve sequence lengths ranging from several bases to entire chromosome arms, and which can be either reciprocal or unidirectional in their effects. Here we present a new analytical framework for detecting these inter-genomic recombinational processes in allopolyploids, and demonstrate that they have been rare in a group of allopolyploid species in the cotton genus.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Conover, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sloan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-11-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.11.08.566278</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Little Evidence for Homoeologous Gene Conversion and Homoeologous Exchange Events in Gossypium Allopolyploids]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-11-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.15.567310v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Whole genome profiling of short-term hypoxia induced genes and identification of HIF-1 binding sites provide insights into HIF-1 function in Caenorhabditis elegans 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.15.567310v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Oxygen is essential to all the aerobic organisms. However, during normal development, disease and homeostasis, organisms are often challenged by hypoxia (oxygen deprivation). Hypoxia-inducible transcription factors (HIFs) are master regulators of hypoxia response and are evolutionarily conserved in metazoans. The homolog of HIF in the genetic model organism C. elegans is HIF-1. In this study, we aimed to understand short-term hypoxia response and to identify HIF-1 direct targets in C. elegans. The central research questions were: (1) which genes are differentially expressed in response to short-term hypoxia? (2) Which of these changes in gene expression are dependent upon HIF-1 function? (3) How do HIF-1-dependent hypoxia-responsive genes affect hypoxia adaptation? (4) Which genes are the direct targets of HIF-1? We combine whole genome gene expression analyses and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) experiments to address these questions. In agreement with other published studies, we report that HIF-1-dependent hypoxia-responsive genes are involved in metabolism, oxidation-reduction process, and stress response. Some HIF-1-dependent hypoxia-responsive genes like efk-1 and phy-2 dramatically impact survival in hypoxic conditions. HIF-1 co-immunoprecipitates with genomic regions proximal genes involved in stress response, protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum, and cell recognition. Further, some of these potential HIF-1 direct targets are differentially expressed under short-term hypoxia or are differentially regulated by mutations that enhance HIF-1 activity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Feng, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qu, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-11-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.11.15.567310</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Whole genome profiling of short-term hypoxia induced genes and identification of HIF-1 binding sites provide insights into HIF-1 function in Caenorhabditis elegans]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-11-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.15.567311v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transcriptome analyses describe the consequences of persistent HIF-1 over-activation in Caenorhabditis elegans 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.15.567311v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Metazoan animals rely on oxygen for survival, but during normal development and homeostasis, animals are often challenged by hypoxia (low oxygen). In metazoans, many of the critical hypoxia responses are mediated by the evolutionarily conserved hypoxia-inducible transcription factors (HIFs). The stability and activity of HIF complexes are strictly regulated. In the model organism C. elegans, HIF-1 stability and activity are negatively regulated by VHL-1, EGL-9, RHY-1 and SWAN-1. Importantly, C. elegans mutants carrying strong loss-of-function mutations in these genes are viable, and this provides opportunities to interrogate the molecular consequences of persistent HIF-1 over-activation. We find that the genome-wide gene expression patterns are compellingly similar in these mutants, supporting models in which RHY-1, SWAN-1 and EGL-9 function in common pathway(s) to regulate HIF-1 activity. These studies illuminate the diversified biological roles played by HIF-1, including metabolism, hypoxia and other stress responses, reproduction and development. Genes regulated by persistent HIF-1 over-activation overlap with genes responsive to pathogens, and they overlap with genes regulated by DAF-16. As crucial stress regulators, HIF-1 and DAF-16 converge on key stress-responsive genes and function synergistically to enable hypoxia survival.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Feng, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qu, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-11-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.11.15.567311</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transcriptome analyses describe the consequences of persistent HIF-1 over-activation in Caenorhabditis elegans]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-11-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.20.567786v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The nematode (Ascaris suum) intestine is a location of synergistic anthelmintic effects of Cry5B and levamisole 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.20.567786v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A novel group of biocidal compounds are the Crystal 3D (Cry) and Cytolytic (Cyt) proteins produced by Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Some Bt Cry proteins have a selective nematocidal activity, with Cry5B being the most studied. Cry5B kills nematode parasites by binding selectively to membrane glycosphingolipids, then forming pores in the cell membranes of the intestine leading to damage. Cry5B selectively targets multiple species of nematodes from different clades and has no effect against mammalian hosts. Levamisole is a cholinomimetic anthelmintic that acts by selectively opening L-subtype nicotinic acetylcholine receptor ion-channels (L-AChRs) that have been found on muscles of nematodes. A synergistic nematocidal interaction between levamisole and Cry5B has been described previously, but the location, mechanism and time-course of this synergism is not known. In this study we follow the timeline of the effects of levamisole and Cry5B on the Ca2+ levels in enterocyte cells from the intestine of Ascaris suum using fluorescence imaging. The peak Ca2+ responses to levamisole were observed after approximately 10 minutes while the peak responses to activated Cry5B were observed after approximately 80 minutes. When levamisole and Cry5B were applied simultaneously, we observed that the responses to Cry5B were bigger and occurred sooner than when it was applied by itself. It is proposed that there is an irreversible cytoplasmic Ca2+ overload that leads to necrotic cell-death in the enterocyte that is induced by levamisole opening Ca2+ permeable L-subtype nAChRs and the development of Ca2+ permeable Cry5B toxin pores in enterocyte plasma membranes. The effects of levamisole potentiate and speed the actions of Cry5B.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Williams, P. D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brewer, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aroian, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robertson, A. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-11-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.11.20.567786</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The nematode (Ascaris suum) intestine is a location of synergistic anthelmintic effects of Cry5B and levamisole]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-11-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.20.567972v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Inbreeding depression leads to reduced fitness in declining populations of wild maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.20.567972v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Crop wild relatives can serve as a source of variation for the genetic improvement of modern varieties. However, the realization of this genetic potential depends critically on the conservation of wild populations. In this study, five populations of Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, the closest relative of domesticated maize, were collected in Jalisco, Mexico and planted in a common garden. Eleven traits related to plant fitness were measured and evaluated in the context of genetic diversity and genetic load. Plants whose seed were sourced from larger, less disturbed populations had greater genetic diversity, lower genetic load, and possessed phenotypes associated with higher fitness, while plants sourced from smaller, heavily impacted populations had traits characteristic of lower fitness and increased genetic load. For example, plants from larger populations germinated more quickly, reached anthesis sooner, demonstrated a higher level of photosynthetic activity, and produced more above-ground biomass, suggesting a direct correlation between the fitness of a population, genetic diversity, and genetic load. These results emphasize the importance of preserving the habitat of populations of Zea mays ssp. parviglumis to limit inbreeding depression and maintain the genetic diversity and adaptive potential of this germplasm.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schulz, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufnagel, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gepts, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-11-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.11.20.567972</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Inbreeding depression leads to reduced fitness in declining populations of wild maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-11-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.29.569287v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CRISPR-Cas12a exhibits metal-dependent specificity switching 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.29.569287v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cas12a is the immune effector of type V-A CRISPR-Cas systems and has been co-opted for genome editing and other biotechnology tools. The specificity of Cas12a has been the subject of extensive investigation both in vitro and in genome editing experiments. However, in vitro studies have often been performed at high magnesium ion concentrations that are inconsistent with the free Mg2+ concentrations that would be present in cells. By profiling the specificity of Cas12a orthologs at a range of Mg2+ concentrations, we find that Cas12a switches its specificity depending on metal ion concentration. Lowering Mg2+ concentration decreases cleavage defects caused by seed mismatches, while increasing the defects caused by PAM-distal mismatches. We show that Cas12a can bind seed mutant targets more rapidly at low Mg2+ concentrations, resulting in faster cleavage. In contrast, PAM-distal mismatches cause substantial defects in cleavage following formation of the Cas12a-target complex at low Mg2+ concentrations. We observe differences in Cas12a specificity switching between three orthologs that results in variations in the routes of phage escape from Cas12a-mediated immunity. Overall, our results reveal the importance of physiological metal ion conditions on the specificity of Cas effectors that are used in different cellular environments.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, G. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schelling, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buscher, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sritharan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sashital, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-11-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.11.29.569287</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CRISPR-Cas12a exhibits metal-dependent specificity switching]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-11-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.11.570820v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
GWAS From Spoken Phenotypic Descriptions: A Proof of Concept From Maize Field Studies 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.11.570820v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We present a novel approach to Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) by leveraging unstructured, spoken phenotypic descriptions to identify genomic regions associated with maize traits. Utilizing the Wisconsin Diversity panel, we collected spoken descriptions of Zea mays ssp. mays traits, converting these qualitative observations into quantitative data amenable to GWAS analysis. First, we determined that visually striking phenotypes could be detected from unstructrured spoken phenotypic descriptions. Next, we developed two methods to process the same descriptions to derive the trait plant height, a well-characterized phenotypic feature in maize: (1) a semantic similarity metric that assigns a score based on the resemblance of each observation to the concept of  tallness, and (2) a manual scoring system that categorizes and assigns values to phrases related to plant height. Our analysis successfully corroborated known genomic associations and uncovered novel candidate genes potentially linked to plant height. Some of these genes are associated with gene ontology terms that suggest a plausible involvement in determining plant stature. This proof-of-concept demonstrates the viability of spoken phenotypic descriptions in GWAS and introduces a scalable framework for incorporating unstructured language data into genetic association studies. This methodology has the potential not only to enrich the phenotypic data used in GWAS and to enhance the discovery of genetic elements linked to complex traits, but also to expand the repertoire of phenotype data collection methods available for use in the field environment.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yanarella, C. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fattel, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-12-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.12.11.570820</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[GWAS From Spoken Phenotypic Descriptions: A Proof of Concept From Maize Field Studies]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-12-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.15.571950v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Data driven discovery and quantification of hyperspectral leaf reflectance phenotypes across a maize diversity panel 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.15.571950v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Hyperspectral reflectance data can be collected from large plant populations in a high-throughput manner in both controlled and field environments. The efficacy of using hyperspectral leaf reflectance as a proxy for traits that typically require significant labor and time to collect has been evaluated in a number of studies. Commonly, estimating plant traits using hyperspectral reflectance involves collecting substantial amounts of ground truth data from plant populations, which may not be feasible for many researchers. In this study, we explore the potential of data-driven approaches to analyze hyperspectral reflectance data with little to no ground truth phenotypic measurements. Evaluations were performed using data on the reflectance of 2,151 individual wavelengths of light from the leaves of maize plants harvested from 1,658 field plots of a replicated trial including representatives of 752 maize genotypes from the Wisconsin Diversity Panel. We reduced the dimensionality of this dataset using an autoencoder neural network and principal component analyses, producing 10 latent variables and principal components, respectively. A subset of these principal components and latent variables demonstrated significant repeatability, indicating that a substantial proportion of the total variance in these variables was explained by genetic factors. Moreover, correlations were observed between variables derived from the autoencoder network and principal components with molecular traits. Notably, the most relevant latent variable (LV8) showed a much stronger correlation with chlorophyll content (R2 = 0.59) compared to the most correlated principal component (PC2; R2 = 0.31). Furthermore, one latent variable exhibited modestly better performance than a partial least squares regression model in estimating leaf chlorophyll content (PLSR; R2 = 0.58, LV8; R2 = 0.59). A number of genetic markers in the maize genome were significantly correlated with variation in different latent variables in genome wide association studies. In a number of cases, significant signals in genome wide association studies were adjacent to genes with plausible links to traits expected to influence leaf hyperspectral reflectance patterns.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tross, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grzybowski, M. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jubery, T. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grove, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nishimwe, A. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Torres-Rodriguez, J. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sun, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganapathysubramanian, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2023-12-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2023.12.15.571950</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Data driven discovery and quantification of hyperspectral leaf reflectance phenotypes across a maize diversity panel]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2023-12-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.22.576598v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The SUbventral-Gland master Regulator (SUGR) of nematode virulence 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.22.576598v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
All pathogens must tailor their gene expression to their environment. Therefore, targeting host:parasite biology that regulates these changes in gene expression could open up routes to pathogen control. Here, we show that in the plant-parasitic nematode Heterodera schachtii, host signals (termed effectostimulins) within plant roots activate the master regulator sugr1. SUGR1, then, directly binds effector promoters, and orchestrates their production. Effector production, in turn, facilitates host entry, releasing more effectostimulins. These data show that gene expression during the very earliest stages of parasitism is defined by a feed forward loop for host entry. Importantly, we demonstrate that blocking SUGR1 blocks parasitism, underlining the SUGR1 signalling cascade as a valuable target for crop protection. Given that nematodes also parasitise humans and other animals, the potential impact is broad: disrupting effector production could, in principle, be applied to any pathogen that secrets effectors.

Graphical abstract

O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=146 SRC="FIGDIR/small/576598v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
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]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pellegrin, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Damm, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sperling, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Molloy, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shin, D. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Long, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brett, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bravo, A. D.-T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lynch, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Senatori, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vieira, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mejias, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Masonbrink, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eves-van den Akker, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-01-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.01.22.576598</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The SUbventral-Gland master Regulator (SUGR) of nematode virulence]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-01-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.26.577106v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Epitranscriptomic Reader YTHDF2 Regulates SEK1(MAP2K4)-JNK-cJUN Inflammatory Signaling in Astrocytes during Neurotoxic Stress 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.26.577106v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
As the most abundant glial cells in the CNS, astrocytes dynamically respond to neurotoxic stress, however, the key molecular regulators controlling the inflammatory status of these sentinels during neurotoxic stress have remained elusive. Herein, we demonstrate that the m6A epitranscriptomic mRNA modification tightly regulates the pro-inflammatory functions of astrocytes. Specifically, the astrocytic neurotoxic stresser, manganese (Mn), downregulated the m6A reader YTHDF2 in human and mouse astrocyte cultures and in the mouse brain. Functionally, YTHDF2 knockdown augmented, while its overexpression dampened, neurotoxic stress induced proinflammatory response, suggesting YTHDF2 serves as a key upstream regulator of inflammatory responses in astrocytes. Mechnistically, YTHDF2 RIP-sequencing identified MAP2K4 (MKK4; SEK1) mRNA as a YTHDF2 target influencing inflammatory signaling. Our target validation revealed Mn-exposed astrocytes mediates proinflammatory response by activating the phosphorylation of SEK1, JNK, and cJUN signaling. Collectively, YTHDF2 serves a key upstream  molecular switch controlling SEK1(MAP2K4)-JNK-cJUN proinflammatory signaling in astrocytes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Malovic, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ealy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rokad, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goeser, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hartman, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhu, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Palanisamy, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zenitsky, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jin, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anantharam, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>He, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-01-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.01.26.577106</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Epitranscriptomic Reader YTHDF2 Regulates SEK1(MAP2K4)-JNK-cJUN Inflammatory Signaling in Astrocytes during Neurotoxic Stress]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-01-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.07.579350v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A common set of structurally distinct endogenous retroviruses predict survival in multiple human tumor types 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.07.579350v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Accumulating evidence suggests that viral mimicry induction in cancer cells through the expression of human endogenous retroviral elements (ERVs) enhances tumor immunogenicity and improves response to immunotherapy. However, the characterization of ERV expression across multiple tumor types, their clinical relevance, and their role in tumor immunity remain limited. Here, we assessed the prognostic and immune-related consequences of ERV expression across 8 different tumor types from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We applied a recently developed tool, Telescope, to quantify the expression of 14,968 ERVs in bulk tumor RNA-sequencing data. Approximately 15-22% of Telescopes ERVs (navg = 2,736) were expressed in each tumor cohort. We identified both tissue-specific and commonly expressed ERVs across cohorts. Over 50% of tissue-specific ERVs were ubiquitously expressed (n = 1,709) across all 8 tumor types. Using patient clinical data, we identified a subset of 94 ERVs whose expression levels were significantly associated with overall survival, of which 42 were favorably prognostic. Prognostic ERVs displayed unique structural characteristics, including more frequent inverted repeats and more stable secondary structures. Patients were classified based on ERV expression, allowing identification of patient cohorts with greater than 6-fold differences in overall survival. We also found that expression of positively prognostic ERVs was associated with enrichment for selected anti-tumor immune response gene expression signatures. This analysis extends previous results identifying patterns of ERV expression in bulk tumor RNA-seq datasets, providing further insight into the role of ERVs in tumor clinicopathology and immunogenicity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Massa, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chintalapudi, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coppenbarger, E. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moss, W. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frost, H. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leach, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-02-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.02.07.579350</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A common set of structurally distinct endogenous retroviruses predict survival in multiple human tumor types]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-02-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.16.580747v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nuclear pore complexes undergo Nup221 exchange during blood stage asexual replication of Plasmodium parasites. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.16.580747v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plasmodium parasites, the causative agents of malaria, undergo closed mitosis without breakdown of the nuclear envelope. Unlike closed mitosis in yeast, P. berghei parasites undergo multiple rounds of asynchronous nuclear divisions in a shared cytoplasm which results in a multinucleated organism prior to formation of daughter cells within an infected red blood cell. During this replication process, intact nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) and their component nucleoporins play critical roles in parasite growth, facilitating selective bi-directional nucleocytoplasmic transport and genome organization. Here we utilize ultrastructure expansion microscopy (U-ExM) to investigate P. berghei nucleoporins at the single nucleus level throughout the 24-hour blood-stage replication cycle. Our findings reveal that these Nups are evenly distributed around the nuclei and organized in a rosete structure previously undescribed around the centriolar plaque, which is responsible for intranuclear microtubule nucleation during mitosis. By adapting the recombination-induced tag exchange (RITE) system to P. berghei, we provide evidence of NPC maintenance, demonstrating Nup221 turnover during parasite asexual replication. Our data shed light on the distribution of NPCs and their homeostasis during the blood-stage replication of P. berghei parasites.

Summary StatementEmploying ultrastructure expansion microscopy and the RITE system, this study unveils Nup221 turnover in nuclear pore complexes of Plasmodium parasites, shedding light on their replication mechanisms.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Blauwkamp, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ambekar, S. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hussain, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mair, G. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Absalon, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-02-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.02.16.580747</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nuclear pore complexes undergo Nup221 exchange during blood stage asexual replication of Plasmodium parasites.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-02-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.21.581488v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A pan-tissue, pan-disease compendium of human orphan genes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.21.581488v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Species-specific genes are ubiquitous in evolution, with functions ranging from prey paralysis to survival in subzero temperatures. Because they are typically expressed under limited conditions and lack canonical features, such genes may be vastly under-identified, even in humans. Here, we leverage terabytes of human RNA-Seq data to identify thousands of highly-expressed transcripts that do not correspond to any Gencode-annotated gene. Many may be novel ncRNAs although 80% of them contain ORFs that have the potential of encoding proteins unique to Homo sapiens (orphan genes). We validate our findings with independent strand-specific and single-cell RNA-seq datasets. Hundreds of these novel transcripts overlap with deleterious genomic variants; thousands show significant association with disease-specific patient survival. Most are dynamically regulated and accumulate selectively in particular tissues, cell-types, developmental stages, tumors, COVID-19, sex, and ancestries. As such, these transcripts hold potential as diagnostic biomarkers or therapeutic targets. To empower future discovery, we provide a compendium of these huge RNA-Seq expression data, and RiboSeq data, with associated metadata. Further, we supply the gene models for the novel genes as UCSC Genome Browser tracks.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Singh, U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haltom, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guarnieri, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beheshti, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aronow, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wurtele, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.02.21.581488</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A pan-tissue, pan-disease compendium of human orphan genes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.22.581585v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
MaizeCODE reveals bi-directionally expressed enhancers that harbor molecular signatures of maize domestication. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.22.581585v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Modern maize was domesticated from Teosinte parviglumis, with subsequent introgressions from Teosinte mexicana, yielding increased kernel row number, loss of the hard fruit case and dissociation from the cob upon maturity, as well as fewer tillers. Molecular approaches have identified several transcription factors involved in the development of these traits, yet revealed that a complex regulatory network is at play. MaizeCODE deploys ENCODE strategies to catalog regulatory regions in the maize genome, generating histone modification and transcription factor ChIP-seq in parallel with transcriptomics datasets in 5 tissues of 3 inbred lines which span the phenotypic diversity of maize, as well as the teosinte inbred TIL11. Integrated analysis of these datasets resulted in the identification of a comprehensive set of regulatory regions in each inbred, and notably of distal enhancers which were differentiated from gene bodies by their lack of H3K4me1. Many of these distal enhancers expressed non- coding enhancer RNAs bi-directionally, reminiscent of "super enhancers" in animal genomes. We show that pollen grains are the most differentiated tissue at the transcriptomic level, and share features with endosperm that may be related to McClintocks chromosome breakage- fusion-bridge cycle. Conversely, ears have the least conservation between maize and teosinte, both in gene expression and within regulatory regions, reflecting conspicuous morphological differences selected during domestication. The identification of molecular signatures of domestication in transcriptional regulatory regions provides a framework for directed breeding strategies in maize.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cahn, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Regulski, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lynn, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ernst, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Santis Alves, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ramakrishnan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chougule, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wei, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Drenkow, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McCombie, W. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ware, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jackson, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schatz, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gingeras, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martienssen, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.02.22.581585</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[MaizeCODE reveals bi-directionally expressed enhancers that harbor molecular signatures of maize domestication.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.03.583232v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
EpicTope: narrating protein sequence features to identify non-disruptive epitope tagging sites 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.03.583232v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Epitope tagging is a valuable technique enabling the in vivo identification, tracking, and purification of proteins. We developed a tool, EpicTope, to facilitate this method by identifying amino acid positions most suitable for epitope insertion. Our method uses a scoring function that considers protein sequence secondary and tertiary structural features, solvent accessibility, and disordered binding regions to determine locations least disruptive to the proteins function. We validated our approach on the zebrafish Smad5 and Hdac1 proteins. We show that multiple predicted internally tagged Smad5 proteins rescue zebrafish smad5 mutant embryos, while the N- and C-terminal tagged variants do not, as predicted. Similarly, we found that optimally-predicted internal and C-terminal Hdac1 tags rescued hdac1 mutant embryos, while a less-optimal N-terminal tag did not. We further show that these functionally tagged Smad5 and Hdac1 proteins are accessible to antibodies in wholemount zebrafish embryo immunohistochemistry, by western blot, and by immunoprecipitation from embryo extracts. Our work demonstrates that EpicTope is an accessible and effective tool for designing epitope tag insertion sites.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zinski, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chung, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Joshi, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Warrick, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Berg, B. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Glova, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Balciunas, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mullins, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-03-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.03.03.583232</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[EpicTope: narrating protein sequence features to identify non-disruptive epitope tagging sites]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-03-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.22.586101v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A zebrafish system for identifying genetic dependencies in melanocytes and melanoma 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.22.586101v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The advent of large-scale sequencing in both development and disease has identified large numbers of candidate genes that may be linked to important phenotypes. We have developed a rapid, scalable system for assessing the role of candidate genes using zebrafish. We generated transgenic zebrafish in which Cas9 was knocked-in to the endogenous mitfa locus, a master transcription factor of the melanocyte lineage. The main advantage of this system compared to existing techniques is maintenance of endogenous regulatory elements. We used this system to identify both cell-autonomous and non-cell autonomous regulators of normal melanocyte development. We then applied this to the melanoma setting to demonstrate that loss of genes required for melanocyte survival can paradoxically promote more aggressive phenotypes, highlighting that in vitro screens can mask in vivo phenotypes. Our genetic approach offers a versatile tool for exploring developmental processes and disease mechanisms that can readily be applied to other cell lineages.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Perlee, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ma, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hunter, M. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swanson, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ming, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xia, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lionnet, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>White, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-03-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.03.22.586101</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A zebrafish system for identifying genetic dependencies in melanocytes and melanoma]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-03-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.587058v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Assembling bacterial puzzles: piecing together functions into microbial pathways 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.587058v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Functional metagenomics enables the study of unexplored bacterial diversity, gene families, and pathways essential to microbial communities. However, discovering biological insights with these data is impeded by the scarcity of quality annotations. Here, we use a co-occurrence-based analysis of predicted microbial protein functions to uncover pathways in genomic and metagenomic biological systems. Our approach, based on phylogenetic profiles, improves the identification of functional relationships, or participation in the same biochemical pathway, between enzymes over a comparable homology-based approach. We optimized the design of our profiles to identify potential pathways using minimal data, clustered functionally related enzyme pairs into multi-enzymatic pathways, and evaluated our predictions against reference pathways in KEGG. We then demonstrated a novel extension of this approach to predict inter-bacterial protein interactions amongst members of a marine microbiome. Most significantly, we show our method predicts emergent biochemical pathways between known and unknown functions. Thus, our work establishes a basis for identifying the potential functional capacities of the entire metagenome, capturing previously unknown and abstract functions into discrete putative pathways.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chung, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bromberg, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-03-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.03.27.587058</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Assembling bacterial puzzles: piecing together functions into microbial pathways]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-03-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.586853v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Design and Assembly of a Cargo-agnostic Hollow Two-lidded DNA Box for Drug Delivery 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.586853v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
DNA origami, a method of folding DNA into precise nanostructures, has emerged as a powerful tool to design complex nanoscale shapes with movable parts. DNA origami has great potential as a drug delivery system that can encapsulate and protect a range of cargos spanning small molecules through large proteins, while remaining stable in a variety of ex vivo processing conditions and in vivo environments. DNA origami has been utilized for drug delivery applications, but the vast majority of these structures have been flexible, flat 2D or solid 3D nanostructures. There is a crucial need for a hollow and completely enclosed design capable of holding any type of cargo. In this paper, we present the design and assembly of a hollow DNA origami "box" with two actuatable lids. We characterize isothermal conditions for structural assembly in minutes that eliminates the need for a thermocycler. The stability of these structures is outstanding, remaining stable at body temperature and low pH for weeks and in the presence of solvents and biological fluids over several days. We demonstrate that passive loading of small molecules is charge dependent. We also outline an approach to design staple extensions pointing into the cavity or outside of the hollow DNA origami, allowing for either active loading of protein or the potential for decoration with passivating or targeting molecules. Future work includes fitting this hollow DNA origami structure with alternative lid opening mechanisms to release a variety of different cargos in response to environmental cues.

Graphical Abstract

O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=80 SRC="FIGDIR/small/586853v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
View larger version (19K):
org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@97179corg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@18f0b46org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@2d390eorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@fcf35c_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG C_FIG
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Koep, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Masud, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Van't Hul, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stanley, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nilsen-Hamilton, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schneider, I. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-03-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.03.27.586853</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Design and Assembly of a Cargo-agnostic Hollow Two-lidded DNA Box for Drug Delivery]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-03-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.26.586792v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Conservation and diversification of genes regulating brassinosteroid biosynthesis and signaling 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.26.586792v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Brassinosteroids (BRs) are important regulators that control myriad aspects of plant growth and development including biotic and abiotic stress responses, such that modulating BR homeostasis and signaling presents enormous opportunities for plant breeding and crop improvement. Enzymes and proteins involved in the biosynthesis and signaling of BRs are well understood from molecular genetics and phenotypic analysis in Arabidopsis thaliana; however, knowledge of molecular function of these genes in other plant species, especially cereal crop plants, is highly limited. In this manuscript, we comprehensively review functional studies of BR genes in Arabidopsis, maize, rice, Setaria, Brachypodium, and soybean to identify conserved and diversified functions across plant species, and to highlight cases where additional research is in order. We performed phylogenetic analysis of gene families known to be involved in biosynthesis and signaling of BRs and re-analyzed publicly available transcriptomic data. Gene trees coupled to expression data provide a useful guide to supplement future research on BRs in these important crop species, such as to allow researchers to identify genes to target through gene editing techniques to perform BR-related functional studies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zebosi, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vollbrecht, E. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Best, N. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-04-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.03.26.586792</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Conservation and diversification of genes regulating brassinosteroid biosynthesis and signaling]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-04-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.01.587552v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
An effective and safe maize seed chipping protocol using clipping pliers with applications in small-scale genotyping and marker-assisted breeding 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.01.587552v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In applications such as marker-assisted breeding and positional cloning, tissue sampling and plant tracking are vital steps in the genotyping pipeline. They enable the identification of desirable seedlings, saving time and reducing the cost, space, and handling required for growing adult plants, especially for greenhouses and winter nurseries. Small-scale marker-assisted selection laboratories rely heavily on leaf-based genotyping, which involves over-planting large, segregating populations followed by leaf sampling, genotyping, and backtracking to identify desired individuals, which is costly and laborious. Thus, there is a need to adopt seed-based genotyping to reduce costs and save time. Therefore, we developed a safe and cheap seed-chipping protocol using clipping pliers to chip seeds to genotype before planting. To identify a cost-effective and high throughput DNA extraction method, we tested four extraction methods and assessed the quality of the seed DNA using PCR. For three of the methods, seed-based DNA was of comparable quality to DNA extracted from leaf punches. We also compared seed- and leaf-derived DNA from the same individuals in a segregating population to test for genotyping miscalls that could arise due to the presence of maternally derived pericarp in the seed samples and found zero miscalls of 43 potential instances. Germination rates of chipped and unchipped seeds were the same for the inbreds tested, B73 and Mo17. However, chipped seeds grew slower until [~]14 days after sowing. Overall, seed sampling using clipping pliers provides a simple, reliable, and high-throughput method to identify specific genotypes before planting.

Key FeaturesO_LIProvides a quick, safe, and cheap sampling technique for maize kernels that may also be suitable for other plants with relatively large seeds.
C_LIO_LIIncludes procedures and materials to track and organize samples within and across batches involving hundreds to thousands of seeds.
C_LIO_LISeeds can be sampled and genotyped relatively quickly for planting; in one day 384 seeds can be sampled, processed for DNA, and genotyped by PCR.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zebosi, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ssengo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Geadelmann, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Unger-Wallace, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vollbrecht, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-04-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.04.01.587552</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[An effective and safe maize seed chipping protocol using clipping pliers with applications in small-scale genotyping and marker-assisted breeding]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-04-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.09.588771v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Single-cell proteomics differentiates Arabidopsis root cell types 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.09.588771v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Recently, major advances have enabled the exploration of cellular heterogeneity using single-cell proteomics. Here we examine the feasibility of single-cell proteomics on plant samples. We focus on Arabidopsis thaliana, examining isolated single cells from the cortex and endodermis, which are two adjacent root cell-types derived from a common stem cell. From 756 cells we identify 3,763 proteins and 1,118 proteins/cell. Ultimately, we focus on 3,217 proteins quantified following stringent filtering. Of these, we identified 596 proteins whose expression is enriched in either the cortex or endodermis and are able to differentiate these closely related plant cell-types. Collectivity, our findings underscore the promise of single-cell proteomics to explore the heterogeneity of expression between individual plant cells.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Montes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nolan, T. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-04-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.04.09.588771</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Single-cell proteomics differentiates Arabidopsis root cell types]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-04-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.16.588916v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b Virus detected in dairy cattle 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.16.588916v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The global emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A (H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b viruses poses a significant global public health threat. Until March 2024, no outbreaks of this virus clade had occurred in domestic cattle. We genetically characterize HPAI viruses from dairy cattle showing an abrupt drop in milk production. They share nearly identical genome sequences, forming a new genotype B3.13 within the 2.3.4.4b clade. B3.13 viruses underwent two reassortment events since 2023 and exhibit critical mutations in HA, M1, and NS genes but lack critical mutations in PB2 and PB1 genes, which enhance virulence or adaptation to mammals. The PB2 E627K mutation in a human case underscores the potential for rapid evolution post-infection, highlighting the need for continued surveillance to monitor public health threats.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saxena, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Magstadt, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burrough, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siepker, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mainenti, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gorden, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Plummer, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-04-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.04.16.588916</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b Virus detected in dairy cattle]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-04-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.13.593804v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Successful Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Reduces Negative Septal Work in Patient-Specific Models of Dyssynchronous Heart Failure 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.13.593804v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In patients with dyssynchronous heart failure (DHF), cardiac conduction abnormalities cause the regional distribution of myocardial work to be non-homogeneous. Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) using an implantable, programmed biventricular pacemaker/defibrillator, can improve the synchrony of contraction between the right and left ventricles in DHF, resulting in reduced morbidity and mortality and increased quality of life. Since regional work depends on wall stress, which cannot be measured in patients, we used computational methods to investigate regional work distributions and their changes after CRT. We used three-dimensional multi-scale patient-specific computational models parameterized by anatomic, functional, hemodynamic, and electrophysiological measurements in eight patients with heart failure and left bundle branch block (LBBB) who received CRT. To increase clinical translatability, we also explored whether streamlined computational methods provide accurate estimates of regional myocardial work.

We found that CRT increased global myocardial work efficiency with significant improvements in non-responders. Reverse ventricular remodeling after CRT was greatest in patients with the highest heterogeneity of regional work at baseline, however the efficacy of CRT was not related to the decrease in overall work heterogeneity or to the reduction in late-activated regions of high myocardial work. Rather, decreases in early-activated regions of myocardium performing negative myocardial work following CRT best explained patient variations in reverse remodeling. These findings were also observed when regional myocardial work was estimated using ventricular pressure as a surrogate for myocardial stress and changes in endocardial surface area as a surrogate for strain. These new findings suggest that CRT promotes reverse ventricular remodeling in human dyssynchronous heart failure by increasing regional myocardial work in early-activated regions of the ventricles, where dyssynchrony is specifically associated with hypoperfusion, late systolic stretch, and altered metabolic activity and that measurement of these changes can be performed using streamlined approaches.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Craine, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krishnamurthy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Villongco, C. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vincent, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krummen, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Narayan, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kerckhoffs, R. C. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Omens, J. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Contijoch, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McCulloch, A. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-05-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.05.13.593804</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Successful Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Reduces Negative Septal Work in Patient-Specific Models of Dyssynchronous Heart Failure]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-05-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.28.596153v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nuclear phylogenomics of grasses (Poaceae) supports current classification and reveals repeated reticulation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.28.596153v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
O_LIGrasses (Poaceae) comprise around 11,800 species and are central for human livelihoods and terrestrial ecosystems. Knowing their relationships and evolutionary history is key to comparative research and crop breeding. Advances in genome-scale sequencing allow for increased breadth and depth of phylogenomic analyses, making it possible to infer a new reference species tree of the family.
C_LIO_LIWe inferred a comprehensive species tree of grasses by combining new and published sequences for 331 nuclear genes from genome, transcriptome, target enrichment and shotgun data. Our 1,153-tip tree covers 79% of grass genera (including 21 genera sequenced for the first time) and all but two small tribes. We compared it to a 910-tip plastome tree.
C_LIO_LIThe nuclear phylogeny matches that of the plastome at most deep branches, with only a few instances of incongruence. Gene tree-species tree reconciliation suggests that reticulation events occurred repeatedly in the history of grasses.
C_LIO_LIWe provide a robust framework for the grass tree of life to support research on grass evolution, including modes of reticulation, and genetic diversity for sustainable agriculture.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grass Phylogeny Working Group 3,</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arthan, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baker, W. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barrett, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barrett, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bennetzen, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Besnard, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bianconi, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Birch, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Catalan, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Christenhusz, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Christin, P.-A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, L. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Couch, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Columbus, J. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crayn, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Davidse, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dunning, L. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Duvall, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dransfield, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ficinski, S. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fisher, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fjellheim, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Forest, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gillespie, L. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hackel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haevermans, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hodkinson, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, C.-H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Humphreys, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jobson, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kayombo, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kellogg, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimeu, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Larridon, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Letsara, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, D.-Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu,</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-06-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.05.28.596153</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nuclear phylogenomics of grasses (Poaceae) supports current classification and reveals repeated reticulation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-06-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.31.596834v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transcription factor binding site divergence across maize inbred lines drives transcriptional and phenotypic variation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.31.596834v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Regulatory elements are important constituents of plant genomes that have shaped ancient and modern crops. Their identification, function, and diversity in crop genomes however are poorly characterized, thus limiting our ability to harness their power for further agricultural advances using induced or natural variation. Here, we use DNA affinity purification-sequencing (DAP-seq) to map transcription factor (TF) binding events for 200 maize TFs belonging to 30 distinct families and heterodimer pairs in two distinct inbred lines historically used for maize hybrid plant production, providing empirical binding site annotation for 5.3% of the maize genome. TF binding site comparison in B73 and Mo17 inbreds reveals widespread differences, driven largely by structural variation, that correlate with gene expression changes. TF binding site presence-absence variation helps clarify complex QTL such as vgt1, an important determinant of maize flowering time, and DICE, a distal enhancer involved in herbivore resistance. Modification of TF binding regions via CRISPR-Cas9 mediated editing alters target gene expression and phenotype. Our functional catalog of maize TF binding events enables collective and comparative TF binding analysis, and highlights its value for agricultural improvement.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Galli, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ghandour, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chaudhry, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gregory, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dong, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chuck, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whipple, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaeppler, H. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, S.-s. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gallavotti, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-06-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.05.31.596834</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transcription factor binding site divergence across maize inbred lines drives transcriptional and phenotypic variation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-06-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.02.597048v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Amplified DNA Heterogeneity Assessment with Oxford Nanopore Sequencing Applied to Cell Free Expression Templates 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.02.597048v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
In this work, Oxford Nanopore sequencing is tested as an accessible method for quantifying heterogeneity of amplified DNA. This method enables rapid quantification of deletions, insertions, and substitutions, the probability of each mutation error, and their locations in the replicated sequences. Amplification techniques tested were conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with varying levels of polymerase fidelity (OneTaq, Phusion, and Q5) as well as rolling circle amplification (RCA) with Phi29 polymerase. Plasmid amplification using bacteria was also assessed. By analyzing the distribution of errors in a large set of sequences for each sample, we examined the heterogeneity and mode of errors in each sample. This analysis revealed that Q5 and Phusion polymerases exhibited the lowest error rates observed in the amplified DNA. As a secondary validation, we analyzed the emission spectra of sfGFP fluorescent proteins synthesized with amplified DNA using cell free expression. Error-prone polymerase chain reactions confirmed the dependency of reporter protein emission spectra peak broadness to DNA error rates. The presented nanopore sequencing methods serve as a roadmap to quantify the accuracy of other gene amplification techniques, as they are discovered, enabling more homogenous cell-free expression of desired proteins.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hejazi, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hejazi, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kashani, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reuel, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-06-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.06.02.597048</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Amplified DNA Heterogeneity Assessment with Oxford Nanopore Sequencing Applied to Cell Free Expression Templates]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-06-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.04.595564v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Elevated CO2 alters soybean physiology and defense responses, and has disparate effects on susceptibility to diverse microbial pathogens 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.04.595564v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
O_LIIncreasing atmospheric CO2 levels have a variety of effects that can influence plant responses to microbial pathogens. However, these responses are varied, and it is challenging to predict how elevated CO2 (eCO2) will affect a particular plant-pathogen interaction. We investigated how eCO2 may influence disease development and responses to diverse pathogens in the major oilseed crop, soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.).
C_LIO_LISoybeans grown in ambient CO2 (aCO2, 419 parts per million (ppm)) or in eCO2 (550 ppm) were challenged with bacterial, viral, fungal, and oomycete pathogens, and disease, pathogen growth, gene expression and molecular plant defense responses were quantified.
C_LIO_LIIn eCO2, plants were less susceptible to Pseudomonas syringae pv. glycinea (Psg) but more susceptible to bean pod mottle virus, soybean mosaic virus, and Fusarium virguliforme. Susceptibility to Pythium sylvaticum was unchanged, although a greater loss in biomass occurred in eCO2. Reduced susceptibility to Psg was associated with enhanced defense responses. Increased susceptibility to the viruses was associated with reduced expression of antiviral defenses.
C_LIO_LIThis work provides a foundation for understanding of how future eCO2 levels may impact molecular responses to pathogen challenge in soybean and demonstrates that agents infecting both shoots and roots are of potential concern in future climatic conditions.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bredow, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khwanbua, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sartor Chicowski, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Breitzman, M. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Holan, K. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Graham, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-06-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.06.04.595564</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Elevated CO2 alters soybean physiology and defense responses, and has disparate effects on susceptibility to diverse microbial pathogens]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-06-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.13.598915v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genotypic and Phenotypic Analyses Show Ralstonia solanacearum Cool Virulence is a Quantitative Trait Not Restricted to 'Race 3 biovar 2' 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.13.598915v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Most Ralstonia solanacearum species complex strains cause bacterial wilts in tropical or subtropical zones, but the group known as Race 3 biovar 2 (R3bv2) is cool virulent and causes potato brown rot at lower temperatures. R3bv2 has invaded potato-growing regions around the world but is not established in the United States. Phylogenetically, R3bv2 corresponds to a subset of the R. solanacearum phylotype IIB clade, but little is known about the distribution of the cool virulence phenotype within phylotype IIB. Therefore, genomes of 76 potentially cool virulent phylotype IIB strains and 30 public genomes were phylogenetically analyzed. A single clonal lineage within the sequevar 1 subclade of phylotype IIB that originated in South America has caused nearly all brown rot outbreaks worldwide. To correlate genotypes with relevant phenotypes, we quantified virulence of ten Ralstonia strains on tomato and potato at both 22{degrees}C and 28{degrees}C. Cool virulence on tomato did not predict cool virulence on potato. We found that cool virulence is a quantitative trait. Strains in the sequevar 1 pandemic clonal lineage caused the most disease, while other R3bv2 strains were only moderately cool virulent. However, some non-R3bv2 strains were highly cool virulent and aggressively colonized potato tubers. Thus, cool virulence is not consistently correlated with strains historically classified as R3bv2 group. To aid detection of sequevar 1 strains, this group was genomically delimited in the LINbase web server and a sequevar 1 diagnostic primer pair was developed and validated. We discuss implications of these results for the R3bv2 definition.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dewberry, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharma, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Prom, J. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kinscherf, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lowe-Power, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mazloom, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arif, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stulberg, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heath, L. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eversole, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beattie, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vinatzer, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allen, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-06-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.06.13.598915</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genotypic and Phenotypic Analyses Show Ralstonia solanacearum Cool Virulence is a Quantitative Trait Not Restricted to 'Race 3 biovar 2']]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-06-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.24.600469v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Single-nucleus RNA sequencing of striatal microglia reveals distinct transcriptomic signatures of acute stress and chronic exercise 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.24.600469v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Acute stress has enduring effects on the brain and motivated behavior across species. For example, acute stress produces persisting decreases in voluntary physical activity as well as molecular changes in the striatum, a brain region that regulates voluntary physical activity and other motivated behaviors. Microglia, the primary immune cells of the central nervous system, are positioned at the interface between neural responses to stress and neural coordination of voluntary activity in that they respond to stress, sense molecular changes in the striatum, and modulate neuronal activity. However, the role of striatal microglia in stress-induced long-term suppression of voluntary activity is unknown. Here we employ single nucleus RNA-sequencing to investigate how stress and exercise impact the biology of microglia in the striatum. We find that striatal microglia display altered activation profiles six weeks after an acute stressor. Furthermore, we show that access to a running wheel is associated with an additional and distinct microglial activation profile characterized by upregulation of genes related to complement components and phagocytosis pathways. Lastly, we find that distinct gene sets show expression changes associated with general access to a running wheel versus variation in running levels. Taken together, our results deepen our understanding of the diverse molecular states that striatal microglia assume in response to stress and exercise and suggest that microglia exhibit a broader range of functional states than previously thought.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Connolly, M. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnson, Z. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chu, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnson, N. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buhr, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McNeill, E. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rhodes, J. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-06-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.06.24.600469</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Single-nucleus RNA sequencing of striatal microglia reveals distinct transcriptomic signatures of acute stress and chronic exercise]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-06-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.26.599742v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Leveraging Crosslinker Diffusion to Template Stiffness Gradients in Alginate Hydrogels 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.26.599742v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mechanobiology drives many important cell biological behaviors such as stem cell differentiation, cancer drug resistance and cell migration up stiffness gradients, a process called durotaxis. The development of 3D hydrogel systems with tunable 2D mechanical gradient patterns affords the ability to study these mechanosensitive cell behaviors to understand cancer invasion or enhance wound healing through directed migration. In this paper, we developed an approach to spatially imprint within alginate hydrogels, gradients in mechanical properties that can be used to probe mechanobiology. Stencils were easily designed and fabricated using a common craft cutter to control the presentation of a calcium crosslinking solution to alginate gels. Different stencil shapes result in different gradients in opacity that can be imprinted into both thick and thin alginate gels of arbitrary 2D shape. The steepness of the opacity gradient as well as the maximum opacity can be controlled based on reproducible crosslinking kinetics regulated through calcium concentration and gradient developing time. Calcium crosslinking results in both opacity changes as well as increases in elastic modulus in the bulk hydrogel. Opacity correlates with elastic modulus, allowing it to be used as a proxy for local elastic modulus. Functionalized alginate gels with collagen and imprinting stiffness gradients within them resulted in cell invasion that was spatially dependent, where stiffer regions facilitated deeper invasion of breast cancer cells. Consequently, this stenciling approach represents a facile way to control stiffness gradients in alginate gels in order to study mechanosensitive cellular behavior.

Graphical Abstract

O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=45 SRC="FIGDIR/small/599742v2_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
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]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ostrowski, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Price, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaufmann, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Judka, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gardner, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thatcher, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mesyk, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koep, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Melvin, A. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ren, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schneider, I. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-06-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.06.26.599742</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Leveraging Crosslinker Diffusion to Template Stiffness Gradients in Alginate Hydrogels]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-06-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.28.601245v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Active surveillance for influenza A virus in swine reveals within-farm reassortment and cocirculation of distinct subtypes and genetic clades 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.28.601245v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Influenza A virus (IAV) is one of the three most frequently detected respiratory pathogens in swine. A passive IAV in swine surveillance system in the United States (U.S.) provides aggregated national metrics to quantify spatial and temporal changes in genetic diversity.

However, swine production is not homogenous: production systems vary in size and management strategies that affect the transmission and evolution of IAV. To assess the impact of fine-scale variation in swine production on IAV transmission, we conducted active surveillance on sow farms and linked nurseries from 4 U.S. production systems for up to 14 monthly collections. From IAV-positive samples, we obtained 85 complete HA sequences, and of these, we successfully assembled 62 whole genomes with associated epidemiological information. To infer transmission and evolution, we conducted Bayesian phylodynamic analyses and detected six genetic clades from four HA lineages: the H1 1A classical swine, the H1 1B human-seasonal, and the H3 2010.1 and 1990.4 lineages. The 1B and H3 1990.4 strains showed evidence of transmission from sow farm to nursery. In contrast, 1A and H3 2010.1 viruses were detected in nurseries without detection in a linked sow farm. We also detected seven separate human-to- swine transmission events in the H1N1 pandemic clade (1A.3.3.2) in sow and nursery sites. Our data demonstrated that nursery sites were infected with IAV that was both linked and unlinked to the sow farm. These data suggest that control efforts may be impacted by subclinical IAV transmission in the breeding herd, the mixing of sow farm sources at the nursery, regional spread of new strains, and human-to-swine transmission. Regular surveillance activities within production systems provide the ability to match vaccine components to circulating diversity, thereby minimizing the opportunity for novel reassorted viruses to emerge and impact animal health.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Thomas, M. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janzen, G. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Markin, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharma, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hewitt, K. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baker, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.06.28.601245</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Active surveillance for influenza A virus in swine reveals within-farm reassortment and cocirculation of distinct subtypes and genetic clades]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.01.601533v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Soybean Cyst Nematode Effector Cysteine Protease 1 (CPR1) Targets a Mitochondrial Soybean Branched-Chain Amino Acid Aminotransferase (GmBCAT1) for Degradation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.01.601533v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The soybean cyst nematode (SCN; Heterodera glycines) facilitates infection by secreting a repertoire of effector proteins into host cells to establish a permanent feeding site composed of a syncytium of root cells. Among the diverse proteins secreted by the nematode, we were specifically interested in identifying proteases to pursue our goal of engineering decoy substrates that elicit an immune response when cleaved by an SCN protease. We identified a cysteine protease that we named Cysteine Protease 1 (CPR1), which was predicted to be a secreted effector based on transcriptomic data obtained from SCN esophageal gland cells, presence of a signal peptide, and lack of transmembrane domains. CPR1 is conserved in all isolates of SCN sequenced to date, suggesting it is critical for virulence. Transient expression of CPR1 in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves suppressed cell death induced by a constitutively active nucleotide binding leucine-rich repeat protein, RPS5, indicating that CPR1 inhibits effector-triggered immunity. CPR1 localizes in part to the mitochondria when expressed in planta. Proximity-based labeling in transgenic soybean roots, co-immunoprecipitation, and cleavage assays identified a branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase from soybean (GmBCAT1) as a substrate of CPR1. Silencing of the CPR1 transcript in the nematode reduced penetration frequency in soybean roots while the expression of CPR1 in soybean roots enhanced susceptibility. Our data demonstrates that CPR1 is a conserved effector protease with a direct target in soybean roots, highlighting it as a promising candidate for decoy engineering.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Margets, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foster, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Masonbrink, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mejias, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Innes, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.01.601533</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Soybean Cyst Nematode Effector Cysteine Protease 1 (CPR1) Targets a Mitochondrial Soybean Branched-Chain Amino Acid Aminotransferase (GmBCAT1) for Degradation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.01.601547v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Limitations of Current Machine-Learning Models in Predicting Enzymatic Functions for Uncharacterized Proteins 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.01.601547v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Thirty to seventy percent of proteins in any given genome have no assigned function and have been labeled as the protein "unknome". This large knowledge shortfall is one of the final frontiers of biology. Machine-Learning (ML) approaches are enticing, with early successes demonstrating the ability to propagate functional knowledge from experimentally characterized proteins. An open question is the ability of machine-learning approaches to predict enzymatic functions unseen in the training sets. Using a set of Escherichia coli unknowns, we evaluated the current state-of-the-art machine-learning approaches and found that these methods currently lack the ability to integrate scientific reasoning into their prediction algorithms. While human annotators can leverage the plethora of genomic data in making plausible predictions into the unknown, current ML methods not only fail to make novel predictions but also make basic logic errors in their predictions. This underscores the need to include assessments of prediction uncertainty in model output and to test for  hallucinations (logic failures) as a part of model evaluation. Explainable AI (XAI) analysis can be used to identify indicators of prediction errors, potentially identifying the most relevant data to include in the next generation of computational models.

Article SummaryMany proteins in any genome, ranging from 30% to 70% of the genome, lack an assigned function. This knowledge gap limits the full use of the vast available genomic data. Machine learning has shown promise in transferring functional knowledge within isofunctional families, but it largely fails to predict novel functions not seen in its training data. Understanding these failures can guide the development of better machine-learning methods to help experts make accurate functional predictions for uncharacterized proteins.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>de Crecy-Lagard, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dias, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swairjo, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.01.601547</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Limitations of Current Machine-Learning Models in Predicting Enzymatic Functions for Uncharacterized Proteins]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.05.602238v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Stat3 mediates Fyn kinase driven dopaminergic neurodegeneration and microglia activation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.05.602238v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Alzheimers Disease and Parkinsons Disease risk locus Fyn kinase is implicated in neurodegeneration and inflammatory signaling. To investigate in vivo mechanisms of Fyn driven neurodegeneration, we built a zebrafish neural specific Gal4:UAS model of constitutively active FynY531F signaling. Using in vivo live imaging we demonstrate neural FynY531F expression lead to dopaminergic neuron loss and mitochondrial aggregation in 5 day larval brain. Dopaminergic loss coincided with microglia activation and induction of tnfa, il1b, and il12a inflammatory cytokine expression. Transcriptome analysis revealed Stat3 signaling as a potential Fyn target. Chemical inhibition experiments confirmed Fyn driven dopaminergic neuron loss and the inflammatory response were dependent upon activation of Stat3 and NF-{kappa}B pathways. Dual chemical inhibition demonstrated Stat3 acts synergistically with NF-{kappa}B in dopaminergic neuron degeneration. These results identify Stat3 as a novel downstream effector of Fyn signaling in neurodegeneration and inflammation.

Summary StatementThis study describes a novel in vivo model of neural Fyn Kinase activation and identifies Stat3 signaling as a downstream Fyn effector in dopaminergic neuron degeneration and neuroinflammation.



O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=123 SRC="FIGDIR/small/602238v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
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- Fyn driven neurodegeneration and cytokine expression are dependent on Stat3
- Stat3 and NF-kB pathways synergize in dopaminergic neuron degeneration


C_FIG
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Siddiqui, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-09</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.05.602238</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Stat3 mediates Fyn kinase driven dopaminergic neurodegeneration and microglia activation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-09</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.07.602381v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nemacounter: A user-friendly software to accurately phenotype SCN cysts 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.07.602381v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The soybean-cyst nematode (SCN; Heterodera glycines) is one of the most destructive pests affecting soybean crops. Effective management of SCN is imperative for the sustainability of soybean agriculture. A promising approach to achieving this goal is the development and breeding of new resistant soybean varieties. Researchers and breeders typically employ exploratory methods such as Genome-Wide Association Studies or Quantitative Trait Loci mapping to identify genes linked to resistance. These methods depend on extensive phenotypic screening. The primary phenotypic measure for assessing SCN resistance is often the number of cysts that form on a plants root system. Manual counting hundreds of cysts on a given root system is not only laborious but also subject to variability due to individual assessor differences. Additionally, while measuring cyst size could provide valuable insights due to its correlation with cyst development, this aspect is frequently overlooked because it demands even more hands-on work. To address these challenges, we have created Nemacounter, an intuitive software designed to detect, count, and measure the size of cysts autonomously. Nemacounter boasts a user-friendly graphical interface, simplifying the process for users to obtain reliable results. It enhances productivity by delivering annotated images and compiling data into csv files for easy analysis and reporting.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mejias, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kozlowski, D. K. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goshon, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.07.602381</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nemacounter: A user-friendly software to accurately phenotype SCN cysts]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.12.603319v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Complex Reticulation in Backbone Subfamily Relationships in Leguminosae 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.12.603319v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Contradictory lines of evidence have made it difficult to resolve the phylogenetic history of the legume diversification era; this is true for the backbone topology, and for the number and timing of whole genome duplications (WGDs). By analyzing the transcriptomic data for 473 gene families in 76 species covering all six accepted legume subfamilies, we assessed the phylogenetic relationships of the legume backbone and uncovered evidence of independent whole genome duplications in each of the six legume subfamilies. Three subfamilies -- Cercidoideae, Dialioideae, and Caesalpinioideae -- bear evidence of an allopolyploid duplication pattern suggestive of ancient hybridization. In Cercidoideae and Dialioideae, the hybridization appears to be within-subfamily, with the genera Cercis and Poeppigia apparently unduplicated descendants of one of the parental lineages; in Caesalpinioideae, the hybridization appears to involve a member of the Papilionoideae lineage, and some other lineage, potentially extinct. Three independent lines of evidence, consisting of a concatenated superalignment, concordance factor analysis of the set of gene family alignments and topologies, and direct inference of reticulation events via maximum pseudo-likelihood implemented by PhyloNet, converged on a single backbone hypothesis and the above hypotheses of reticulate evolution.

Significance StatementIn a hybridization event, genes that have already been evolving separately for potentially millions of years become sister chromosomes, yet remain related to one another not at the moment of hybridization, but at the speciation node of the hybrids parents. Methodologies based on counts of bursts of duplicated genes, can therefore be fundamentally vulnerable to incorrect and contradictory conclusions about the number and timing of WGD events, unless interpreted carefully and in combination with data from gene trees discordant with the consensus backbone. Our assessment of the legume backbone in that light, resolves previous contradictory findings by concluding that three legume subfamilies are allopolyploid relative to the ur-legume.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Stai, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cardinal-McTeague, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bruneau, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.12.603319</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Complex Reticulation in Backbone Subfamily Relationships in Leguminosae]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.20.604417v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A high-resolution model of gene expression during Gossypium hirsutum (cotton) fiber development 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.20.604417v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cotton fiber development relies on complex and intricate biological processes to transform newly differentiated fiber initials into the mature, extravagantly elongated cellulosic cells that are the foundation of this economically important cash crop. Here we extend previous research into cotton fiber development by employing controlled conditions to minimize variability and utilizing time-series sampling and analyses to capture daily transcriptomic changes from early elongation through the early stages of secondary wall synthesis (6 to 24 days post anthesis; DPA). A majority of genes are expressed in fiber, largely partitioned into two major coexpression modules that represent genes whose expression generally increases or decreases during development. Differential gene expression reveals a massive transcriptomic shift between 16 and 17 DPA, corresponding to the onset of the transition phase that leads to secondary wall synthesis. Subtle gene expression changes are captured by the daily sampling, which are discussed in the context of fiber development. Coexpression and gene regulatory networks are constructed and associated with phenotypic aspects of fiber development, including turgor and cellulose production. Key genes are considered in the broader context of plant secondary wall synthesis, noting their known and putative roles in cotton fiber development. The analyses presented here highlight the importance of fine-scale temporal sampling on understanding developmental processes and offer insight into genes and regulatory networks that may be important in conferring the unique fiber phenotype.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jareczek, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swaminathan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howell, A. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rani, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Leach, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xiong, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mallery, E. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xie, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haigler, C. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zabotina, O. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Szymanski, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.20.604417</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A high-resolution model of gene expression during Gossypium hirsutum (cotton) fiber development]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.23.601989v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Impaired experience-dependent inter-areal network connectivity across the visual cortex in Fmr1 KO mice 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.23.601989v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Fragile X syndrome (FX) is the most prevalent inheritable form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), characterized by hypersensitivity, difficulty in habituating to new sensory stimuli, and intellectual disability. Individuals with FX often experience visual perception and learning deficits. Visual experience leads to the emergence of the familiarity-evoked theta band oscillations in the primary visual cortex (V1) and the lateromedial area (LM) of mice. These theta oscillations in V1 and LM are synchronized with each other, providing a mechanism of sensory multi-areal binding. However, how this multi-areal binding and the corresponding theta oscillations are altered in FX is not known. Using iDISCO whole brain clearing with light-sheet microscopy, we quantified immediate early gene Fos expression in V1 and LM, identifying deficits in experience-dependent neural activity in FX mice. We performed simultaneous in vivo recordings with silicon probes in V1 and LM of awake mice and channelrhodopsin-2-assisted circuit mapping (CRACM) in acute brain slices to examine the neural activity and strength of long-range synaptic connections between V1 and LM in both wildtype (WT) and Fmr1 knockout (KO) mice, the model of FX, before and after visual experience. Our findings reveal synchronized familiarity-evoked theta oscillations in V1 and LM, the increased strength of V1[-&gt;]LM functional and synaptic connections, which correlated with the corresponding changes of presynaptic short-term plasticity in WT mice. The LM oscillations were attenuated in FX mice and correlated with impaired functional and synaptic connectivity and short-term plasticity in the feedforward (FF) V1[-&gt;]LM and feedback (FB) LM[-&gt;]V1 pathways. Finally, using 4Pi single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) in thick brain tissue, we identified experience-dependent changes in the density and shape of dendritic spines in layer 5 pyramidal cells of WT mice, which correlated with the functional synaptic measurements. Interestingly, there was an increased dendritic spine density and length in naive FX mice that failed to respond to experience. Our study provides the first comprehensive characterization of the role of visual experience in triggering inter-areal neural synchrony and shaping synaptic connectivity in WT and FX mice.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cheng, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nareddula, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gao, H.-C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xiao, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nadew, Y. Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edens, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Quinn, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimbrough, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chubykin, A. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.23.601989</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Impaired experience-dependent inter-areal network connectivity across the visual cortex in Fmr1 KO mice]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.28.605515v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
AraRoot - A Comprehensive Genome-Scale Metabolic Model for the Arabidopsis Root System. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.28.605515v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Being the first plant to have its genome sequenced, Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) is a well-established genetic model plant system. Studies on Arabidopsis have provided major insights into plants physiological and biochemical nature. Methods that allow us to computationally study the metabolism of organisms include the use of genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs). Despite its popularity, currently no GEM maps the metabolic activity in the roots of Arabidopsis, which is the organ that faces and responds to stress conditions in the soil. Weve developed a comprehensive GEM of the Arabidopsis root system - AraRoot. The final model includes 2,682 reactions, 2,748 metabolites, and 1,310 genes. Analyzing the metabolic pathways in the model identified 158 possible bottleneck genes that impact biomass production, most of which were found to be related to phosphorous-containing- and energy-related pathways. Further insights into tissue-specific metabolic reprogramming conclude that the cortex layer in the roots is likely responsible for root growth under prolonged exposure to high salt conditions, while the endodermis and epidermis are responsible for producing metabolites responsible for increased cell wall biosynthesis. The epidermis was found to have a very poor ability to regulate its metabolism during exposure to high salt concentrations. Overall, AraRoot is the first GEM that accurately captures the comprehensive biomass formation and stress responses of the tissues in the Arabidopsis root system.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Esterhuizen, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ampimah, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yandeau-Nelson, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nikolau, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sparks, E. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saha, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.28.605515</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[AraRoot - A Comprehensive Genome-Scale Metabolic Model for the Arabidopsis Root System.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.29.605590v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Using flux theory in dynamic omics data sets to identify differentially changing signals using DPoP 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.29.605590v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Derivative profiling (DP) is a novel approach to identify differential signals from dynamic omics data sets. This approach applies variable step-size differentiation to time dynamic omics data. This work assumes that there is a general omics derivative that is a useful and descriptive feature of dynamic omics experiments. We assert that this omics derivative, or omics flux, is a valuable descriptor that can be used instead of, or with, fold change calculations. The results of derivative profiling are compared to established methods such as Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), significance versus fold change analysis (Volcano), and an adjusted ratio over intensity (M/A) analysis to find that there is a statistically significant similarity between the results. This comparison is repeated for transcriptomic and phosphoproteomic expression profiles previously characterized in Aspergillus nidulans. This method has been packaged in an open-source, GUI-based MATLAB app, the Derivative Profiling omics Package (DPoP). Gene Ontology (GO) term enrichment has been included in the app so that a user can automatically/programmatically describe the over/under-represented GO terms in the derivative profiling results using domain specific knowledge found in their organisms specific GO database file. The advantage of the DPoP analysis is that it is computationally inexpensive, it does not require fold change calculations, it describes both instantaneous as well as overall behavior, and it achieves statistical confidence with signal trajectories of a single bio-replicate over four or more points. While we apply this method to time dynamic transcriptomic and phosphoproteomic datasets, it is a numerically generalizable technique that can be applied to any organism and any field interested in time series data analysis. The app described in this work enables omics researchers with no computer science background to apply derivative profiling to their data sets, while also allowing multidisciplined users to build on the nascent idea of profiling derivatives in omics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Edwards, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zavorskas, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huso, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doan, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Silbiger, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srivastava, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marten, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-07-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.29.605590</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Using flux theory in dynamic omics data sets to identify differentially changing signals using DPoP]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-07-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.31.606038v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
MDR1 DNA glycosylase regulates the expression of genomically imprinted genes and helitrons 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.31.606038v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Targeted demethylation by DNA glycosylases (DNGs) results in differential methylation between parental alleles in the endosperm, which drives imprinted expression. Here, we performed RNA sequencing on endosperm derived from DNG mutant mdr1 and wild-type endosperm. Consistent with the role of DNA methylation in gene silencing, we find 96 gene and 86 TE differentially expressed (DE) transcripts that lost expression in the hypermethylated mdr1 mutant. Compared with other endosperm transcripts, the mdr1 targets are enriched for TEs (particularly Helitrons), and DE genes are depleted for both core genes and GO term assignments, suggesting that the majority of DE transcripts are TEs and pseudo-genes. By comparing DE genes to imprinting calls from prior studies, we find that the majority of DE genes have maternally biased expression, and approximately half of all maternally expressed genes (MEGs) are DE in this study. In contrast, no paternally expressed genes (PEGs) are DE. DNG-dependent imprinted genes are distinguished by maternal demethylation and expression primarily in the endosperm, so we also performed EM-seq on hybrids to identify maternal demethylation and utilized a W22 gene expression atlas to identify genes expressed primarily in the endosperm. Overall, approximately [2/3] of all MEGs show evidence of regulation by DNA glycosylases. Taken together, this study solidifies the role of MDR1 in the regulation of maternally expressed, imprinted genes and TEs and identifies subsets of genes with DNG-independent imprinting regulation.

Significance StatementThis work investigates the transcriptome changes resulting from the loss of function of DNA glycosylase MDR1, revealing that, in wild-type endosperm, targets of MDR1 are expressed predominantly from the maternal allele and this expression is suppressed in mutants. Furthermore, by combining expression data, DNA methylation data, and developmental expression data, we are able to categorize all maternally expressed, imprinted genes based on DNA glycosylase dependent or independent regulatory methods.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Higgins, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gent, J. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.07.31.606038</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[MDR1 DNA glycosylase regulates the expression of genomically imprinted genes and helitrons]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.03.606496v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Isolation and molecular characterization of an enteric isolate of the Genotype-I Bovine coronavirus with notable mutations in the receptor binding domain of the spike glycoprotein and deletion downstream the RNA binding domain of the nucleocapsid protein. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.03.606496v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bovine coronavirus (BCoV) continues to be a significant threat to cattle populations despite the implementation of vaccination programs. The continuous circulation of BCoV highlights the necessity for ongoing genomic surveillance to understand better the viruss evolution and its impact on cattle health. The main goal of this study was to do isolation and perform a comprehensive molecular characterization of a new enteric field isolate of the BCoV. To identify any genetic elements in the sequences of this BCoV isolate that could act as genetic markers for BCoV infection in cattle. To achieve these objectives, the newly identified BCoV isolate was propagated on the MDBK cell line for several subsequent blind passages. The immunofluorescence assay verified confirmation of the virus propagation. We plaque purified this isolate and titrated it by plaque assay using the HRT-18 cell line. We examined the viral protein expression using the SDS-PAGE followed by the Western blot using the BCoV/S and BCoV/N and BCoV/S antibodies. Our results show a substantial increase in the viral genome copy number, protein expression, and virus infectivity of this BCoV isolate with the increase in cell culture passages. The full-length genome sequence of this isolate using the NGS was drafted. The vial genome is 31 Kb in length. The viral genome has the typical BCoV organization (5-UTR-Gene- 1- HE-S-M-E-N-UTR-3). Our phylogenetic analysis based on the nucleotide sequences of the (full-length genome, S, HE, and N) showed that the BCoV-13 clustered with other members of the BCoV (genotype I-i). The sequence analysis shows several synonymous mutations among various domains of the S glycoprotein, especially the receptor binding domain. We found nine notable nucleotide deletions immediately downstream of the RNA binding domain of the nucleocapsid gene. Further gene function studies are encouraged to study the function of these mutations on the BCoV molecular pathogenesis and immune regulation/evasion. This research enhances our understanding of BCoV genomics and contributes to improved diagnostic and control measures for BCoV infections in cattle populations.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shah, A. U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gauger, P. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hemida, M. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.03.606496</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Isolation and molecular characterization of an enteric isolate of the Genotype-I Bovine coronavirus with notable mutations in the receptor binding domain of the spike glycoprotein and deletion downstream the RNA binding domain of the nucleocapsid protein.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.12.607624v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dynamics of duplicated gene regulatory networks governing cotton fiber development following polyploidy 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.12.607624v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cotton fiber development entails complex genome-wide gene regulatory networks (GRN) that remain mostly unexplored. Here we present integrative analyses of fiber GRNs using public RNA-seq datasets, integrated with multi-omics genomic, transcriptomic, and cistromic data. We detail the fiber co-expression dynamics and regulatory connections, validating findings with external datasets and transcription factor (TF) binding site data. We elucidate previously uncharacterized TFs that regulate genes involved in fiber-related functions and cellulose synthesis, and identify the regulatory role of two homoeologous G2-like transcription factors on fiber length. Analysis of duplicated gene expression and network relationships in allopolyploid cotton, which has two co-resident genomes (A, D), revealed novel aspects of asymmetric subgenomic developmental contributions. Whereas D-based homoeolog pairs drive higher overall gene expression from the D subgenome, TFs from the A subgenome play a preferential regulatory role in the fiber gene regulatory network. Following allopolyploid formation, it appears that the trans-regulatory roles of TFs diversified more rapidly between homoeologs than did the cis-regulatory elements of their target genes. Our approach underscores the utility of network analysis for detection of master regulators and provides fresh perspectives on fiber development and polyploid functional genomics, through the lens of co-expression and GRN dynamics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Xiong, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhu, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ma, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.12.607624</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dynamics of duplicated gene regulatory networks governing cotton fiber development following polyploidy]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.16.608346v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Conservation of imprinted expression across genotypes is correlated with consistency of imprinting across endosperm development in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.16.608346v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Imprinted expression is an essential process for seed viability affecting hundreds of genes in Zea mays endosperm, however most studies have examined just one time point for analysis. The focus on single time points can limit our ability to identify imprinted genes, and our ability to draw conclusions for the role of imprinting in endosperm. In this study we examine imprinted expression across four time points ranging from the transition to endoreduplication from mitotic division through the beginning of programmed cell death. Additionally, we assessed imprinting variation across eight diverse maize lines, six of which have never before been assessed for imprinting. Through this analysis we identify over 700 imprinted genes with varying consistency across time points including 258 genes imprinted at every time point and 104 genes displaying transient imprinting. We find a correlation between high consistency of imprinting across time and high conservation of parental bias across eight diverse maize lines reciprocally crossed with B73. Additionally, we identify evidence of imprinting for three zein genes that are critical for nutrient accumulation in the endosperm, suggesting that imprinting may play a more important role in seed composition than previously thought. Taken together, this study provides a more holistic view of imprinting variation across time and across genotypes in maize and enables us to more thoroughly investigate the complex imprinting landscape.

SummaryThough genomic imprinting is essential for seed development, changes in imprinted expression through endosperm development remain unclear. Here, the authors present a time series analysis of genomic imprinting in maize endosperm identifying over 1000 imprinted genes displaying consistent and transient imprinting. Additionally, the authors utilize imprinting data from B73 reciprocally crossed with eight diverse genotypes, and identify a correlation between consistency and conservation of imprinted expression. Together these results offer a more holistic view of imprinted expression in maize endosperm.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Higgins, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nyabashi, V. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.16.608346</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Conservation of imprinted expression across genotypes is correlated with consistency of imprinting across endosperm development in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.19.607249v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Developmental variability in cotton fiber cell wall properties linked to important agronomic traits 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.19.607249v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The economic value of cotton is based on its long, thin, strong, and twisted trichoblasts that emerge from the ovule epidermis. The mature dried fiber cell reflects the outcome of a rapid tapering of the nascent trichoblast, weeks of polarized diffuse growth, followed by a transition to persistent secondary cell wall synthesis. Highly conserved and dynamic microtubule and cellulose microfibril-based anisotropic growth control modules are central to all of these phases. In this paper, we developed novel quantitative phenotyping and computational modeling pipelines to analyze fiber growth behaviors at a daily resolution. We uncovered unexpected variability in growth rate, cell wall properties, and cell geometry across a critical window of fiber development. Finite element computational modeling of fiber growth was used to analyze the instability of cell diameter control and predict how spatial gradients of fiber and matrix material properties can interact to dictate the patterns of shape change. As an initial step toward gaining insight into the molecular orchestration of cellulose biosynthesis, expression profiles of a broad set of relevant genes were quantified across the same developmental timeline and correlated with fiber phenotypes. This analysis identified specific candidate genes that may serve as targets for fiber quality improvement.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wilson, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howell, A. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sood, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rani, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yu, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mallery, E. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swaminathan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zabotina, O. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xie, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Davis, C. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Szymanski, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.19.607249</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Developmental variability in cotton fiber cell wall properties linked to important agronomic traits]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.20.608626v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Identification of phenotypic and transcriptomic signatures underpinning maize crown root systems 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.20.608626v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maize is pivotal in supporting global agriculture and addressing food security challenges. Crop root systems are critical for water uptake and nutrient acquisition, which impacts yield. Quantitative trait phenotyping is essential to understand better the genetic factors underpinning maize root growth and development. Root systems are challenging to phenotype given their below-ground, soil-bound nature. In addition, manual trait annotations of root images are tedious and can lead to inaccuracies and inconsistencies between individuals, resulting in data discrepancies. To address these issues, we have developed an automated phenotyping pipeline for field-grown maize crown roots by leveraging open-source software. Phenotypic variation of 20 maize genotypes from the Wisconsin Diversity panel was significant for numerous root traits, suggesting a genetic basis for the observed developmental deviations. In addition, juvenile root traits from controlled environment conditions exhibited inconsistent correlation with field-grown adult root traits, underscoring the developmental plasticity prevalent during maize root morphogenesis. Transcripts involved in hormone signaling and stress responses were among differentially expressed genes in roots from 20 maize genotypes, suggesting many molecular processes may underlie the observed phenotypic variance. This study furthers our understanding of genotype-phenotype relationships, which is relevant for informing agricultural strategies to improve maize root physiology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Callwood, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Townsend, E. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Malik, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Draves, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khor, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marshall, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sweers, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cowling, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kelley, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.20.608626</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Identification of phenotypic and transcriptomic signatures underpinning maize crown root systems]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.23.609308v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Exploring the uncharted: Novel potential filariasis vectors unveiled in Sri Lanka 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.23.609308v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Brugian filariasis (BF) has reemerged in Sri Lanka recently. Studies suggest the emergence of a variant brugian parasite. Knowledge on transmission dynamics is important in restraining the spread of infection. This study investigated the potential vector mosquitoes of this variant brugian parasite around six indexed human BF cases in five BF endemic districts in Sri Lanka. A total of 1711 mosquitoes from 20 species were analyzed. Potential infective mosquitoes were detected by the presence of L3 larval stage of brugian parasites within the head and thorax regions upon dissections and confirmed by amplification of the Brugia species-specific HhaI region. Twelve (12) mosquito species that could potentially serve as vectors for BF transmission in selected endemic areas in the country were identified due to the presence of L3 larvae in the head and thorax regions. This is the first report of Ma. indiana, Ar. subalbatus, Ae. albopictus, Cq. crassipes, Cx. tritaeniorhynchus, Cx. bitaeniorhynchus, Cx. quinquefasciatus, Cx. gelidus, Cx. lopoceraomyia and Cx. vishnui with the potential of serving as vectors for BF transmission in Sri Lanka and Cx. bitaeniorhynchus, Cx. gelidus, Cx. lopoceraomyia and Cx. vishnui in the world through a field study. Of these, Ma. indiana, Cx. tritaeniorhynchus, Cx. quinquefasciatus and Ar. subalbatus together with Ma. uniformis, Ma. annulifera had the highest prevalence and infection rate at certain study sites. The recovery of parasite-positive Ma. indiana, Cx. quinquefasciatus and Ar. subalbatus mosquitoes from window traps demonstrate the probable anthropophilic nature of these species, and their high prevalence in the respective areas deems further investigation on their vector potentiality essential.

Author SummaryLymphatic filariasis (LF) is a debilitating disease affecting over 120 million people worldwide. Of the two types of LF, Brugian Filariasis (BF) has a wide range of definitive hosts, making it possible for the rapid spread of the disease. BF was considered eliminated from Sri Lanka in 1969 but is on the rise after four decades of quiescence. Effective vector control is an integral part of infection control. We carried out entomological investigations for potential vectors of re-emerged BF in five BF-endemic areas in Sri Lanka. Here we report Ma. indiana, Cx. tritaeniorhynchus, Cx. bitaeniorhynchus, Cx. quinquefasciatus, Cx. gelidus, Cx. lopoceraomyia, Cx. vishnui, Ar. subalbatus, Ae. albopictus and Cq. crassipes with the potential to serve as vectors for BF transmission in Sri Lanka due to the presence of L3 larvae in the head and thorax regions and Cx. bitaeniorhynchus, Cx. quinquefasciatus, Cx. gelidus, Cx. lopoceraomyia and Cx. vishnui in the world. The high prevalence and infection rate of Ma. indiana, Cx. quinquefasciatus and Ar. subalbatus mosquitoes and their anthropophagic nature in certain BF endemic areas are worrisome. This study emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive analysis of BF vectors for vector control strategies tailored to each region and season.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nimalrathna, S. U.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Amarasiri, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aluthge, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mallawarachchi, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chandrasena, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Silva, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Silva, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kimber, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harischandra, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.23.609308</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Exploring the uncharted: Novel potential filariasis vectors unveiled in Sri Lanka]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.25.609617v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
RESPIRATORY SYNCYTIAL VIRUS NON-STRUCTURAL PROTEIN EXPRESSION ARE LIMITED IN NEUTROPHILS 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.25.609617v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is a negative stranded RNA virus with a high incidence of secondary bacterial infections. RSV contains two broad immune inhibitory proteins Ns1 and Ns2 which are not present in any other viruses of the Mononegavirales Order. Here we report that expression of Ns2 is attenuated during RSV infection of neutrophils and that RSV is indeed infecting neutrophils rather than simply being phagocytosed by them. Infection was determined by intracellular staining and coinfection studies of uninfected Hep2 cells. The significant attenuation of Ns2 in vivo along with the low abundance of coinfected cells indicates that RSV infection is likely functionally non permissive in in vivo infection. The implications of RSV infection of neutrophils may explain the previously observed phenomenon of decreased phagocytosis in neutrophils exposed to RSV and the lack of Ns2 expression within neutrophils may provide avenues of study to attenuate viral infection through therapy development.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Thornhill, E. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Verhoeven, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.25.609617</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[RESPIRATORY SYNCYTIAL VIRUS NON-STRUCTURAL PROTEIN EXPRESSION ARE LIMITED IN NEUTROPHILS]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.29.610401v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Regulatory architecture of disease resistance in maize revealed by multi-omic systems genetics 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.29.610401v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Complex traits such as disease resistance have been traditionally studied using quantitative genetics. Here, we use systems genetics to integrate disease severity and multi-omic quantitate trait loci (QTL) to uncover biological networks underlying interaction with northern leaf blight (NLB), a yield-limiting disease of corn. Specifically, we integrated transcriptome, (phospho)proteome, and metabolome measurements to map molecular QTL and build predictive regulatory networks following NLB infection. These inferred networks identified a critical signaling module that was genetically validated comprised of a kinase termed NLB SUSCEPTIBLE KINASE 1, a bHLH transcription factor, and the lignin biosynthesis enzyme BROWN MIDRIB 2. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of high-throughput mapping of genetic determinants of gene- product levels and demonstrates the power of systems genetics to identify upstream regulatory genes that confer resistance to NLB that can inform future strategies for crop protection.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Clark, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Song, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kabahuma, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kolkman, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Christensen, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes-Serey, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Malik, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelson, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-08-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.29.610401</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Regulatory architecture of disease resistance in maize revealed by multi-omic systems genetics]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-08-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.30.610504v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Use of equine H3N8 hemagglutinin as a broadly protective influenza vaccine immunogen 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.30.610504v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
An efficacious universal influenza vaccine remains a long-sought goal for human health as current vaccines suffer from shortfalls such as mid to low efficacy and the need for yearly revisions in strains use to account for viral drift/shift. Horses undergo bi-annual vaccines for H3N8 equine influenza virus, and surveillance of sera from vaccinees demonstrated very broad reactivity and neutralization to many human seasonal influenza strains. Subsequently, vaccination of mice using the equine H3N8 Kentucky/1/91 strain of equine H3N8 vaccine induced similar broadly reactive and neutralizing serum antibodies to human seasonal strains and to high pathogenicity avian influenza strains. Challenge of mice vaccinated with equine H3N8 or recombinant hemagglutinin (HA) based on the same strain protected vaccinees from high-dose lethal virus challenges. Protection was associated with the presence of neutralizing antibodies to the HA head, esterase, and stem regions that was similar to that of antibodies generated in horses after vaccination. Vaccinated ferrets exhibited similar broadly reactive serum antibody responses that protected vaccinees from clinical signs of infection and viral-induced histopathology after challenge with influenza A/07/2009 (H1N1) pandemic virus. Taken together, these data suggest that vaccination with equine H3N8 vaccine induces broad protection against influenza without the need for non-influenza viral vectors, multiple HAs, or foreign protein scaffolds common to other universal influenza vaccine candidates.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Verhoeven, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sponseller, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crowe, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bangaru, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Webby, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.08.30.610504</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Use of equine H3N8 hemagglutinin as a broadly protective influenza vaccine immunogen]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.05.611540v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CRISPR-Cas9 target-strand nicking provides phage resistance by inhibiting replication 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.05.611540v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cas endonucleases, like Cas9 and Cas12a, are RNA-guided immune effectors that provide bacterial defense against bacteriophages. Cas endonucleases rely on divalent metal ions for their enzymatic activities and to facilitate conformational changes that are required for specific recognition and cleavage of target DNA. While Cas endonucleases typically produce double-strand breaks (DSBs) in DNA targets, reduced, physiologically relevant Mg2+ concentrations and target mismatches can result in incomplete second-strand cleavage, resulting in the production of a nicked DNA. It remains poorly understood whether nicking by Cas endonucleases is sufficient to provide protection against phage. To address this, we tested phage protection by Cas9 nickases, in which only one of two nuclease domains is catalytically active. By testing a large panel of guide RNAs, we find that target strand nicking can be sufficient to provide immunity, while non-target nicking does not provide any additional protection beyond Cas9 binding. Target-strand nicking inhibits phage replication and can reduce the susceptibility of Cas9 to viral escape when targeting non-essential regions of the genome. Cleavage of the non- target strand by the RuvC domain is strongly impaired at low Mg2+ concentrations. As a result, fluctuations in the concentration of other biomolecules that can compete for binding of free Mg2+ strongly influences the ability of Cas9 to form a DSB at targeted sites. Overall, our results suggest that Cas9 may only nick DNA during CRISPR-mediated immunity, especially under conditions of low Mg2+ availability in cells.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nguyen, G. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schelling, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sashital, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.05.611540</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CRISPR-Cas9 target-strand nicking provides phage resistance by inhibiting replication]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.03.611011v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Effect of Genotype and Age on a Defined Microbiota in Gnotobiotic SCID Piglets 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.03.611011v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) individuals lack functional T and B lymphocytes, leading to a deficient adaptive immune system. SCID pigs are a unique large animal biomedical model as they possess many similarities to humans, allowing for the collection of translatable data in regenerative medicine, cancer, and other biomedical research topics. While many studies suggest early gut microbiota development is necessary for developing the intestinal barrier and immune system, these animals are often cesarian section derived, leaving them uncolonized for normal intestinal microflora. The hypothesis was that an increase in complexity of microbiota inoculum will allow for more stability in the composition of the gut microbiota of SCID piglets. This was tested across multiple litters of SCID piglets with three different defined microbiota consortium (2-strain, 6-strain, 7-strain). All piglets received their designated defined microbiota by oral gavage immediately after birth and again 24 hours later. There was no effect of SCID genotype on the composition of the gut microbiota, but there was a significant effect due to piglet age. Additionally, all three defined microbiota consortia were deemed safe to use in SCID piglets, and the 7-strain microbiota was the most stable over time. Based on these results, the 7-strain defined microbiota will be added to the SCID pig husbandry protocol, allowing for a more reproducible model.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Widmer, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rahic-Seggerman, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Forster, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ahrens-Kress, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sauer, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mooyottu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vinithakumari, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dunkerson-Kurzhumov, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sponseller, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kiupel, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmitz-Esser, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuggle, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.03.611011</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Effect of Genotype and Age on a Defined Microbiota in Gnotobiotic SCID Piglets]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.19.613351v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The utility of environmental data from traditionalvarieties for climate-adaptive maize breeding 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.19.613351v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maintaining crop yields in the face of climate change is a major challenge facing plant breeding today. Considerable genetic variation exists in ex-situ collections of traditional crop varieties, but identifying adaptive loci and testing their agronomic performance in large populations in field trials is costly.

Here, we study the utility of climate and genomic data for identifying promising traditional varieties to incorporate into maize breeding programs. To do so, we use phenotypic data from more than 4,000 traditional maize varieties grown in 13 trial environments. First, we used genotype data to predict environmental characteristics of germplasm collections to identify varieties that may be locally adapted to target environments. Second, we used environmental GWAS (envGWAS) to identify genetic loci associated with historical divergence along climatic gradients, such as the putative heat shock protein hsftf9 and the large-scale adaptive inversion Inv4m.

Finally, we compared the value of environmental data and envGWAS-prioritized loci to genomic data for prioritizing traditional varieties. We find that maize yield traits are best predicted by genomic data, and that envGWAS-identified variants provide little direct predictive information over patterns of population structure. We also find that adding environment-of-origin variables does not improve yield component prediction over kinship or population structure alone, but could be a useful selection proxy in the absence of sequencing data. While our results suggest little utility of environmental data for selecting traditional varieties to incorporate in breeding programs, environmental GWAS is nonetheless a potentially powerful approach to identify individual novel loci for maize improvement, especially when coupled with high density genotyping.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gates, D. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckler, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janzen, G. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rellan-Alvarez, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rodriguez-Zapata, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Navarro, J. A. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sawers, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snodgrass, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sonder, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Willcox, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hearne, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Runcie, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.19.613351</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The utility of environmental data from traditionalvarieties for climate-adaptive maize breeding]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.21.614171v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dietary specialization drives adaptation, convergence, and integration across the cranial and appendicular skeleton in Waterfowl (Anseriformes). 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.21.614171v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Convergence provides strong evidence for adaptive evolution as it reflects shared adaptive responses to the same selection pressures. The waterfowl (order Anseriformes) are an ideal group in which to study convergent evolution as they have repeatedly evolved morphotypes putatively correlated with diet (i.e., dabbler, grazer, diver). Here, we construct the most robust evolutionary hypothesis to date for waterfowl and reveal widespread morphological convergence across the order. We quantified the shape of the skull and hindlimb elements (femur, tibiotarsus, and tarsometatarsus) of 118 species of extant waterfowl using geometric morphometrics. Multivariate generalized evolutionary models provide strong support for a relationship between dietary ecology and skull shape, and evidence for convergent evolution across lineages that share dietary niches. Foraging behavior better explained the evolution of hindlimb shape, but diet still contributed significantly. We also find preliminary evidence for integration across all three measured hindlimb elements with each other and with the skull. We demonstrate that dietary ecology drives morphological convergence within waterfowl, that this convergent evolution involves multiple integrated skeletal structures, and that morphological changes are associated with shifts in the rate of phenotypic evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chatterji, R. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heath, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>James, H. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hofman, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sorenson, M. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckner, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.21.614171</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dietary specialization drives adaptation, convergence, and integration across the cranial and appendicular skeleton in Waterfowl (Anseriformes).]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.24.612755v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Developmental regulation of endothelial-to-hematopoietic transition from induced pluripotent stem cells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.24.612755v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) arise in embryogenesis from a specialized hemogenic endothelium (HE). In this process, HE cells undergo a unique fate change termed endothelial-to-hematopoietic transition, or EHT. While induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) give rise to HE with robust hemogenic potential, the generation of bona fide HSCs from iPSCs remains a challenge. Here, we map single cell dynamics of EHT during embryoid body differentiation from iPSCs and integrate it with human embryo datasets to identify key transcriptional differences between in vitro and in vivo cell states. We further map ligand-receptor interactions associated with differential expression of developmental programs in the iPSC system. We found that the expression of endothelial genes was incompletely repressed during iPSC EHT. Elevated FGF signaling by FGF23, an endothelial pathway ligand, was associated with differential gene expression between in vitro and in vivo EHT. Chemical inhibition of FGF signaling during EHT increased HSPC generation in the zebrafish, while an FGF agonist had the opposite effect. Consistently, chemical inhibition of FGF signaling increased hematopoietic output from iPSCs. In summary, we map the dynamics of EHT from iPSCs at single cell resolution and identify ligand-receptor interactions that can be modulated to improve iPSC differentiation protocols. We show, as proof of principle, that chemical inhibition of FGF signaling during EHT improves hematopoietic output in zebrafish and the iPSC system.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wellington, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Campbell, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Trapnell, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Espin-Palazon, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hadland, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doulatov, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.24.612755</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Developmental regulation of endothelial-to-hematopoietic transition from induced pluripotent stem cells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.24.614595v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A genome-wide CRISPR screen in Anopheles mosquito cells identifies essential genes and required components of clodronate liposome function 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.24.614595v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Anopheles mosquitoes are the sole vector of human malaria, the most burdensome vector-borne disease worldwide. Strategies aimed at reducing mosquito populations and limiting their ability to transmit disease show the most promise for disease control. Therefore, gaining an improved understanding of mosquito biology, and specifically that of the immune response, can aid efforts to develop new approaches that limit malaria transmission. Here, we use a genome-wide CRISPR screening approach for the first time in mosquito cells to identify essential genes in Anopheles and identify genes for which knockout confers resistance to clodronate liposomes, which have been widely used in mammals and arthropods to ablate immune cells. In the essential gene screen, we identified a set of 1280 Anopheles genes that are highly enriched for genes involved in fundamental cell processes. For the clodronate liposome screen, we identified several candidate resistance factors and confirm their roles in the uptake and processing of clodronate liposomes through in vivo validation in Anopheles gambiae, providing new mechanistic detail of phagolysosome formation and clodronate liposome function. In summary, we demonstrate the application of a genome-wide CRISPR knockout platform in a major malaria vector and the identification of genes that are important for fitness and immune-related processes.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mameli, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Samantsidis, G.-R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Viswanatha, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kwon, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hall, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Butnaru, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mohr, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perrimon, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.24.614595</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A genome-wide CRISPR screen in Anopheles mosquito cells identifies essential genes and required components of clodronate liposome function]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.24.614800v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nucleoprotein phase-separation affinities revealed via atomistic simulations of short peptide and RNA fragments 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.24.614800v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Liquid-liquid phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids into condensate phases is a versatile mechanism for ensuring compartmentalization of cellular biochemistry. RNA molecules play critical roles in these condensates, particularly in transcriptional regulation and stress responses, exhibiting a wide range of thermodynamic and dynamic behaviors. However, deciphering the molecular grammar that governs the stability and dynamics of protein-RNA condensates remains challenging due to the multicomponent and heterogeneous nature of these biomolecular mixtures. In this study, we employ atomistic simulations of twenty distinct mixtures containing minimal RNA and peptide fragments to dissect the phase-separating affinities of all twenty amino acids in the presence of RNA. Our findings elucidate chemically specific interactions, hydration profiles, and ionic effects that synergistically promote or suppress protein-RNA phase separation. We map a ternary phase diagram of interactions, identifying four distinct groups of residues that promote, maintain, suppress, or disrupt protein-RNA clusters.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramachandran, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-26</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.24.614800</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nucleoprotein phase-separation affinities revealed via atomistic simulations of short peptide and RNA fragments]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-26</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.28.615565v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Aspergillus nidulans cell wall integrity kinase, MpkA, impacts cellular phenotypes that alter mycelial-material mechanical properties 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.28.615565v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mycelial materials are an emerging, natural material made from filamentous fungi that have the potential to replace unsustainable materials used in numerous commercial applications (e.g., packaging, textiles, construction). Efforts to change the mechanical properties of mycelial-materials have typically involved altering growth medium, processing approaches, or fungal species. Although these efforts have shown varying levels of success, all approaches have shown there is a strong correlation between phenotype (of both fungal mycelia and mycelial materials assembly) and resultant mechanical properties. We hypothesize that genetic means can be used to generate specific fungal phenotypes, leading to mycelial materials with specific mechanical properties. To begin to test this hypothesis, we used a mutant of the model filamentous fungus, Aspergillus nidulans, with a deletion of the last kinase in the cell wall integrity (CWI) signaling pathway, mpkA. We generated one set of mycelial materials from the {Delta}mpkA deletion mutant (A1404), and another from its isogenic parent (A1405; control). When subjected to tensile testing, and compared to material generated from the control, {Delta}mpkA material has similar elastic modulus, but significantly increased ultimate tensile strength, and strain at failure. When subjected to a fragmentation assay (i.e., resistance to shear-stress), the {Delta}mpkA material also had higher relative mechanical strength. To determine possible causes for this behavior, we carried out a comprehensive set of phenotype assessments focused on: three-dimensional structure, hyphal morphology, hyphal growth behaviors, and conidial development. We find, compared to the control, material generated from the {Delta}mpkA mutant manifests significantly less development, a modified cell wall composition, larger diameter hyphae, more total biomass, higher water capacity and more densely packed material, which all appear to impact the altered mechanical properties.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gray, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edwards, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doan, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huso, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pan, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bolima, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morse, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yoda, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gautam, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zupan, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>deCarvalho, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marten, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.28.615565</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Aspergillus nidulans cell wall integrity kinase, MpkA, impacts cellular phenotypes that alter mycelial-material mechanical properties]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.30.615782v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Diterpenoid phytoalexins shape rice root microbiomes and their associations with root parasitic nematodes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.30.615782v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Rice synthesizes diterpenoid phytoalexins (DPs) are known to operate in defense against foliar microbial pathogens and root-knot nematode Meloidogyne graminicola. Here, we examined the role of DPs in shaping riceassociated root microbiomes in nematode-infested rice paddy soils. Further, we assessed how DPs affect interactions between the root microbiomes and nematode communities, particularly rice root-knot nematodes from the Meloidogyne genus. We used 16S and ITS2 rRNA gene amplicon analysis to characterize the rice root-and rhizosphere-associated microbiomes of DP knock-out mutants and their wild-type parental line, at an early (17 days) and late (28 days) stage of plant development in field soil. Disruption of DP synthesis resulted in distinct composition and structure of microbial communities both relative to the parental/wild-type line but also between individual mutants, indicating specificity in DP-microbe interactions. Moreover, nematode-suppressive microbial taxa, including Streptomyces, Stenotrophomonas, Enterobacter, Massilia, and Acidibacter, negatively correlated with Meloidogyne. Comparative analysis revealed differential enrichment of microbial taxa in the roots of rice diterpenoid phytoalexin (DP) knock-out mutants versus wild-type, suggesting that DPs modulate specific taxa in the rice root microbiome. These findings indicate DPs role in plant-microbiome assembly and nematode interactions, further underscoring the potential of leveraging phytoalexins for sustainable management of crop diseases.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kudjordjie, E. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Desmedt, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kyndt, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nicolaisen, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peters, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vestergard, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-09-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.09.30.615782</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Diterpenoid phytoalexins shape rice root microbiomes and their associations with root parasitic nematodes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-09-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.08.617074v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Thermal Adaptation of Cytosolic Malate Dehydrogenase Revealed by Deep Learning and Coevolutionary Analysis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.08.617074v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Protein evolution has produced enzymes that maintain stability and function across various thermal environments. While sequence variation, structural dynamics, and intermolecular interactions are known to influence an enzymes thermal adaptation, how these factors collectively govern stability and function across diverse temperatures remains unresolved. Cytosolic malate dehydrogenase (cMDH), a citric acid cycle enzyme, is an ideal model for studying these mechanisms due to its temperature-sensitive flexibility and broad presence in species from diverse thermal environments. In this study, we employ techniques inspired by deep learning and statistical mechanics to uncover how sequence variation and structural dynamics shape patterns of cMDHs thermal adaptation. By integrating coevolutionary models with variational autoencoders (VAE), we generate a latent generative landscape (LGL) of cMDH sequence space, enabling us to explore evolutionary pathways and predict fitness using direct coupling analysis (DCA). Structural predictions via AlphaFold and molecular dynamics simulations further illuminate how variations in hydrophobic interactions and conformational flexibility contribute to the thermal stability of warm- and cold-adapted cMDH orthologs. The integrative computational framework employed in this study provides powerful insights into protein adaptation at both sequence and structural levels, offering new perspectives on the evolution of thermal stability and creating avenues for the rational design of proteins with optimized thermal properties for biotechnological applications.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shukla, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morcos, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-10-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.10.08.617074</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Thermal Adaptation of Cytosolic Malate Dehydrogenase Revealed by Deep Learning and Coevolutionary Analysis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-10-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.12.617995v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Maximum vertical height during wing flapping of laying hens captured with a depth camera 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.12.617995v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cage-free housing systems for laying hens, and their accompanying guidelines, legislation, and audits, are becoming more common around the world. Cage-free regulations often specify requirements for floor space and cage height, but the availability of three-dimensional space can vary depending on system configurations. Little research has looked at how much vertical space a hen occupies while flapping her wings, which is arguably her most space-intensive behavior. Therefore, the objective of this study was to use a depth sensing camera to measure the maximum vertical height hens reach when wing flapping without physical obstructions. Twenty-eight individually caged Hy-line W36 hens at 45 weeks of age were evaluated. A ceiling-mounted depth camera was centered above a test pen and calibrated prior to collecting data. During testing, one hen at a time was placed in the test pen and recorded flapping her wings. From depth footage, the minimum distance between pixels was obtained for each frame, and we computed the maximum vertical height reached by each hen. Results for vertical space used during a wing flapping event showed that hens reached a maximum height of 51.0 {+/-} 4.7 cm. No physical measures correlated with maximum height obtained from the depth camera (P>0.05). Hens in this study were from a single strain, were old enough to have keel damage, and were cage-reared and housed, preventing us from generalizing the results too far. However, depth cameras provide a useful approach to measure how much space laying hens of varying strains, ages, and rearing/housing methods need to perform dynamic behaviors.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Grebey, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bongiorno, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Han, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Steibel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siegford, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-10-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.10.12.617995</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Maximum vertical height during wing flapping of laying hens captured with a depth camera]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-10-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.12.617978v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A novel toolbox of GATEWAY-compatible vectors for rapid functional gene analysis in soybean composite plants 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.12.617978v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The generation of transgenic plants is essential for plant biology research to investigate plant physiology, pathogen interactions and gene function. However, producing stable transgenic plants for plants such as soybean is a laborious and time-consuming process, which can impede research progress. Composite plants consisting of wild-type shoots and transgenic roots are an alternative method for generating transgenic plant tissues that can facilitate functional analysis of genes-of-interest involved in root development or root-microbe interactions. In this report, we introduce a novel set of GATEWAY-compatible vectors that enable a wide range of molecular biology uses in roots of soybean composite plants. These vectors incorporate in-frame epitope fusions of green fluorescent protein, 3x-HA, or miniTurbo-ID, which can be easily fused to a gene-of-interest using the GATEWAY cloning system. Moreover, these vectors allow for the identification of transgenic roots using either mCherry fluorescence or the RUBY marker. We demonstrate the functionality of these vectors by expressing subcellular markers in soybean, providing evidence of their effectiveness in generating protein fusions in composite soybean plants. Furthermore, we show how these vectors can be used for gene function analysis by expressing the bacterial effector, AvrPphB in composite roots, enabling the identification of soybean targets via immunoprecipitation followed by mass spectrometry. Additionally, we demonstrate the successful expression of stable miniTurbo-ID fusion proteins in composite roots. Overall, this new set of vectors is a powerful tool that can be used to assess subcellular localization and perform gene function analyses in soybean roots without the need to generate stable transgenic plants.

Key MessageWe developed a set of GATEWAY vectors to accelerate gene function analysis in soybean composite plants to rapidly screen transgenic roots and investigate subcellular localization, protein-protein interactions, and root-pathogen interactions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mejias, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Margets, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bredow, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foster, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khwanbua, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goshon, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Innes, R. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-10-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.10.12.617978</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A novel toolbox of GATEWAY-compatible vectors for rapid functional gene analysis in soybean composite plants]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-10-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.14.617543v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Light-guided actin polymerization drives directed motility in protocells 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.14.617543v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Motility is a hallmark of lifes dynamic processes, enabling cells to actively chase prey, repair wounds, and shape organs. Recreating these intricate behaviors using well-defined molecules remains a major challenge at the intersection of biology, physics, and molecular engineering. Although the polymerization force of the actin cytoskeleton is characterized as a primary driver of cell motility, building a minimal platform to test this process in protocellular systems has proven elusive. The difficulty lies in the daunting task of distilling key components from motile cells and integrating them into model membranes in a physiologically relevant manner. To address this, we developed a method to optically control actin polymerization with high spatiotemporal precision within cell-mimetic lipid vesicles known as giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs). Within these active protocells, the reorganization of actin networks triggered outward membrane extensions as well as the unidirectional movement of GUVs at speeds of up to 0.43 {micro}m/min, within the range of adherent mammalian cells. Notably, our findings reveal the requirements of both branched and linear actin networks for efficient membrane protrusions. This approach offers a powerful platform for unraveling the intricacies of cell migration, designing synthetic cells with active morphodynamics, and advancing bioengineering applications, such as self-propelled delivery systems and autonomous tissue-like materials.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Matsubayashi, H. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Razavi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rock, T. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakajima, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakamura, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matsuura, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Murata, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nomura, S.-i. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Inoue, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-10-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.10.14.617543</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Light-guided actin polymerization drives directed motility in protocells]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-10-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.18.619148v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A Longitudinal Analysis of Function Annotations of the Human Proteome Reveals Consistently High Biases 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.18.619148v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The resources required to study gene function are limited, especially when considering the number of genes in the human genome and the complexity of their function. Therefore, genes are prioritized for experimental studies based on many different considerations, including, but not limited to, perceived biomedical importance, such as disease-associated genes, or the understanding of biological processes, such as cell signaling pathways. At the same time, most genes are not studied or are under-characterized, which hampers our understanding of their function and potential effects on human health and wellness. Understanding function annotation disparity is a necessary first step toward understanding how much functional knowledge is gained from the human genome, and toward guidelines for better targeting future studies of the genes in the human genome effectively. Here, we present a comprehensive longitudinal analysis of the human proteome utilizing data analysis tools from economics and information theory. Specifically, we view the human proteome as a population of proteins within a knowledge economy: we treat the quantified knowledge of the proteins function as the analog of wealth and examine the distribution of information in a population of proteins in the proteome in the same manner distribution of wealth is studied in societies. Our results show a highly skewed distribution of information about human proteins over the last decade, in which the inequality in the annotations given to the proteins remains high. Additionally, we examine the correlation between the knowledge about protein function as captured in databases and the interest in proteins as reflected by mentions in the scientific literature. We show a large gap between knowledge and interest and dissect the factors leading to this gap. In conclusion, our study shows that research efforts should be redirected to less studied proteins to mitigate the disparity among human proteins both in databases and literature.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Phan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Joshi, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kadelka, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-10-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.10.18.619148</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Longitudinal Analysis of Function Annotations of the Human Proteome Reveals Consistently High Biases]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-10-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.22.619690v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Exploring new dimensions of immune cell biology in Anopheles gambiae through genetic immunophenotyping 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.22.619690v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mosquito immune cells, or hemocytes, are integral components of the innate immune responses that define vector competence. However, the lack of genetic resources has limited their characterization and our understanding of their functional roles in immune signaling. To overcome these challenges, we engineered transgenic Anopheles gambiae that express fluorescent proteins under the control of candidate hemocyte promoters. Following the characterization of five transgenic constructs through gene expression and microscopy-based approaches, we examine mosquito immune cell populations by leveraging advanced spectral imaging flow cytometry. Our results comprehensively map the composition of mosquito hemocytes, classifying them into twelve distinct populations based on size, granularity, ploidy, phagocytic capacity, and the expression of PPO6, SPARC, and LRIM15 genetic markers. Together, our novel use of morphological properties and genetic markers provides increased resolution into our understanding of mosquito hemocytes, highlighting the complexity and plasticity of these immune cell populations, while providing the foundation for deeper investigations into their roles in immunity and pathogen transmission.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Samantsidis, G.-R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-10-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.10.22.619690</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Exploring new dimensions of immune cell biology in Anopheles gambiae through genetic immunophenotyping]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-10-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.30.621166v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A mathematical model informs optimal fungicide use against Sclerotinia stem rot to maximize profits in soybean production 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.30.621166v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, the causative agent of stem rot (SR), is a significant yield-limiting disease affecting soybean crops in the temperate climates around the globe. Effective disease management practices rely on fungicides to mitigate the growth and spread of the disease. To infer optimal, profit-maximizing fungicide application rates, this study develops a mathematical model of mold and soybean growth with a requisite profit function. Sensitivity of the optimal fungicide application rate was computed against profit parameters (fungicide cost and soybean bushel price), and model parameters (mold growth rate, maximal SR damage to crops and fungicide efficiency). Expectantly, higher soybean bushel prices, rates of mold growth, and maximal mold damage to crops return elevated optimal fungicide rates. In contrast, higher levels of fungicide efficiency motivate lower optimal fungicide rates. The model also reveals a discontinuity in the optimal fungicide application rates for elevated fungicide costs; in this economic context, it becomes more profitable to apply no fungicide rather than low, ineffectual amounts that still allow mold to reach near-maximal outbreak levels in a finite time period. Future refinements of the model will incorporate variable mold growth rates modeled on annual weather patterns, crop rotation practices, and further exploring the relationships that soybean densities and row spacing have on mold growth, in order to build a more robust system to analyze the long-term effect of disease behavior on soybean crop yield.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Byer, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hatfield, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kadelka, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.10.30.621166</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A mathematical model informs optimal fungicide use against Sclerotinia stem rot to maximize profits in soybean production]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.01.621550v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genomic and Phenomic Prediction for Soybean Seed Yield, Protein, and Oil 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.01.621550v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Developments in genomics and phenomics have provided valuable tools for use in cultivar development. Genomic prediction (GP) has been used in commercial soybean [Glycine max L. (Merr.)] breeding programs to predict grain yield and seed composition traits. Phenomic prediction (PP) is a rapidly developing field that holds the potential to be used for the selection of genotypes early in the growing season. The objectives of this study were to compare the use and performance of GP and PP for predicting soybean seed yield, protein content, and oil content. We additionally conducted Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) to identify significant SNPs associated with the traits of interest. These SNPs were also used to train the GP models. The GWAS panel of 292 diverse accessions was grown in six environments in replicated trials. Spectral data were collected at three timepoints during the growing season. A GBLUP model was trained on 268 accessions, while three separate machine learning (ML) models were trained on vegetation indices (VIs) and canopy traits. We observed that for PP, Random Forest (RF) algorithm had the highest rank correlation between the predicted and the actual phenotype rank. PP had a higher correlation coefficient than GP for seed yield, while GP had higher correlation coefficients for seed protein and oil contents. VIs with high feature importance were used as covariates in a new GBLUP model, and a new RF model was trained with the inclusion of selected SNPs from the GWAS results. These models did not outperform the original GP and PP models. These results show the capability of using ML for in-season predictions for specific traits in soybean breeding and provide insights on PP and GP inclusions in breeding programs.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARYObtaining DNA information can often be costly for a public breeding program to obtain, which is a barrier of entry for using genomic prediction in these programs to make selections. Phenomic prediction provides an alternative opportunity that does not require the recurring costs of DNA sequencing. This research aimed to compare genomic and phenomic prediction in a diverse panel of soybeans. We found that phenomic prediction had the highest accuracy for seed yield, while genomic prediction was the best model for seed protein and oil. Combining genomic and phenomic data did not improve the predictive ability of the models.

Core ideas

O_LIIn-season phenomic prediction is able to outperform genomic prediction for seed yield.
C_LIO_LIGenomic prediction outperformed in-season phenomic prediction models for seed protein and oil.
C_LIO_LIOverlapping spectral indices were identified as the most predictive for seed yield, protein, and oil.
C_LIO_LIFusion of genomic and phenomic prediction did not increase the predictive ability of the combined models.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Van der Laan, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Parmley, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saadati, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Torres Pacin, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Panthulugiri, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganapathysubramanian, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lorenz, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.11.01.621550</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genomic and Phenomic Prediction for Soybean Seed Yield, Protein, and Oil]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.04.620947v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
High Temperature and Microbiome Conditions Affect Gene Expression in Soybean 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.04.620947v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Heat stress is increasingly a problem in global agriculture production, both in increasing occurrences and extended durations. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of the soybean heat stress response is essential for breeding heat tolerant soybeans. Plant associated microbiomes are known to mitigate adverse effects from abiotic stress. Soybean heat stress studies have primarily focused on response to short periods of stress, and how soybean responds on a transcriptional level to a soil microbiome is poorly understood. We hypothesize a soil microbiome may help soybean survive long-term heat stress exposure. We used RNA-seq to measure the transcriptional responses in four soybean exposed to two temperature regimes and grown in two soil microbiome conditions. We identified unique responses to temperature based on the soil microbiome conditions and to the different genotypes, with fewer changes across genotypes in response to a soil microbiome. Our findings provide insights on the interaction of soil microbiome with heat stress response in soybean and identify gene targets to further study the soybean heat stress tolerance with applications to develop improved varieties.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Van der Laan, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Elango, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferela, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>O'Rourke, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.11.04.620947</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[High Temperature and Microbiome Conditions Affect Gene Expression in Soybean]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.06.622134v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Effects of live yeasts and their metabolic products on bumble bee microcolony development 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.06.622134v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Bumble bees can benefit from fungi, though the mechanisms underlying these benefits remain unknown and could include nutrition, resource supplementation, or pathogen protection. We tested how adding living yeasts or their metabolic products to Bombus impatiens diets in a factorial experiment affects microcolony performance, including survival, reproduction, and pathogen presence. We additionally assessed effects of yeast treatments on diet (nectar and pollen) chemical composition using untargeted metabolomics. Yeasts impacted microcolony reproduction and survival, but effects depended on source colony. Colonies containing the putative pathogen Aspergillus showed reduced reproduction, but yeast treatments reduced Aspergillus prevalence. Yeast treatments altered chemical composition of nectar and pollen, but most distinguishing compounds were unidentified. Our results suggest limited direct effects of yeasts via nutrition, resource supplementation, or modification of diets, instead suggesting that yeasts may benefit bees through interactions with the pathogens including Aspergillus. Overall, the effects of yeast supplementation are context-dependent, and more research is necessary to better understand the factors important in determining their impacts on bee hosts.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rutkowski, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weston, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vannette, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.11.06.622134</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Effects of live yeasts and their metabolic products on bumble bee microcolony development]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.06.622333v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Interplay between autophagy, the unfolded protein response and the cytoplasmic heat stress response during heat stress in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.06.622333v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
High temperatures can substantially reduce plant survival and reproduction, and therefore decrease crop productivity. Plants activate several pathways in response to high temperatures, including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) unfolded protein response (UPR), the cytoplasmic heat stress response, and autophagy, which together aid in stress tolerance by refolding or degrading misfolded and unfolded proteins. The relationship between the UPR and autophagy is known, as ER stress activates the UPR, and a key activator of the UPR, Inositol-requiring enzyme type 1 (IRE1B), upregulates autophagy. To assess the relationship between the distinct responses to heat stress in maize, we analyzed the effect of disruption of the UPR, via a bzip60 mutant, on autophagy. We found that genes related to autophagy are upregulated in the bzip60 mutant, and that autophagy is activated in this mutant even in the absence of stress. We in turn analyzed the effect of loss of autophagy on the UPR. The bZIP60 mRNA spliced form, a marker for the UPR, was increased in mutants in ATG10, a core component of the autophagy machinery, during ER stress. By contrast, bZIP60 splicing was unaffected in atg10 mutants in response to heat, whereas cytoplasmic heat stress components were increased. Loss of autophagy therefore differentially affects other heat stress response pathways, depending on the specific stress conditions leading to the activation of the pathways.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bassham, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.11.06.622333</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Interplay between autophagy, the unfolded protein response and the cytoplasmic heat stress response during heat stress in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.09.622766v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Assessment of the Genetic Diversity of Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) Strandings in the Mississippi Sound (USA) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.09.622766v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) is a key marine mammal species in the northern Gulf of Mexico, playing an essential role as a top predator. This study focuses on the genetic diversity and population structure of bottlenose dolphins stranded in the Mississippi Sound from 2010 to 2021. A total of 511 tissue samples (muscle, liver, lung, kidney, and brain) were collected from stranded dolphins, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was extracted for analysis. Using high-throughput sequencing methods, 417 samples were successfully amplified and sequenced, producing 386 complete mitogenomes. Genetic diversity metrics, such as nucleotide and haplotype diversity, were calculated, and population structure was inferred for both mitochondrial control region (mtCR) and whole mitogenome sequences. Using the whole mitogenome, the study identified four genetically distinct populations within the Mississippi Sound, demonstrating regional variation in dolphin populations. Notably, some individuals likely originated from populations outside the sampled area. The use of whole mitogenomes allowed for improved resolution of genetic diversity and population differentiation compared to previous studies using partial mtDNA sequences. These findings provide critical insights into the genetic structure of bottlenose dolphins in the region and highlight the value of using stranded animals for population genetic studies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Arick, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Landrau-Giovannetti, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, C.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reichley, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Magbanua, Z. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pechanova, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moore, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kayal, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Linhoss, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Madrigal, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ozdemir, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Solangi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Karsi, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.11.09.622766</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Assessment of the Genetic Diversity of Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) Strandings in the Mississippi Sound (USA)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.11.623064v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Measuring Growth, Resistance and Recovery after Artemisinin Treatment of Plasmodium falciparum in a semi-high-throughput Assay 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.11.623064v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundArtemisinin partial resistance (ART-R) has spread throughout Southeast Asia and mutations in pfKelch13, the molecular marker of resistance, are widely reported in East Africa. Effective in vitro assays and robust phenotypes are crucial for monitoring populations for the emergence and spread of resistance. The recently developed extended Recovery Ring-stage Survival Assay used a qPCR-based readout to reduce the labor intensiveness for in vitro phenotyping of ART-R and improved correlation with the clinical phenotype of ART-R. Here, we extend and refine this assay to include measurements of parasite growth and recovery after drug exposure. Clinical isolates and progeny from two genetic crosses were used to optimize and validate the reliability of a straight-from-blood, SYBR Green-based qPCR protocol in a 96-well plate format to accurately measure phenotypes for Growth, Resistance, and Recovery.

ResultsThe assay determined growth between 6 h and 96 h, resistance at 120 h, and recovery from 120 h and 192 h. Growth can be accurately captured by qPCR and is shown by reproduction of previous growth phenotypes from HB3 x Dd2. Resistance measured at 120 h continually shows the most consistent phenotype for ring stage susceptibility. Recovery identifies an additional response to drug than parasites that are determined sensitive by Fold Change at 120 h. Comparison of progeny phenotypes for Growth vs Resistance showed a minor but significant correlation, whereas Growth vs Recovery and Resistance vs Recovery showed no significant correlation. Additionally, dried blood spot (DBS) samples matched Fold Change measured from liquid samples demonstrating Resistance can be easily quantified using either storage method.

ConclusionsThe qPCR-based methodology provides the throughput needed to quickly measure large numbers of parasites for multiple relevant phenotypes. Growth can reveal fitness defects and illuminate relationships between proliferation rates and drug response. Recovery serves as a complementary phenotype to resistance that quantifies the ability of sensitive parasites to tolerate drug exposure. All three phenotypes offer a comprehensive assessment of parasite-drug interaction each with independent genetic determinants of main effect and overlapping secondary effects that should be further. By adapting our method to include DBS, readouts can be easily extended to ex vivo surveillance applications.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sievert, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, P. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shoue, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Needham, L. A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brenneman, K. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qahash, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cassady, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nosten, F. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vaughan, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romero-Severson, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferdig, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.11.11.623064</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Measuring Growth, Resistance and Recovery after Artemisinin Treatment of Plasmodium falciparum in a semi-high-throughput Assay]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.15.622802v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The conserved aphid saliva chemosensory protein effector Mp10 targets plant AMSH deubiquitinases at cellular membranes to suppress pattern-triggered immunity 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.15.622802v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Chemosensory proteins (CSPs) are a conserved family present in insects and other arthropods, recognized for their critical roles in both intra- and interspecies communication. However, the functional mechanisms of these proteins remain largely unexplored. In our previous research, we identified a CSP in aphid saliva, Mp10, from the peach-potato aphid Myzus persicae, which functions as an effector protein modulating host plant immunity. Mp10 suppresses pattern recognition receptor (PRR)-triggered immunity (PTI), the first layer of plant defence, while also inducing effector-triggered immunity (ETI). In this study, we elucidate the molecular mechanisms by which Mp10 suppresses PTI. Our findings reveal that Mp10 interacts with AMSH deubiquitinase enzymes in plants, as shown by yeast two-hybrid, co-immunoprecipitation (co-IP), and FRET-FLIM assays, with these interactions predominantly localized to intracellular membranes. Mp10 was found to modulate the dynamics of membrane-bound PRR receptor kinases in plant cells. Co-IP and mass spectrometry analyses demonstrated that Mp10 and AMSH2 associate with a range of PRR kinases, PRR-associated kinases, and proteins involved in the intracellular trafficking of membrane proteins. Mp10 reduces the accumulation of these kinases at the cell surface by promoting their internalization to internal membranes, thereby dampening PTI. Supporting this, a dominant-negative catalytically inactive variant of AMSH2 also inhibits PTI. Interestingly, Mp10 orthologues from other sap-feeding hemipteran insects exhibit similar immune-suppressive activities, and our findings show that their interaction with plant AMSH proteins is conserved, indicating this immune-suppression mechanism is evolutionarily ancient.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gravino, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mugford, S. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kreuter, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Joyce, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wilson, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kliot, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Canham, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mathers, T. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Drurey, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maqbool, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saalbach, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martins, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hogenhout, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.11.15.622802</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The conserved aphid saliva chemosensory protein effector Mp10 targets plant AMSH deubiquitinases at cellular membranes to suppress pattern-triggered immunity]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.21.624663v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Aspergillus nidulans Transcription Factor BrlA is Utilized in a Conidiation-Independent Response to Cell-Wall Stress 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.21.624663v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Under synchronized conidiation, over 2500 gene products show differential expression, including transcripts for both brlA and abaA, which increase steadily over time. In contrast, during wall-stress induced by the echinocandin micafungin, the brlA transcript is upregulated while the abaA transcript is not. In addition, when mpkA (last protein kinase in the cell wall integrity signaling pathway) is deleted, brlA expression is not upregulated in response to wall stress. Together, these data imply BrlA may play a role in a cellular stress-response which is independent of the canonical BrlA-mediated conidiation pathway. To test this hypothesis, we performed a genome-wide search and found 332 genes with a putative BrlA response element (BRE) in their promoter region. From this set, we identified 28 genes which were differentially expressed in response to wall-stress, but not during synchronized conidiation. This set included seven gene products whose homologues are involved in transmembrane transport and 14 likely to be involved in secondary metabolite biosynthesis. We selected six of these genes for further examination and find that they all show altered expression behavior in the brlA deletion strain. Together, these data support the idea that BrlA plays a role in various biological processes outside asexual development.

ImportanceThe Aspergillus nidulans transcription factor BrlA is widely accepted as a master regulator of conidiation. Here, we show that in addition to this function BrlA appears to play a role in responding to cell-wall stress. We note that this has not been observed outside A. nidulans. Further, BrlA-mediated conidiation is highly conserved across Aspergillus species, so this new functionality is likely relevant in other Aspergilli. We identified several transmembrane transporters that have altered transcriptional responses to cell-wall stress in a brlA deletion mutant. Based on our observation, together with what is known about the brlA gene locus regulation, we identify brlA{beta} as the likely intermediary in function of brlA in the response to cell-wall stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Edwards, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zavorskas, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huso, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doan, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morse, M. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wilkinson, H. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ebbole, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shaw, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srivastava, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marten, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-11-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.11.21.624663</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Aspergillus nidulans Transcription Factor BrlA is Utilized in a Conidiation-Independent Response to Cell-Wall Stress]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-11-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.02.626474v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Molecular evolution of a reproductive barrier in maize and related species 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.02.626474v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Three cross-incompatibility loci each control a distinct reproductive barrier in both domesticated maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) and its wild teosinte relatives. These three loci, Teosinte crossing barrier1 (Tcb1), Gametophytic factor1 (Ga1), and Ga2, each play a key role in preventing hybridization between incompatible populations and are proposed to maintain the barrier between domesticated and wild subspecies. Each locus encodes both a silk-active and a matching pollen-active pectin methylesterase (PMEs). To investigate the diversity and molecular evolution of these gametophytic factor loci, we identified existing and improved models of the responsible genes in a new genome assembly of maize line P8860 that contains active versions of all three loci. We then examined fifty-two assembled genomes from seventeen species to classify haplotype diversity and identify sites under diversifying selection during the evolution of these genes. We show that Ga2, the oldest of these three loci, was duplicated to form Ga1 at least 12 million years ago. Tcb1, the youngest locus, arose as a duplicate of Ga1 before or around the time of diversification of the Zea genus. We find evidence of positive selection during evolution of the functional genes at an active site in the pollen-expressed PME and predicted surface sites in both the silk- and pollen-expressed PMEs. The most common allele at the Ga1 locus is a conserved ga1 allele (ga1-Off), which is specific haplotype containing three full-length PME gene copies, all of which are non-coding due to conserved stop codons and are between 610 thousand and 1.5 million years old. We show that the ga1-Off allele is associated with and likely generates 24-nt siRNAs in developing pollen-producing tissue, and these siRNAs map to functional Ga1 alleles. In previously-published crosses, the ga1-Off allele was associated with reduced function of the typically dominant functional alleles for the Ga1 and Tcb1 barriers. Taken together, this seems to be an example of a type of epigenetic trans-homolog silencing known as paramutation functioning at a locus controlling a reproductive barrier.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Cryan, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phinney, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Evans, M. M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kellogg, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhan, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meyers, B. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kliebenstein, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-12-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.12.02.626474</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Molecular evolution of a reproductive barrier in maize and related species]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-12-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.04.626907v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Lineage labeling with zebrafish hand2 Cre and CreERT2 recombinase CRISPR knock-ins 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.04.626907v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundThe ability to generate endogenous Cre recombinase drivers using CRISPR- Cas9 knock-in technology allows lineage tracing, cell type specific gene studies, and in vivo validation of inferred developmental trajectories from phenotypic and gene expression analyses. This report describes endogenous zebrafish hand2 Cre and CreERT2 drivers generated with GeneWeld CRISPR-Cas9 precision targeted integration.

Resultshand2-2A-cre and hand2-2A-creERT2 knock-ins crossed with ubiquitous loxP-based Switch reporters led to broad labeling in expected mesodermal and neural crest-derived lineages in cardiac, pectoral fins, pharyngeal arch, liver, intestine, and mesothelial tissues, as well as enteric neurons. Novel patterns of hand2 lineage tracing appeared in venous blood vessels. CreERT2 induction at 24 hours reveals late emerging hand2 progenitors in the 24 - 48 hour embryo contribute to the venous and intestinal vasculature. Induction in 3 dpf larva restricts hand2 lineage labeling to mesoderm-derived components of the branchial arches, heart, liver and enteric neurons.

Conclusionshand2 progenitors from the lateral plate mesoderm and ectoderm contribute to numerous lineages in the developing embryo. Later emerging hand2 progenitors become restricted to a subset of lineages in the larva. The hand2 Cre and CreERT2 drivers establish critical new tools to investigate hand2 lineages in zebrafish embryogenesis and larval organogenesis.

Graphical abstract

O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=117 SRC="FIGDIR/small/626907v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
View larger version (20K):
org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@12f58cborg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@16e95c8org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@12b8e9dorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@a01848_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG C_FIG Zebrafish hand2 Cre and CreERT2 drivers generated with GeneWeld CRISPR/Cas9 precision targeted integration label numerous lineages from the mesoderm and ectoderm. Temporal CreERT2 Tamoxifen regulated switching re{-} veals late emerging hand2 progenitors contribute to the embryonic venous vasculature and larval organs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ming, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moran, H. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lalonde, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adams, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Restrepo, N. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Joshi, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ekker, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yin, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sumanas, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mosimann, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Essner, J. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGrail, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-12-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.12.04.626907</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Lineage labeling with zebrafish hand2 Cre and CreERT2 recombinase CRISPR knock-ins]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-12-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.17.628909v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Enhanced identification of small molecules binding to hnRNPA1 via cryptic pockets mapping coupled with X-Ray fragment screening 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.17.628909v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The human heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP) A1 is a prototypical RNA-binding protein essential in regulating a wide range of post-transcriptional events in cells. As a multifunctional protein with a key role in RNA metabolism, deregulation of its functions has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases, tumour aggressiveness and chemoresistance, which has fuelled efforts to develop novel therapeutics that modulates its RNA binding activities. Here, using a combination of Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations and graph neural network pockets predictions, we showed that hnRNPA1 N-terminal RNA binding domain (UP1) contains several cryptic pockets capable of binding small molecules. To identify chemical entities for development of potent drug candidates and experimentally validate identified druggable hotspots, we carried out a large fragment screening on UP1 protein crystals. Our screen identified 36 hits which extensively samples UP1 functional regions involved in RNA recognition and binding, as well as mapping hotspots onto novel protein interaction surfaces. We observed a wide range of ligand-induced conformational variation, by stabilisation of dynamic protein regions. Our high-resolution structures, the first of an hnRNP in complex with a fragment or small molecule, provides rapid routes for the rational development of a range of different inhibitors and chemical tools for studying molecular mechanisms of hnRNPA1 mediated splicing regulation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dunnett, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Das, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Venditti, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Prischi, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-12-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.12.17.628909</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Enhanced identification of small molecules binding to hnRNPA1 via cryptic pockets mapping coupled with X-Ray fragment screening]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-12-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.20.629602v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Transcriptional responses to in vitro macrocyclic lactone exposure in Toxocara canis larvae using RNA-seq 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.20.629602v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Toxocara canis, the causative agent of zoonotic toxocariasis in humans, is a parasitic roundworm of canids with a complex lifecycle. While macrocyclic lactones (MLs) are successful at treating adult T. canis infections when used at FDA-approved doses in dogs, they fail to kill somatic third-stage larvae. In this study, we profiled the transcriptome of third-stage larvae derived from larvated eggs and treated in vitro with 10 {micro}M of the MLs - ivermectin and moxidectin with Illumina sequencing. We analyzed transcriptional changes in comparison with untreated control larvae. In ivermectin-treated larvae, we identified 608 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), of which 453 were upregulated and 155 were downregulated. In moxidectin-treated larvae, we identified 1,413 DEGs, of which 902 were upregulated and 511 were downregulated. Notably, many DEGs were involved in critical biological processes and pathways including transcriptional regulation, energy metabolism, neuronal structure and function, physiological processes such as reproduction, excretory/secretory molecule production, host-parasite response mechanisms, and parasite elimination. We also assessed the expression of known ML targets and transporters, including glutamate-gated chloride channels (GluCls), and ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters, subfamily B, with a particular focus on P-glycoproteins (P-gps). We present gene names for previously uncharacterized T. canis GluCl genes using phylogenetic analysis of nematode orthologs to provide uniform gene nomenclature. Our study revealed that the expression of Tca-glc-3 and six ABCB genes, particularly four P-gps, were significantly altered in response to ML treatment. Compared to controls, Tca-glc-3, Tca-Pgp-11.2, and Tca-Pgp-13.2 were downregulated in ivermectin-treated larvae, while Tca-abcb1, Tca-abcb7, Tca-Pgp-11.2, and Tca-Pgp-13.2 were downregulated in moxidectin-treated larvae. Conversely, Tca-abcb9.1 and Tca-Pgp-11.3 were upregulated in moxidectin-treated larvae. These findings suggest that MLs broadly impact transcriptional regulation in T. canis larvae.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Quintana, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brewer, M. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jesudoss Chelladurai, J. R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-12-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.12.20.629602</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Transcriptional responses to in vitro macrocyclic lactone exposure in Toxocara canis larvae using RNA-seq]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-12-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.630189v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Maize and wild relatives show distinct patterns of genome downsizing following polyploidy 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.630189v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plant genomes are smaller than expected despite the ubiquity of polyploidy due to the process of genome downsizing called fractionation. This process causes loss of DNA sequences, including genes, until genomes return to a diploid-like state, though some duplicates remain from the polyploid ancestor. Fractionation can affect the copies of ancestral diploid genomes (i.e., subgenomes) differently, resulting in one being preferentially retained and the other preferentially lost. While previous work suggested fractionation occurs shortly after a polyploidy event, few studies have been able to densely sample descendent genomes from the same whole genome duplication event. The Tripsacinae subtribe of grasses, which includes the genera Tripsacum and Zea and the economically and culturally important maize (Zea mays ssp. mays), originates from an ancient allopolyploid ([~]5-12 MYA). We use publicly available genome assemblies from the Tripsacinae subtribe of grasses to investigate the patterns and timing of fractionation relative to the outgroup sorghum, which does not share the allotetraploidy event. Our results show the majority of fractionation following polyploidy occurred in a common ancestor of modern species and that one subgenome is preferentially retained, in keeping with previous studies of maize. However, Tripsacum retains a greater proportion of duplicate genes (homoeologs) than Zea, potentially related to the fewer chromosomal rearrangements observed in this genus. Multiple, nested deletion events were commonly observed in alignments to a single sorghum reference exon, and some homoeologs show fractionation of different exons across genomes. Further, [~]35% of homoeologous pairs of exons show differential fractionation, where fractionation patterns differ between species. Altogether, this suggests multiple origins of fractionation for a given homoeolog may be common. We demonstrate that fractionation is a much more dynamic process in the Tripsacinae than previously predicted.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Snodgrass, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stitzer, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2024-12-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2024.12.24.630189</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Maize and wild relatives show distinct patterns of genome downsizing following polyploidy]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2024-12-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.03.631234v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Branched and Linear F-actin Networks Control Directional Migration Switching Behavior on Aligned Collagen Fibrils 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.03.631234v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Directed cell migration is essential in many biological processes and is driven by a variety of directional cues, including aligned fibrils in the extracellular matrix (ECM), a phenomenon known as contact guidance. How different cells respond to aligned fibrils and how internal regulators like formins and Arp2/3 control contact guidance is unknown. In this study, a unique system to assemble aligned collagen fibrils on mica and to transfer them onto controllable substrates is used to probe contact guidance. This fibril alignment system reveals that cytoskeletal regulation through myosin contractility and not receptor expression drives contact guidance ability. Highly contractile cells exhibit high-fidelity contact guidance, weakly contractile cells ignore cues and moderately contractile cells use a mixture of both parallel and perpendicular migration strategies on aligned collagen fibrils. In addition to myosin contractility, formins and Arp2/3 control contact guidance in a reciprocal manner across a variety of cell types. Formins, mediators of linear F-actin structures, enhance contact guidance and Arp2/3, a mediator of branched F-actin structures, diminishes contact guidance. This controlled materials system reveals the importance of both myosin-mediated contractility as well as the antagonistic action of formins and Arp2/3 on contact guidance, providing potential targets to tune contact guidance.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Foroozandehfar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tohidi, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siddiqui, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Namanda, F. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schneider, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-01-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.03.631234</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Branched and Linear F-actin Networks Control Directional Migration Switching Behavior on Aligned Collagen Fibrils]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-01-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.09.632101v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dipeptidase 1 is a functional receptor for coronavirus PHEV 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.09.632101v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Coronaviruses of the subgenus Embecovirus include several relevant pathogens such as the human seasonal coronaviruses HKU1 and OC43, bovine coronavirus, and porcine hemagglutinating encephalomyelitis virus (PHEV), among others. While sialic acid is thought to be required for embecovirus entry, protein receptors are unknown in most cases. Here we show that PHEV does not require sialic acid for entry and uses dipeptidase 1 (DPEP1) as a receptor. Cryo-electron microscopy revealed that PHEV, unlike other embecoviruses, samples open and closed conformations of its spike trimer at steady state. We found that the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the PHEV spike shares no detectable sequence homology or receptor usage with those of closely related viruses. In contrast, the X-ray structure of the RBD/DPEP1 complex showed that the elements involved in receptor binding are conserved across embecoviruses, revealing a striking versatility of the RBD to accommodate highly variable sequences that confer novel receptor specificities.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dufloo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fernandez, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arbabian, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Haouz, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gimenez-Lirola, L. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rey, F. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanjuan, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-01-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.09.632101</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dipeptidase 1 is a functional receptor for coronavirus PHEV]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-01-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.20.633842v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Molecular Drivers of RNA Phase Separation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.20.633842v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
RNA molecules are essential in orchestrating the assembly of biomolecular condensates and membraneless compartments in cells. Many condensates form via the association of RNA with proteins containing specific RNA binding motifs. However, recent reports indicate that low-complexity RNA sequences can self-assemble into condensate phases without protein assistance. Divalent cations significantly influence the thermodynamics and dynamics of RNA condensates, which exhibit base-specific lower-critical solution temperatures (LCST). The precise molecular origins of these temperatures remain elusive. In this study, we employ atomistic molecular simulations to elucidate the molecular driving forces governing the temperature-dependent phase behavior of RNA, providing new insights into the origins of LCST. Using RNA tetranucleotides and their chemically modified analogs, we map RNA condensates equilibrium thermodynamic profiles and structural ensembles across various temperatures and ionic conditions. Our findings reveal that magnesium ions promote LCST behavior by inducing local order-disorder transitions within RNA structures. Consistent with experimental observations, we demonstrate that the thermal stability of RNA condensates follows the Poly(G) > Poly(A) > Poly(C) > Poly(U) order shaped by the interplay of base-stacking and hydrogen bonding interactions. Furthermore, our simulations show that ionic conditions and post-translational modifications can fine-tune RNA self-assembly and modulate condensate physical properties.

Author SummaryRNA molecules are essential for organizing membraneless compartments that play critical roles in cellular processes. While many of these condensates form through interactions between RNA and proteins, recent studies have shown that certain RNA sequences can self-assemble into condensates without protein assistance. This ability is influenced by the sequence composition of RNA and the presence of ions like magnesium. Using detailed molecular simulations we carried out systematic study to reveal how temperature and ionic conditions affect RNA condensation. We discovered that magnesium ions play a key role in driving RNA molecules to condense at lower temperatures by promoting structural changes within the RNA. Our findings also revealed that the stability of RNA condensates varies depending on the RNA sequence, with guanine-rich sequences being the most stable. Additionally, we demonstrated how chemical modifications and ionic conditions can fine-tune the properties of RNA condensates. This study provides new insights into how RNA forms condensates and highlights potential strategies to control their behavior, which could have implications for understanding cellular organization and developing new therapies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramachandran, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-01-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.20.633842</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Molecular Drivers of RNA Phase Separation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-01-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.21.634104v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Assessing the impact of yield plasticity on hybrid performance in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.21.634104v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Improving crop resilience in the face of increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather and reduced access to agricultural inputs such as nitrogen fertilizer and water will require an improved understanding of phenotypic plasticity in crops. To understand the roles of different component traits in determining overall plasticity for grain yield, we generated data from a panel of 122 maize (Zea mays) hybrids grown in replicated field trials in 34 environments spanning 700 miles (1126 km) of the U.S. Corn Belt. We observed that the levels of genetic versus environmental control and the relationships between mean parent release year, overall performance, and linear plasticity were trait-dependent across the 18 agronomic and yield components studied. Importantly and unexpectedly, we observed no clear tradeoff between linear plasticity and mean performance and found only rare examples where genotype-by-environment interactions would alter selection decisions based on the environments tested in our dataset. Furthermore, we showed that overall plasticity was repeatable and appears to be under considerable genetic control but that plasticity in response to nitrogen fertilization was not, which may help explain the limited success in breeding for nitrogen use efficiency. Together, these findings improve our understanding of phenotypic plasticity, with implications for maize breeding.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Davis, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coffey, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Turkus, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lopez-Corona, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Linders, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ullagaddi, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Santra, D. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schnable, J. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-01-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.21.634104</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Assessing the impact of yield plasticity on hybrid performance in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-01-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.22.633974v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Extensive genome evolution distinguishes maize within a stable tribe of grasses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.22.633974v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Over the last 20 million years, the Andropogoneae tribe of grasses has evolved to dominate 17% of global land area. Domestication of these grasses in the last 10,000 years has yielded our most productive crops, including maize, sugarcane, and sorghum. The majority of Andropogoneae species, including maize, show a history of polyploidy - a condition that, while offering the evolutionary advantage of multiple gene copies, poses challenges to basic cellular processes, gene expression, and epigenetic regulation. Genomic studies of polyploidy have been limited by sparse sampling of taxa in groups with multiple polyploidy events. Here, we present 33 genome assemblies from 27 species, including chromosome-scale assemblies of maize relatives Zea and Tripsacum. In maize, the after-effects of polyploidy have been widely studied, showing reduced chromosome number, biased fractionation of duplicate genes, and transposable element (TE) expansions. While we observe these patterns within the genus Zea, 12 other polyploidy events deviate significantly. Those tetraploids and hexaploids retain elevated chromosome number, maintain nearly complete complements of duplicate genes, and have only stochastic TE amplifications. These genomes reveal variable outcomes of polyploidy, challenging simple predictions and providing a foundation for understanding its evolutionary implications in an ecologically and economically important clade.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Stitzer, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seetharam, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Scheben, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, S.-K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schulz, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>AuBuchon-Elder, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>El-Walid, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferebee, T. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hale, C. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>La, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, Z.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McMorrow, S. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Minx, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phillips, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Syring, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wrightsman, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhai, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pasquet, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McAllister, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Malcomber, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Traiperm, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Layton, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhong, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Costich, D. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dawe, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fengler, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Irelan, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Llaca, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Parakkal, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zastrow-Hayes, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Woodhouse, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cannon, E. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Portwood, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andorf, C. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Albert, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Birchler, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siepel, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romay, M. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kellogg, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Buckler, E. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hufford</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-01-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.22.633974</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Extensive genome evolution distinguishes maize within a stable tribe of grasses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-01-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.26.634938v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
GO Big or Go Home: A New Gene Ontology Subset that Improves Plant Gene Function Prediction 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.26.634938v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
BackgroundThe availability of gene function prediction datasets helps researchers to consider possible functions for uncharacterized genes for hypothesis generation, candidate gene prioritization, and many other applications. Many such datasets are based on the Gene Ontology (GO) function graph. For plants this can be problematic because the most specific GO terms available are often derived from the biology of non-plant taxa (e.g., functions specific to nerve function would not seem likely to map to plant biological processes given that plants lack nerves). To balance the need for functional specificity while limiting to functions relevant to plant biology, researchers often limit to the GO Slim plant subset, but, by design, that subset consists of very general terms and limits real utility for e.g., specific hypothesis generation. Worse yet, sometimes researchers choose to simply throw out terms if they are not relevant to plant biology (rather than traversing the GO graph to select the most specific term in that hierarchy that is compatible with plant biology).

ResultsWe created GO Big, a Gene Ontology subset type, to improve the biological relevance of gene function predictions for taxon-specific biology applications. GO Big plant subsets retain maximal functional specificity for hypothesis generation while limiting to terms applicable to the biology of plants. In brief, we used a curatorial approach to generate two GO Big subsets, a general subset derived from terms with experimentally validated functions across Viridiplantae species, and a species-specific subset for maize (Zea mays ssp. mays).

ConclusionAnnotating genes with assignments that better reflect the biology of a taxon can pave the way for more biologically accurate and testable hypotheses for genes of interest. The subsets produced here can help plant biologists limit genome-wide gene function prediction sets to functions possible for plant genes, and the process to generate GO Big subsets is described in detail to enable others to create GO Big subsets for additional taxon sets, including ones for protists, fungi, and other phylogenetic categories.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Fattel, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lawrence-Dill, C. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-01-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.26.634938</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[GO Big or Go Home: A New Gene Ontology Subset that Improves Plant Gene Function Prediction]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-01-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.26.634793v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.26.634793v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. Here we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipiens form molestus, also known as the London Underground Mosquito. Population genomic analysis of [~]350 contemporary and historical samples counter the popular hypothesis that molestus originated belowground in London less than 200 years ago. Instead, we show that molestus first adapted to human environments aboveground in the Middle East over the course of >1000 years, likely in concert with the rise of agricultural civilizations. Our results highlight the role of early human society in priming taxa for contemporary urban evolution and have important implications for understanding arbovirus transmission.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Haba, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aardema, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Afonso, M. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Agramonte, N. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Albright, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alho, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Almeida, A. P. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alout, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alten, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Altinli, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Amara Korba, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andreadis, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anghel, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arich, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arsenault-Benoit, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Atyame, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aubry, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Avila, F. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ayala, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Azrag, R. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Babayan, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bear, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Becker, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bega, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bejarano, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ben-Avi, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Benoit, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boubidi, S. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bradshaw, W. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bravo-Barriga, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bueno-Mari, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Busic, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cabanova, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cabeje, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Caputo, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cardo, M. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carpenter, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carreton, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chouaibou, M. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Christian, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coetzee, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Conner, W. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cornel,</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-01-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.26.634793</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-01-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.30.635669v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Revealing the hidden social structure of pigs with AI assisted automated monitoring data and social network analysis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.30.635669v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Social interactions of farm animals affect their performance, health and welfare. The recent advances in AI-automated monitoring technologies offer digital phenotypes, at low-cost, that record the animals in real-time. This proof-of-concept study addresses, for the first time, the hypothesis that applying social network analysis (SNA) on automated data could potentially facilitate the analysis of social structures of farm animals. Data was collected using automated recording systems that captured 2D camera images and videos of pigs in six pens (16-19 animals each) on a PIC breeding company farm (USA). The system provided real-time data, including ear-tag readings, elapsed time, posture (standing, lying, sitting), and XY coordinates of the shoulder and rump for each pig. Weighted SNA was performed, based on the proximity of "standing" animals, for two 3-day periods: the early growing period (first month after mixing) and the later period (60 days post-mixing). Group level degree, betweenness, and closeness centralization showed a significant increase from the early growing period to the later one (p<0.02), highlighting the pig[s] social dynamics over time. Largest clique size remained unchanged (p=0.28), but the number of maximal cliques significantly decreased from the early to late growing period (p=0.007). Individual SNA traits were stable over these periods, except for closeness centrality and clustering coefficient which significantly increased (p<0.00001). This study demonstrates that combining AI-assisted monitoring technologies with SNA offers an efficient, real-time approach to gain novel insights into animal social interactions. This approach can optimize on-farm management or breeding practices, leading to improved animal performance, health, and welfare.

HighlightsO_LISocial network analysis (SNA) applied to automated monitoring data provides novel insight into social interactions of pigs.
C_LIO_LIGroup level SNA centralization traits highlighted pigs  social dynamics over time.
C_LIO_LIThe stability of key individual SNA traits can be leveraged for breeding purposes.
C_LIO_LIAI-assisted monitoring combined with SNA help optimizing management practices on commercial farms.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Agha, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Psota, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Turner, S. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lewis, C. R. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Steibel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doeschl-Wilson, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-01-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.30.635669</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Revealing the hidden social structure of pigs with AI assisted automated monitoring data and social network analysis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-01-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.28.635396v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Estimation of total mediation effect for a binary trait in a case-control study for high-dimensional omics mediators 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.28.635396v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mediation analysis helps uncover how exposures impact outcomes through intermediate variables. Traditional mean-based total mediation effect measures may suffer from the cancellation of opposite component-wise effects, and existing methods often lack the power to capture weak effects in high-dimensional mediators. Additionally, most high-dimensional mediation analysis methods have focused on continuous outcomes, with limited attention to binary outcomes, particularly in case-control studies. To fill this gap, we propose an R2 total mediation effect measure within the liability framework that offers a clear and intuitive causal interpretation, provides additional insights beyond the mean-based measures, and is invariant to disease prevalence. We develop a cross-fitted, modified Haseman-Elston regression-based estimation procedure tailored for mediation analysis in case-control studies, which can also be applied to cohort studies. Our estimator remains consistent in the presence of non-mediators and weak effects, as demonstrated in extensive simulations. Theoretical justification for consistency is provided under mild conditions and without requiring exact mediator selection. In a case-control substudy of the Womens Health Initiative involving 2150 individuals, we found that many metabolites were mediators with weak effects in the path from BMI to coronary heart disease, and we estimated that 89% (95% CI: 57%-100%) of the BMI-explained variation in underlying CHD liability is mediated by the measured metabolomics. The proposed estimation procedure is implemented in the R package "r2MedCausal", available on GitHub.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wei, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-02-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.28.635396</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Estimation of total mediation effect for a binary trait in a case-control study for high-dimensional omics mediators]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-02-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.31.635861v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Positive allosteric modulation of emodepside sensitive Brugia malayi SLO-1F and Onchocerca volvulus SLO-1A potassium channels by GoSlo-SR-5-69 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.31.635861v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Human lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis are Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), of major public health concern. Prophylaxis and treatment rely on anthelmintics that effectively eliminate migrating microfilariae but lack efficacy against adult filarial worms. To expedite the elimination of both diseases, the introduction of drugs with adulticidal activity is paramount. The broad-spectrum anthelmintic emodepside, a nematode selective SLO-1 K channel activator, has been considered a promising candidate for the treatment of onchocerciasis due to its macrofilaricidal activity against Onchocerca volvulus. Nevertheless, it is less effective against adult Brugia malayi, one of the causative agents of human lymphatic filariasis. Characterizing molecular and pharmacological disparities between highly conserved splice variant isoforms of B. malayi and O. volvulus SLO-1 K channels and identifying allosteric modulators that can increase emodepside potency on B. malayi SLO-1 K channels is necessary for therapeutic advance. In this study, we tested the effects of emodepside and the mammalian BK channel activator, GoSlo-SR-5-69 alone and in combination on Xenopus expressed B. malayi SLO-1F and O. volvulus SLO-1A channels. Additionally, binding poses of emodepside, and GoSlo-SR-5-69 were predicted on both channels using molecular docking. Ovo-SLO-1A was more sensitive to emodepside than Bma-SLO-1F. GoSlo-SR- 5-69 was a positive allosteric modulator, potentiating the effects of emodepside. Emodepside was docked at the S6 pocket below the selectivity filter for Bma-SLO-1F and Ovo-SLO-1A. The binding of emodepside in the S6 pocket indicated a stabilizing{pi} -{pi} interaction between F342 and the phenyl rings of emodepside which may contribute to the potency of emodepside on these filaria channels. Molecular docking suggested that GoSlo-SR-5-69 binds at the RCK1 pocket. This study reveals for the first time, allosteric modulation of filarial nematode SLO-1 K channels by a mammalian BK channel activator and highlights its ability to increase emodepside potency on the B. malayi SLO-1 K channel.

Author SummaryB. malayi is one of the causative agents of lymphatic filariasis, while O. volvulus causes onchocerciasis. Elimination of adult B. malayi and O. volvulus is impeded by anthelmintics lacking adequate macrofilaricidal activity. The anthelmintic emodepside has microfilaricidal and macrofilaricidal activity. However, it exhibits poor efficacy against adult B. malayi in vivo. Here, we conducted a comparative pharmacological characterization of two closely related splice variants SLO-1 K channels of B. malayi and O. volvulus. Using voltage clamp, we tested the effects of emodepside and GoSlo-SR-5-69 independently and in combination on Xenopus expressed B. malayi SLO-1F and O. volvulus SLO-1A channels. Binding poses of emodepside, and GoSlo-SR-5-69 were predicted on both channels using molecular docking. We demonstrate that the O. volvulus SLO-1A receptor is more sensitive to emodepside than the B. malayi SLO-1F receptor. GoSlo-SR-5-69 is also a potentiator of emodepside responses. Homology modelling revealed that emodepside probably binds in the pore region of the B. malayi SLO-1F and O. volvulus SLO-1A channels, while GoSlo-SR-5-69 probably binds to the RCK1 domain of the channels. Our study provides new insights into similarities and differences shared between SLO-1 K channels of each species and reveals positive allosteric modulation by a mammalian SLO-1 K activator.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>McHugh, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Njeshi, C. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smith, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kashyap, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Datta, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sun, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robertson, A. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-02-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.01.31.635861</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Positive allosteric modulation of emodepside sensitive Brugia malayi SLO-1F and Onchocerca volvulus SLO-1A potassium channels by GoSlo-SR-5-69]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-02-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.05.636703v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Proteomics-based models of gene expression and cellular control of cotton fiber development 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.05.636703v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The shapes and material properties of cotton seed coat trichoblasts are the basis of a multibillion-dollar natural fiber industry. As such, these highly specialized cells are low-hanging fruit for intentional trait engineering. However, broad successes will require more mechanistic knowledge about their systems-level cellular controls. This time-series study integrates daily measurements of purified fiber transcriptomes and proteomes with multiscale fiber phenotyping datasets that span the same developmental interval. Abundance profiles of the subcellular proteomes are the foundation of the analyses. This resource article provides direct information concerning which homoeologs operate and informative depictions of how compartmentalized cellular systems change during developmental transitions. Prediction accuracy was partially validated by analysis of the protein expression group 11, which contained multiple known secondary cell wall cellulose synthases and dozens of unknown proteins and an averaged profile that was strongly correlated with a sharp state transition in cellulose microfibril alignment and increased cellulose content. The dataset as a whole can serve as a hypothesis-generating machine to guide future experiments that relate to cell shape and growth rate control, reversible tissue formation, and cell wall remodeling. Integration of mRNA and protein abundance revealed widespread evidence for post-transcriptional control. In addition, there were hundreds of transcriptionally controlled genes with differing timepoints of transition. This latter gene set can be used to more reliably analyze transcriptional control networks and to generate collections of gene expression drivers for cotton fiber research. The protein and transcript data are organized into user-friendly tables and a web interface that can be searched using any plant ortholog of interest based on developmental time, abundance, annotations, or phenotypic association.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Lee, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rani, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miller, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swaminathan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zabotina, O. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xie, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Szymanski, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-02-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.02.05.636703</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Proteomics-based models of gene expression and cellular control of cotton fiber development]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-02-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.04.636509v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A Multi-Model Ensemble Reveals Soil Carbon Gains from Regenerative Practices in the U.S. Midwest Cropland 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.04.636509v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Process-based cropping systems models (CSMs) are key components of measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV) frameworks of carbon markets, but their application suffers from model-specific differences that keep any one model from working well across all combinations of soils, climates, crops, and agronomic practices at varying scales. Multi-model ensemble (MME), successfully used to quantify soil, management and climate impact on crop productivity, provide an opportunity to better estimate changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) outcomes for agronomic practices that have the potential to mitigate SOC loss at scale. We used an MME across 46 million hectares of US Midwest cropland at a resolution of 4- km2 to assess the aggregate ability of different regenerative practices to sequester SOC at this scale compared to their dynamic baselines. MME was validated with long-term experimental data and compared to its constituent CSMs, showing greater accuracy and lower uncertainty. The results show that adopting no-till combined with cover crops increased SOC stocks by 0.36 {+/-} 0.12 Mg ha-1 yr-1 aggregated across the entire U.S. Midwest cropland. At the regional scale, this corresponds to a net SOC gain of 16.4 Tg C yr-1 compared to business-as-usual baselines. These benefits are approximately halved when each management change is practiced individually, and the modest gains are only fully realized when continued over the long-term in soils with low initial carbon stock. Results demonstrate the power of MMEs run at high resolution for providing robust estimates of environmental outcomes following agricultural practice change, and for pinpointing locations for most effective intervention. This approach can alleviate many producer carbon market participation barriers and help address market issues while ultimately supporting large-scale regenerative agriculture initiatives.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Basso, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tadiello, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Millar, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maureira, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Albarenque, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baer, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Price, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharma, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Villalobos, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Paustian, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fowler, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Delandmeter, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Acutis, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Archontoulis, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Covey, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doro, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dumont, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grace, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hoogenboom, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jones, J. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perego, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robertson, G. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ruane, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stockle, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-02-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.02.04.636509</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Multi-Model Ensemble Reveals Soil Carbon Gains from Regenerative Practices in the U.S. Midwest Cropland]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-02-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.11.633654v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Crusty-Pinky: A Novel Polyextremotolerant Fungus and its Methylobacterium Symbionts Could be an Essential Symbiosis for the Biological Soil Crust Consortium 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.11.633654v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
JF2 08-2F Crusty is a novel melanized polyextremotolerant fungus isolated from a biological soil crust, which we believe harbors Methylobacterium spp. endosymbionts, called Pinky. Crusty is capable of utilizing many sources of carbon and nitrogen and is resistant to multiple metals and UV-C due to its melanized cell wall. We were unable to recover a Pinky-free culture of Crusty via usage of antibiotics. However, when exposed to antibiotics that kill or stop the growth of the Pinky, growth of Crusty is significantly stunted, implying that actively growing Pinky symbionts are needed for Crustys optimal growth. The Crusty-Pinky symbiosis also seems to be able to perform active metabolism in carbonless and nitrogenless medium, which we believe is due to Pinkys ability to perform aerobic anoxygenic photosynthesis. Finally, Pinky was identified as being capable of growth stimulation of the algae Chlorella sorokiniana, indicating that Pinky likely produces cytokinins or auxins which Methylobacterium are known for. Features of this symbiosis provide us insight into the ecological roles of these microbes within the biological soil crust.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Carr, E. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saha, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Riekhof, W. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-02-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.02.11.633654</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Crusty-Pinky: A Novel Polyextremotolerant Fungus and its Methylobacterium Symbionts Could be an Essential Symbiosis for the Biological Soil Crust Consortium]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-02-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.10.637555v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Robust Prediction of Enzyme Variant Kinetics with RealKcat 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.10.637555v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Predicting enzyme kinetics directly from sequence remains a central challenge in computational biology, particularly in resolving the effects of mutations at catalytically essential residues. Existing models frequently overlook the functional consequences of such perturbations, often defaulting to wild-type predictions even in cases of substantial activity loss, thereby limiting their reliability for enzyme design and mechanistic inference. Here, we introduce RealKcat, a machine learning framework trained on KinHub-27k, a rigorously curated dataset of 27,176 experimentally reported enzyme-substrate entries consolidated from BRENDA, SABIO-RK, and UniProt and verified across 2,158 primary sources. To ensure biochemical realism, kinetic parameters were collapsed into order-of-magnitude bins, enabling predictions that are tolerant to experimental noise yet sensitive to functional shifts. RealKcat integrates ESM embeddings for enzyme sequences with ChemBERTa embeddings of affiliated substrate, producing a unified feature space of the chemical conversion that supports robust multi-class classification of both catalytic turnover (kCat) and substrate affinity (KM). Across cross-validation, hold-out, out-of-distribution, and few-shot evaluations--including a dense mutational landscape of alkaline phosphatase (PafA)--RealKcat consistently capturead the direction and magnitude of mutation-induced changes, while preserving discrimination in both wild-type and mutant contexts. Importantly, structural descriptors were deliberately excluded, as naive integration of structural features has been shown to impair model generalization, underscoring the primacy of rigorous dataset curation, biologically informed task formulation, and balanced evaluation metrics. RealKcat establishes a scalable and mutation-sensitive framework for enzyme kinetics prediction, offering a biologically grounded platform for enzyme engineering, metabolic modeling, and therapeutic design.

Significance StatementEnzymes catalyze biochemical reactions that sustain life, and accurate measurement of their efficiency--expressed through turnover number (kCat) and substrate affinity (KM)--is fundamental to biotechnology, synthetic biology, and even pharmaceutical innovation. Yet experimental assays remain prohibitive, time-intensive, and sensitive to conditions such as pH, temperature, and ionic strength of the assay buffer, while existing computational approaches often lack sensitivity to catalytic-site mutations and are constrained by inconsistencies in public databases. RealKcat addresses these gaps by introducing a rigorously curated dataset (KinHub-27k) derived from manual review of 2,158 articles and augmented with 5,278 synthetic catalytic variants generated through alanine substitution at annotated catalytic residues. Leveraging protein and substrate embeddings and a classification scheme based on order-of-magnitude kinetic bins, RealKcat achieves state-of-the-art functional e-accuracy and, critically, demonstrates sensitivity to catalytic perturbations. By adopting e-accuracy--a performance metric that evaluates predictions within {+/-}1 order of magnitude, aligning with the practical utility of enzyme kinetics--RealKcat provides biologically meaningful assessments that conventional metrics often obscure. This work establishes a robust, mutation-aware predictive platform that advances computational enzyme design and extends applicability to biomanufacturing, metabolic engineering, and precision medicine.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sajeevan, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Osinuga, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>B, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferdous, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shahreen, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Noor, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koneru, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Santa-Correa, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Salehi, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, N. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Calderon-Lopez, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mali, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saha, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-02-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.02.10.637555</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Robust Prediction of Enzyme Variant Kinetics with RealKcat]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-02-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.13.637661v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Rationally Designed PKD1 Activator Protects Against Neurodegeneration in Pre-clinical Models of Parkinson's Disease 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.13.637661v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Oxidative stress leads to degeneration in Parkinsons disease (PD). The key signal transduction and regulatory networks that are involved during this degenerative process in PD are currently being investigated for novel neuro-protective strategies. We recently discovered that the activation of Protein Kinase D1 (PKD1) acts as a novel compensatory mechanism in PD models and positive modulation of PKD1 can be a therapeutic strategy. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to take a translational approach by developing a PKD1 activator and characterizing the protective function in pre-clinical models of PD. Positive genetic modulation of PKD1 by overexpression of constitutively active PKD1 protected against MPP+ induced dopaminergic neurotoxicity. Pharmacological activation by Rosiglitazone protected, whereas inhibition by kb NB 142-70 exacerbated against MPP+ and 6-OHDA toxicity in cell culture PD models. Importantly, peptides were rationally designed and screened for their ability to activate PKD1 using our screening methods. Peptide AK-P4 was identified to activate PKD1 specifically and protect against MPP+ and 6-OHDA in both N27 cells and primary mesencephalic neurons. Further AK-P4 tagged with TAT sequence (AK-P4T) delivered using intra-venous injections activated PKD1 in mice. The neuro-protective effects of AK-P4T were tested using the sub-chronic MPTP mice model. Co-treatment with AK-P4T significantly restored the neurotransmitter levels and the behavioral and locomotory activities of the MPTP mouse model of PD. Collectively, our results demonstrate that rationally designed PKD1 activator peptide AK-P4T positively modulated PKD1 and protected against neurodegeneration in the pre-clinical models of PD. Our results suggest that positive modulation of the PKD1 using AK-P4T shows promise as a potential therapeutic agent against PD.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Asaithambi, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jang, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ghosh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ay, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jin, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anantharam, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-02-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.02.13.637661</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Rationally Designed PKD1 Activator Protects Against Neurodegeneration in Pre-clinical Models of Parkinson's Disease]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-02-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.18.638450v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
ESMStabP: A Regression Model for Protein Thermostability Prediction 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.18.638450v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Accurately predicting protein thermostability is crucial for numerous applications in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and food science. Experimental methods for determining protein melting temperatures are often time-consuming and costly, driving the need for efficient computational alternatives. In this paper, we introduce ESMStabP, an enhanced regression model for predicting protein thermostability. To improve model performance and generalizability, we assembled a significantly larger dataset by combining and cleaning datasets previously utilized in other thermostability models. Building on Deep-StabP, ESMStabP incorporates significant improvements, using embeddings from the ESM2 protein language model and thermophilic classifications. The predictions from ESMStabP outperform DeepStabP and other existing predictors, achieving an R2 of 0.95 and a Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) of 0.97. Despite these improvements, challenges such as dataset availability. This work underscores the critical role of specific layer identification for model development and outlines potential directions for future advancements in protein stability predictions
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ramos, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jernigan, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kilinc, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.02.18.638450</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[ESMStabP: A Regression Model for Protein Thermostability Prediction]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.02.638868v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Synthetic Generation of Dynamic Omics Data Demonstrates Aspergillus nidulans BrlA Paradoxical Wall Stress Response 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.02.638868v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We propose a method to generate additional dynamic omics trajectories which could support pathway analysis methods such as enrichment analysis, genetic programming, and machine learning. Using long short-term memory neural networks, we can effectively predict an organisms dynamic response to a stimulus based on an initial dataset with relatively few samples. We present both an in silico proof of principle, based on a model that simulates viral propagation, and an in vitro case study, tracking the dynamics of Aspergillus nidulans BrlA transcript in response to antifungal agent micafungin. Our silico experiment was conducted using a highly noisy dataset with only 25 replicates. This proof of principle shows that this method can operate on biological datasets, which often have high variance and few replicates. Our in silico validation achieved a maximum R2 value of approximately 0.95 on our highly noisy, stochastically simulated data. Our in vitro validation achieves an R2 of 0.71. As with any machine learning application, this method will work better with more data; however, both of our applications attain acceptable validation metrics with very few biological replicates. The in vitro experiments also revealed a novel paradoxical dose-response effect: transcriptional upregulation by Aspergillus nidulans BrlA is highest at an intermediate dose of 10 ng/mL and is reduced at both higher and lower concentrations of micafungin.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zavorskas, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edwards, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huso, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doan, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marten, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srivastava, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-03-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.03.02.638868</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Synthetic Generation of Dynamic Omics Data Demonstrates Aspergillus nidulans BrlA Paradoxical Wall Stress Response]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-03-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.03.641325v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Thermal Adaptation of Extremozymes: Temperature-Sensitive Contact Analysis of Serine Proteases 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.03.641325v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Enzyme thermal adaptation reflects a delicate interplay between sequence, structure, and dynamics of proteins, fine-tuning the catalytic activity to environmental demands. Understanding these evolutionary relationships can drive bioengineering advances, including industrial enzyme design, biocatalysts for extreme conditions, and novel therapeutics. This work explores sequence-dynamics connections in subtilisin-like serine protease homologs using a recently developed computational methodology that uses expanded ensemble simulations and temperature-sensitive contact analysis. We reveal that thermophilic enzymes achieve thermal stability through extensive salt bridges and hydrophobic networks, while psychrophilic enzymes rely on targeted interaction stability for cold adaptation. An unsupervised cluster analysis of residue conservation, flexibility, and hydrophobic interactions provides a comprehensive view of residue-specific contributions to thermal adaptation. These findings underscore the coordinated roles of conserved and variable regions in enzyme stability and offer a framework for tailoring enzymes to specific thermal properties for biotechnological applications.

SIGNIFICANCEThis study reveals how subtilisin-like serine proteases adapt to extreme temperatures by balancing sequence, structure, and dynamics. Through multi-ensemble simulations, we demonstrate that conserved catalytic regions and specific residue variations allow fine-tuned thermal adaptation. The analysis of simulations reveals the importance of salt bridges and hydrophobic interactions in enhancing thermophilic enzyme stability. We find that psychrophilic enzymes exhibit unique stability mechanisms for cold environments. The approach used in this study provides a comprehensive framework for understanding enzyme thermal adaptation and offers valuable insights for bioengineering enzymes with tailored properties for industrial and medical applications.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kulathunga, D. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-03-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.03.03.641325</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Thermal Adaptation of Extremozymes: Temperature-Sensitive Contact Analysis of Serine Proteases]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-03-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.10.642340v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Phylo-rs: an extensible phylogenetic analysis library in Rust 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.10.642340v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We introduce Phylo-rs: a fast, extensible, general-purpose library for phylogenetic analysis and inference written in the Rust programming language. Phylo-rs leverages a combination of speed, memory-safety, and native WebAssembly support offered by Rust to provide a robust set of memory-efficient data structures and elementary phylogenetic algorithms. Phylo-rs is focused on efficient and convenient deployment of software aimed at large-scale phylogenetic analysis and inference. Phylo-rs is available under an open-source license on GitHub at https://github.com/sriram98v/phylo-rs, with documentation available at https://docs.rs/phylo/latest/phylo/.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Vijendran, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Markin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-03-13</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.03.10.642340</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Phylo-rs: an extensible phylogenetic analysis library in Rust]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-03-13</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.12.640685v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Development and Characterization of Chicken Lung Organoids for Future In Vitro Modeling of Avian Influenza Virus-Host Cell Interaction 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.12.640685v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
High pathogenicity avian influenza viruses pose a growing threat to poultry, livestock, wildlife, and humans as they undergo accelerated expansion of host and geographical ranges. Since 2020, these viruses have driven a panzootic characterized by extensive viral diversification and spillover into species previously considered to be resistant to the disease. There is currently a lack of physiologically relevant in vitro models that can be used to screen the rapidly changing viral landscape. To address this need, we describe the first chicken lung organoids derived from adult stem cells of specific pathogen free White Leghorns. We analyze their gene expression with bulk RNA sequencing, confirm their cellular heterogeneity via single-nuclei RNA sequencing, and provide basic morphological characterization using hematoxylin and eosin staining, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, and transmission electron microscopy. The results indicate that the organoids contained several cell types, including non-ciliated columnar, cuboidal, squamous, and mucin-producing cells, representative of different regions of the avian respiratory system. Furthermore, expression of genes relevant to influenza A virus infection and replication appeared to be conserved across different sample types. These organoids have the potential to effectively and efficiently model viral infection of the chicken lung, enabling the investigation of viral pathogenesis and evolutionary potential, virus-host interactions, and discovery of targets for antiviral treatments.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nicholson, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zdyrski, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Corbett, M. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lowen, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Catucci, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Melvin, B. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stabler, L. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Douglass, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mochel, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allenspach, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carnaccini, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-03-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.03.12.640685</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Development and Characterization of Chicken Lung Organoids for Future In Vitro Modeling of Avian Influenza Virus-Host Cell Interaction]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-03-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.16.643514v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Whole-genome sequence of Potamopyrgus antipodarum: a model system for the maintenance of sexual reproduction reveals a recent whole-genome duplication 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.16.643514v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Key unanswered questions in biology center on the causes, consequences, and maintenance of sexual reproduction ("sex"). Genome-driven processes are central to the evolutionary and genetic mechanisms inherent to sex, making genomic resources a fundamental part of answering these questions. We present the first genome assembly for a species that is uniquely well-suited for the study of (a)sex in nature, Potamopyrgus antipodarum. This New Zealand snail is unusual in featuring multiple separate transitions from obligately sexual to obligately asexual reproduction, leading to the coexistence of phenotypically similar sexual and asexual forms, a feature that is required to directly study the maintenance of sex. These separately derived asexual lineages constitute separate evolutionary experiments, providing a powerful means of characterizing how the absence of sex affects genome evolution. Our genome assembly provides critical steps towards understanding causes and consequences of sex in this system and important resources for the rapidly growing P. antipodarum and molluscan genomics research community. In characterizing this genome, we uncovered unexpected evidence for a recent whole-genome duplication (WGD) in P. antipodarum. This discovery sets the stage for using P. antipodarum to evaluate processes of rediploidization following WGD and assess whether WGD might drive transitions to asexuality.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jalinsky, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McElroy, K. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharbrough, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bankers, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fields, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Higgins, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Toll, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boore, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Logsdon, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Neiman, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-03-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.03.16.643514</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Whole-genome sequence of Potamopyrgus antipodarum: a model system for the maintenance of sexual reproduction reveals a recent whole-genome duplication]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-03-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.19.644242v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic analysis of pigment production in the fungus Exophiala dermatitidis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.19.644242v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Exophiala dermatitidis is a polyextremotolerant black yeast species. E. dermatitidis produces 1,8 dihydroxynaphthalene (DHN) melanin via the Polyketide Synthase 1 (PKS1) pathway enabling it to survive harmful conditions. This study focused on random mutagenesis to obtain albino (alb) and hyper-pigmented (hyp) mutants. Notably, all 17 alb mutants possessed mutations in PKS1 whereas the 133 hyper-pigmented (hyp) mutants harbored mutations impacting a range of functions. Cell morphology and phenotypic assays showed additional differences between the alb and hyp mutants. Strikingly, three of the albino mutants (alb1, alb2, and alb3) were conditional in that despite the presence of mutations in PKS1 they were able to produce melanin upon exposure to different carbon sources. These mutants otherwise shared similar cell morphology and growth patterns with the obligate albinos. No additional shared mutations were found among the conditional albinos. Temperature and UV irradiation assays demonstrated reduced growth of albino mutants at higher temperatures (i.e., 42{degrees}C) and a greater sensitivity to higher doses of UV. Single nucleotide variant (SNVs) calling showed that hyper-pigmented mutants had a greater number of SNVs compared to albino strains. To date this is the first study to generate and characterize conditional albino mutants in E. dermatitidis with the ability to recover melanin production.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Harris, S. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chhoker, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hausner, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-03-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.03.19.644242</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic analysis of pigment production in the fungus Exophiala dermatitidis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-03-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.20.644475v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Impacts of competition and phenotypic plasticity on the viability of adaptive therapy 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.20.644475v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cancer is heterogeneous and variability in drug sensitivity is widely documented across cancer types. Adaptive therapy is an emerging modality of cancer treatment that leverages this drug resistance heterogeneity to improve therapeutic outcomes. Current standard treatments typically eliminate a large fraction of drug-sensitive cells, leading to drug-resistant relapse due to competitive release. Adaptive therapy aims to retain some drug-sensitive cells, thereby limiting resistant cell growth by ecological competition. While early clinical trials of such a strategy have shown promise, optimisation of adaptive therapy is a subject of active study. Current methods largely assume cell phenotypes to remain constant, even though cell-state transitions could permit drug-sensitive and -resistant phenotypes to interchange and thus escape therapy. We address this gap using a deterministic model of population growth, in which sensitive and resistant cells grow under competition and undergo cell-state transitions. Based on the models steady-state behaviour and temporal dynamics, we identify distinct balances of competition and phenotypic transitions that are suitable for effective adaptive versus constant dose therapy. Our data indicate that under adaptive therapy, models with cell-state transitions show a higher frequency of fluctuations than those without, suggesting that the balance between ecological competition and phenotypic transitions could determine population-level dynamical properties. Our analyses also identify key limitations of applying phenomenological models in clinical practice for therapy design and implementation, particularly when cell-state transitions are involved. These findings provide an overall perspective on the relevance of phenotypic plasticity for emerging cancer treatment strategies using population dynamics as an investigation framework.

Significance StatementDrug-sensitive and -resistant cancer cells can compete with each other within the same tumour, and adaptive therapy exploits this competition to control overall tumour growth. The fact that sensitive and resistant cell types can switch phenotypes complicates the implementation of adaptive therapy. Our ODE-based theoretical ecology framework shows that asymmetric competition favouring sensitive cells generally benefits therapy outcomes, while phenotypic plasticity is usually detrimental. Our model also provides cell population-level indicators that can help predict the underlying balance between competition and plasticity. Phenomenological models are limited by whether their parameters can be reliably identified given scarce data, and our study illuminates the scope of such models in understanding cancer population dynamics and the need for mechanistic modelling.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Vibishan, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jain, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sharma, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hari, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kadelka, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>George, J. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jolly, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-03-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.03.20.644475</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Impacts of competition and phenotypic plasticity on the viability of adaptive therapy]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-03-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.27.645669v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genome reannotation and effector candidate identification in Meloidogyne chitwoodi through gland-specific transcriptome analysis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.27.645669v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The root-knot nematode (RKN) Meloidogyne chitwoodi is a threat for potato production in the western United States, negatively impacting potato yield and product value. Meloidogyne chitwoodi produce proteins, called effectors, in their esophageal glands that are secreted during parasitism and play integral roles in plant-nematode interactions. Because the esophageal glands are the main effector secretory organ, we performed juvenile gland isolation and gland transcriptome analysis. The data allowed us to improve the M. chitwoodi genome annotation. Additionally, the gland-specific transcriptome data gave us an enrichment of gland-localized genes, which was validated by in situ hybridization. The gland transcriptome analysis led to the identification of 111 effector candidates. One of the effectors, Mc15g003960, which was highly expressed in the pre-parasitic J2 gland tissue, was further characterized. Expression of Mc15g003960 in Arabidopsis resulted in increased galling by M. chitwoodi. However, the ectopic expression of Mc15g003960 in planta did not suppress defense-related callose deposition, suggesting that this effector might be involved in processes other than interfering with plant basal defense responses. Our data shows that using the gland transcriptome, good quality genome annotation and stringent criteria, we can increase the efficiency of effector identification, which can be used to develop more sustainable management tools.

Authors summaryThe root-knot nematode Meloidogyne chitwoodi is a major problem for potato farmers in the western U.S., reducing crop yield and quality. These nematodes produce special proteins, called effectors, in their esophageal glands, which help them infect plants. Since these glands are the main source of effectors, we isolated them from juvenile nematodes and analyzed their gene expression. This helped us improve the nematodes genome map and identify genes specific to the glands. From this study, we found 111 potential effector genes. One of them, Mc15g003960, was highly active before the nematode started feeding. When we introduced this gene into Arabidopsis plants, the nematodes caused more damage, but it didnt seem to weaken the plants basic defense system. This suggests Mc15g003960 is not suppressing plant defenses and has a different role in helping the nematode with successful infection. Overall, our approach helped us identify key effectors more efficiently, which could lead to better ways to manage nematode infestations in the future.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Teixeira, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ko, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bali, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vieira, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gleason, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-03-29</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.03.27.645669</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genome reannotation and effector candidate identification in Meloidogyne chitwoodi through gland-specific transcriptome analysis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-03-29</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.01.644731v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The impact of fungal developmental structures on mechanical properties of mycelial materials. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.01.644731v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
This study explores how suppressing asexual development in Aspergillus nidulans enhances the mechanical properties of mycelial materials. Using four aconidial mutants ({Delta}brlA, {Delta}flbA, {Delta}fluG, and fadAG42R) that lack asexual development and a control strain (A28) that undergoes typical asexual development, we found that the absence of asexual development significantly improves mechanical strength. All mutants exhibited higher ultimate tensile strength (UTS) than the control, with {Delta}fluG and {Delta}brlA (fluffy nonsporulating, FNS phenotype) showing the highest UTS. Additionally, fadAG42R and {Delta}flbA (fluffy autolytic dominant, FAD phenotype) demonstrated significantly higher strain at failure (SF), linked to increased autolysis and lower dry cell mass compared to the control and FNS mutants. Solid-state NMR analysis revealed that autolysis in FAD mutants disrupts galactofuranose-related metabolic processes, altering cell wall composition and contributing to higher elasticity. These findings suggest that suppressing asexual development enhances mycelial material strength, while autolysis mechanisms influence elasticity. This research highlights the potential for genetic manipulation in fungi to engineer advanced mycelial-based materials with tailored mechanical properties.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gray, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edwards, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doan, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huso, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pan, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bolima, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gautam, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srivastava, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zupan, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marten, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-04-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.04.01.644731</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The impact of fungal developmental structures on mechanical properties of mycelial materials.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-04-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.04.647290v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Tubulin isotypes contribute opposing properties to balance anaphase spindle morphogenesis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.04.647290v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Faithful chromosome segregation requires proper function of the mitotic spindle, which is built from, and depends on, the coordinated regulation of many microtubules and the activities of molecular motors and MAPs. In addition, microtubules themselves are assembled from multiple variants, or isotypes of - and {beta}-tubulin, yet whether they mediate the activities of motors and MAPs required for proper spindle function remains poorly understood. Here, we use budding yeast to reveal that -tubulin isotypes regulate opposing outward- and inward-directed forces in the spindle midzone that facilitate optimal spindle elongation and length control. Moreover, we show that the isotypes mediate balanced spindle forces by differentially localizing the antagonistic force generators Cin8 (kinesin-5) and Kar3 (kinesin-14) to interpolar microtubules. Our results reveal new roles for tubulin isotypes in orchestrating motor and MAP activities and provide insights into how forces in the spindle are properly calibrated to ensure proper mitotic spindle morphogenesis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nsamba, E. T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bera, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Todi, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Savoy, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gupta, R. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gupta, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-04-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.04.04.647290</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Tubulin isotypes contribute opposing properties to balance anaphase spindle morphogenesis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-04-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.09.647968v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Histone H3 tail charge patterns govern nucleosome condensate formation and dynamics 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.09.647968v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Emerging models of nuclear organization suggest that chromatin forms functionally distinct microenvironments through phase separation. As chromatin architecture is organized at the level of the nucleosome and regulated by histone post-translational modifications, we investigated how these known regulatory mechanisms influence nucleosome phase behavior. By systematically altering charge distribution within the H3 tail, we found that the terminal and central regions modulate the phase boundary and tune nucleosome condensate viscosity differentially, as revealed by microscopy-based assays, microrheology, and simulations. Nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation experiments revealed that H3 tails remain dynamically mobile within condensates, and their mobility correlates with condensate viscosity. These results demonstrate that the number, identity, and spatial arrangement of basic residues in the H3 tail critically regulate nucleosome phase separation. Our findings support a model in which nucleosomes, through their intrinsic properties and modifications, actively shape the local chromatin microenvironment--providing new insight into the histone language in chromatin condensates.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hammonds, E. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Suresh, K. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meidl Zahorodny, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gupta, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, P. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morrison, E. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-04-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.04.09.647968</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Histone H3 tail charge patterns govern nucleosome condensate formation and dynamics]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-04-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.10.648098v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Two Spore Types in a Marine Parasite of Dinoflagellates 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.10.648098v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Marine alveolates (MALVs) are diverse, primarily parasitic micro-eukaryotes that significantly impact marine ecosystems. The life cycles of most MALVs remain elusive and the role of sexual reproduction in these organisms is a key question that may determine their ecological success. In this study we focus on a widespread dinoflagellate parasite of bloom-forming dinoflagellates, Amoebophrya.

After infection, we identified two distinct spores, differing in size, ultrastructure, swimming behavior, lifespan, gene expression, and metabolite composition. The smaller spores serve as infectious propagules, equipped with an apical complex for host invasion. They exhibit a distinct, shorter, and straighter swimming pattern, likely optimized for an extended lifespan while enhancing dispersion and chance for host encounters. Transcriptomic analysis reveals that these smaller spores are primed for efficient protein synthesis upon initiating a new infection.

Conversely, the larger spores cannot infect new hosts and are characterized by the expression of meiotic genes, underscoring their sexual nature. They have a shorter lifespan, exhibit more tortuous movement, along display condensed chromosomes, signaling readiness for mating. Interestingly, infected hosts already express meiotic genes, and a single infected host only produces progeny of the same spore type, suggesting that cell fate is determined prior to spore release.

Our study provides one of the first formal demonstrations of a sexually specialized cell in MALVs. Isolating compatible strains for cross-breeding and understanding how environmental conditions favor each reproductive route are the next key questions for elucidating the ecological success of MALVs in marine waters.

Significance StatementMarine alveolates (MALVs) are ecologically significant parasites that impact carbon cycling, causing major disease outbreaks affecting fisheries and aquaculture, and influencing the dynamics of harmful algal blooms. Despite their diversity and wide host range, much of our knowledge comes from environmental DNA, leaving important aspects of their biology, such as their life cycles, largely unknown. This study provides the first evidence of sexual reproduction in MALVs, linking spore polymorphism to infective or sexual routes. This discovery is crucial as sexual reproduction increases genetic diversity and adaptability, aiding MALVs resilience in changing environments. Understanding MALVs reproductive strategies deepens our insight into their ecological roles and their broader impact on marine ecosystems.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Szymczak, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pinaud, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Romero Rodriguez, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walde, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kayal, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alves-de-Souza, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bigeard, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gallet, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gachenot, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Le Panse, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jauzein, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Le Gac, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Decelle, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pohnert, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vallet, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Talman, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guillou, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-04-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.04.10.648098</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Two Spore Types in a Marine Parasite of Dinoflagellates]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-04-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.16.649193v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Exploring influenza A virus receptor distribution in the lactating mammary gland of domesticated livestock and in human breast tissue. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.16.649193v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The spread of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus among dairy cattle illustrates the adaptability of influenza A viruses (IAV) to infect non-traditional species. While IAV-specific sialic acid (SA) receptors have been identified in the mammary glands of dairy cattle, their presence in pigs, sheep, goats, and alpacas has not been studied until now. The zoonotic transmission of HPAI H5N1 to dairy and poultry farm workers during outbreaks raises public health concerns. This study employed lectin histochemistry to examine the mammary glands of livestock and humans. We found that these tissues were rich in SA 2,6-Gal receptors, followed by SA 2,3-Gal receptors, essential for IAV binding. Notably, the A(H5N1) clade 2.3.4.4b virus could bind to mammary tissue from both cattle and pigs. These findings highlight the potential for HPAI H5N1 to infect and spread within the mammary glands of production animals and humans.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Harm, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arruda, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Siepker, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fasina, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Groeltz, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baker, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phillips, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jones, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Espina, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Seger, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Plummer, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bell, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelli, R. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-04-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.04.16.649193</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Exploring influenza A virus receptor distribution in the lactating mammary gland of domesticated livestock and in human breast tissue.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-04-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.26.650795v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Comparative multi-omics profiling of Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense fibers at high temporal resolution reveals key differences in polysaccharide composition and associated glycosyltransferases 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.26.650795v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Among the two allopolyploid cultivated species of cotton, Gossypium barbadense is known for its superior quality fiber compared to G. hirsutum. Length and strength are key determinants of the fiber quality. Although the mature fibers are dried cell walls consisting mainly cellulose, the dynamic remodeling of pectin, xyloglucan, and xylan polysaccharides during fiber growth significantly impact the final fiber quality. Comprehensive knowledge about polysaccharides and their biosynthesis during fiber development of the cultivated species is important for improving fiber quality. In this study, comparative large-scale glycome, transcriptome and proteome profiling were conducted daily on fibers of both cotton species covering critical stages of fiber development spanning primary cell wall synthesis and the transition to secondary wall synthesis. Interspecific comparisons revealed that a delayed accumulation of cellulose content, as well as the occurrence of lower levels and differential compositions of non-fucosylated/fucosylated xyloglucans, homogalacturonans, and highly branched Rhamnogalacturonan-I polysaccharides might be contributing to longer fiber phenotypes of G. barbadense relative to G. hirsutum. Our study also suggests, differential temporal compositions of heteroxylans might contribute to variation in cellulose microfibril arrangement and strength of fiber exists between the two species of cotton. Comparative transcriptomic analysis identified differentially expressed polysaccharide-synthesizing glycosyltransferases that might underlie fiber quality differences between the two species. Transcripts encoding many cell wall localized expansins were more abundant in G. barbadense than in G. hirsutum. Overall, these findings extend our knowledge regarding the molecular factors that contribute to fiber quality and provide insights for targeted cotton fiber improvement.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTComparative multi-omics profiling of two major commercial cotton species, Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense revealed substantial differences in polysaccharide structures and expressed polysaccharide-synthesizing glycosyltransferases, that potentially contribute to differences in fiber length and strength. The molecular details elucidated in the present study contribute to the goal of improving fiber quality and its commercial value.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Swaminathan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>DeTemple, M. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mugisha, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sichterman, L. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xie, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Szymanski, D. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zabotina, O. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-04-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.04.26.650795</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Comparative multi-omics profiling of Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense fibers at high temporal resolution reveals key differences in polysaccharide composition and associated glycosyltransferases]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-04-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.12.653486v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Sewing the future of cotton: a multi-omics study combining nanomechanics, transcriptomics, and phenotypic traits 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.12.653486v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cellulose microfibrils that are essential for mechanical strength and overall quality of cotton fibers. This study quantifies and compares the nanoscale structural and mechanical properties of cellulose microfibrils such as microfibril dimensions, crossover count and angles, roughness, and Youngs modulus for two popular cotton species: Gossypium hirsutum (Gh) and Gossypium barbadense (Gb) fibers across four growth stages (8, 12, 18, and 22 days post-anthesis) using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Our results revealed for the first time that Gb fibers exhibit a better alignment, finer dimensions, and higher stiffness compared to Gh fibers at nanoscale, resulting in smoother fiber surfaces, and improved quality at macroscale. We are also the first to develop machine-learning models to predict macroscale phenotypic traits specifically boll length and cellulose content using nanoscale features alone and in combination with multi-omics modalities, substantially enhancing the predictive accuracy and highlighting opportunities for robust cross-species modeling of cotton fiber traits.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hasib, M. H. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Masud, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Biswas, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jubery, T. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stanley, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Swaminathan, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zabotina, O. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-05-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.05.12.653486</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Sewing the future of cotton: a multi-omics study combining nanomechanics, transcriptomics, and phenotypic traits]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-05-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.654078v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Application of post glycosylation modifying enzymes for mass spectrometry imaging of modified N-glycans in situ. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.654078v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Glycans are essential components of cells and are involved in innumerable biological processes. Their structural diversity and complexity present unique analytical challenges. Glycans are comprised of various types of monosaccharides that are linked together at different positions and with varied stereochemistry. In addition, glycans are frequently decorated with a diverse set of chemical modifications, termed post-glycosylation modifications (PGMs). Characterization of PGMs is essential for a thorough understanding of glycans, however, the technical challenges and low throughput of current methodologies have limited our understanding of these modifications. Here we demonstrate a novel approach for rapid visualization of specific PGMs present in tissue N-glycans by applying PGM-targeting enzymes to mass spectrometry imaging (MSI). The method enables in situ investigation of glycans with PGMs en masse, identifying the sugar residue and position modified, as well as visualizing the spatial distribution of each modified N-glycan in tissues. As the repertoire of PGM-targeting enzymes expands, we anticipate this approach will enable a better understanding of PGM distribution within a dynamic N-glycome. This may yield both new biological insights and the potential for identification of novel disease biomarkers.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dreifus, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chuzel, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Escobar, E. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grimsley, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hanneman, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fossa, S. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gregory, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, R. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Drake, R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foster, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taron, C. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-05-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.05.14.654078</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Application of post glycosylation modifying enzymes for mass spectrometry imaging of modified N-glycans in situ.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-05-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.02.657498v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Comparative population genomics of relictual Caribbean island Gossypium hirsutum 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.02.657498v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Gossypium hirsutum is the worlds most important source of cotton fiber, yet the diversity and population structure of its wild forms remain largely unexplored. The complex domestication history of G. hirsutum combined with reciprocal introgression with a second domesticated species, G. barbadense, has generated a wealth of morphological forms and feral derivatives of both species and their interspecies recombinants, which collectively are scattered across a large geographic range in arid regions of the Caribbean basin. Here we assessed genetic diversity within and among populations from two Caribbean islands, Puerto Rico (n = 43, five sites) and Guadeloupe (n = 25, one site), which contain putative wild and/or introgressed forms. Using whole-genome resequencing data and a phylogenomic framework derived from a broader genomic survey, we parsed individuals into feral derivatives and truly wild forms. Feral cottons display uneven levels of genetic and morphological resemblance to domesticated cottons, with diverse patterns of genetic variation and heterozygosity. These patterns are inferred to reflect a complex history of interspecific and intraspecific gene flow that is spatially highly variable in its effects. Wild cottons in both Caribbean islands appear to be relatively inbred, especially the Guadeloupe samples. Our results highlight the dynamics of population demographics in relictual wild cottons that experienced profound genetic bottlenecks associated with repeated habitat destruction superimposed on a natural ecogeographical distribution comprising widely scattered populations. These results have implications for conservation and utilization of wild diversity in G. hirsutum.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ning, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yuan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, C.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Magbanua, Z. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pechanova, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dong, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Udall, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.02.657498</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Comparative population genomics of relictual Caribbean island Gossypium hirsutum]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.03.657639v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Postnatal Pulmonary Artery Development from Transcript to Tissue 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.03.657639v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Many congenital conditions and surgical interventions perturb the hemodynamics experienced by proximal pulmonary arteries during early postnatal development, thus leading to differential gene expression and associated changes in vascular structure and function. Among these, pathologic conditions include patent ductus arteriosus, pulmonary atresia and stenosis, and hypoxemia-induced pulmonary hypertension while surgical interventions include the placement of a Blalock-Taussig shunt as well as Glenn, Fontan, and Norwood procedures. Despite the significant morbidity associated with these diverse conditions, there has been little attention directed towards understanding natural postnatal development of pulmonary arteries from both biological and mechanical perspectives. With-out such information, we cannot truly understand the phenotype of the affected pulmonary artery, which is fundamental to improving diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. In this paper, we present novel data from wild-type mice that document normal postnatal changes in select gene expression, vascular wall composition, and biomechanical properties of proximal pulmonary arteries. These findings enabled the establishment of a novel, data-informed computational model of pulmonary artery development capable of simulating outcomes in response to perturbations in the pulmonary artery hemodynamic environment.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Schwarz, E. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ramachandra, A. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yeung, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Manning, E. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weiss, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Humphrey, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.03.657639</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Postnatal Pulmonary Artery Development from Transcript to Tissue]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.10.658632v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Proximal Pulmonary Artery Stiffening as a Biomarker of Cardiopulmonary Aging 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.10.658632v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The geroscience hypothesis suggests that understanding underlying ageing mechanisms will enable us to delay aging and lessen age-related disability and diseases. While hallmarks of ageing list multiple contributing factors, role of mechanics has only been recently recognized and increasingly appreciated. Here, we use mouse models of ageing to investigate changes in mechanics of the proximal pulmonary artery, lung and right ventricle function in ageing. We found an age-related decline in the capacity to store energy and increased circumferential stiffness of the proximal pulmonary artery with age that associated with a reorientation of collagen towards the circumferential direction, decreased exercise ability, and decreased function of the lung and right ventricle. The observed compromised mechanics in proximal pulmonary artery is consistent across multiple mouse models of accelerated ageing. Further, transcriptional changes in proximal pulmonary artery indicate that aging is associated with senescence of perivascular macrophages, adventitial fibroblasts, and medial smooth muscle cells. Older pulmonary arteries increase expression of genes associated with ECM turnover (including genes in the TGF{beta} pathway) and increased intercellular signaling amongst perivascular macrophages, fibroblasts and smooth muscle cells. Our results provide promising biomarkers of ageing for diagnosis and potential pathways and molecular targets for targeting anti-ageing therapies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>De Man, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cai, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doddaballapur, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guerrera, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lin, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Justet, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Abu Hussein, N. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cavinato, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Raredon, M. S. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heerdt, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yan, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, M.-J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bruns, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tellides, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Humphrey, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaminski, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ramachandra, A. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Manning, E. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.10.658632</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Proximal Pulmonary Artery Stiffening as a Biomarker of Cardiopulmonary Aging]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.10.658939v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Backbone Rigidity Encodes Universal Viscoelastic Signatures in Biomolecular Condensates 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.10.658939v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Biomolecular condensates exhibit a wide range of viscoelastic properties shaped by their molecular sequence and composition. Coarse-grained molecular models of intrinsically disordered proteins are widely used to complement experiments by revealing the structure and thermodynamics of condensates. However, fully flexible chain representations of inherently disordered proteins often fail to capture their complex viscoelastic behavior, instead predicting purely viscous responses. In this work, we demonstrate that introducing sequence-dependent chain rigidity enables the accurate reproduction of the elastic and viscous moduli for experimentally characterized condensates of A1-LCD and its numerous mutants. Furthermore, we show that the frequency-dependent loss factor can be described by a single parameter that universally correlates with viscosity across different sequences and variations of the coarse-grained molecular energy function. Our results also reveal that increased chain rigidity, indicated by a larger gyration radius, expands the condensates elastic regime. Finally, we elucidate the microscopic origins of sequence-encoded viscoelasticity by showing how it can be tuned through sequence rearrangements that promote sticker cluster formation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Biswas, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.10.658939</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Backbone Rigidity Encodes Universal Viscoelastic Signatures in Biomolecular Condensates]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.18.660300v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Flexible docking of cyclic peptides to proteins using CABS-dock 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.18.660300v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cyclic peptides are promising therapeutics, but their flexible docking remains challenging. We present a protocol based on the well-established CABS-dock method, enhanced with cyclic restraints and Rosetta refinement. The approach was evaluated on 38 benchmark complexes previously used in other docking method studies. While selecting the truly best model remains difficult, near-native solutions are frequently sampled. CABS-dock offers global, unbiased docking without prior binding site knowledge, making it valuable for pose generation, structural ensemble modeling, and integration into AI-driven peptide-protein docking workflows.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zalewski, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Badaczewska-Dawid, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kmiecik, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.18.660300</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Flexible docking of cyclic peptides to proteins using CABS-dock]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.22.660983v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Toxoplasma effector TgWIP hijacks dendritic cell actin and motility via Nck1/Grb2 and the WAVE complex 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.22.660983v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii enhances its dissemination to distant organs by hijacking infected leukocytes via a Trojan Horse mechanism. Upon infecting dendritic cells (DCs), Toxoplasma induces a hypermigratory phenotype characterized by podosome dissolution and formation of F-actin stress fibers. We previously showed that these cytoskeletal changes depend on the effector protein Toxoplasma WAVE complex-interacting protein (TgWIP) secreted from parasites to infected leukocytes. Here, we identify the host adaptor proteins Non-catalytic region of tyrosine kinase adaptor protein 1 and 2 (Nck1/2) and Growth factor receptor-bound protein 2 (Grb2) as direct TgWIP interactors. TgWIP mainly uses two distinct proline-rich regions (PRRs) to interact with Nck1 and Grb2. Mutating these PRRs abrogates TgWIP binding to Nck1 and Grb2 and diminishes podosome dissolution and DC hypermotility. Furthermore, we show that TgWIP directly interacts with the actin nucleation promoting factor WAVE Regulatory Complex (WRC) via a WRC-interacting receptor sequence (WIRS). Disrupting this interaction also influences actin cytoskeletal remodeling and DC hypermotility. Collectively, our data reveal that TgWIP directly interacts with multiple actin regulators, including Nck1, Grb2, and the WRC, to remodel the actin cytoskeleton of the host cells, elucidating a key mechanism that Toxoplasma exploits to enhance host cell migration and dissemination.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Morales, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kramer, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Moraes de Siqueira, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, A. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sangare, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saeij, J. P. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.22.660983</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Toxoplasma effector TgWIP hijacks dendritic cell actin and motility via Nck1/Grb2 and the WAVE complex]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.18.660386v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Rapid Cell-Free Combinatorial Mutagenesis Workflow Using Small Oligos Suitable for High-Iteration, Active Learning-Guided Protein Engineering 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.18.660386v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Active learning-guided protein engineering e2iciently navigates the challenging fitness landscape by screening designs iteratively in a model-guided design-build-test-learn cycle. However, while high iterations boost performance, current workflows reliance on tedious and costly cell-based cloning and expression steps limits the iterations they can practically implement. To address this problem, we present a novel combinatorial mutagenesis workflow that uses small ([~]20-40 bp) mutagenic annealed-oligo fragments and cell-free expression to rapidly and conveniently screen protein variants in <9 hours. Using bulk-prepared mutagenic oligos eliminates the need for cloning, PCR-based mutagenesis, or ordering costly genes each screening round. Their >80% size reduction from current fragment-based shu2ling strategies also helps avoid including multiple mutations on the same fragment, reducing the number one must order to cover the design space. By screening 3-10 fragment assemblies for two di2erent proteins, we show our approach is a general, scalable, and cost-e2ective platform for high-iteration protein engineering.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Godin, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hejazi, S. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lange, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aldamak, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Reuel, N. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.18.660386</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Rapid Cell-Free Combinatorial Mutagenesis Workflow Using Small Oligos Suitable for High-Iteration, Active Learning-Guided Protein Engineering]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.23.661129v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Peroxisomal import is circadian in glia and regulates sleep and lipid metabolism 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.23.661129v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Peroxisomes are critical organelles that detoxify cellular waste while also catabolizing and anabolizing lipids. How peroxisomes coordinate protein import and support metabolic functions across complex tissues and timescales remains poorly understood in vivo. Using the Drosophila brain, we discover a striking enrichment of peroxisomes in the neuronal soma and the cortex glia that enwrap them. Unexpectedly, import of peroxisomal proteins into cortex glia, but not neurons, oscillated across time and peaked in the early morning. Rhythmic peroxisomal import in cortex glia autonomously required the circadian clock and Peroxin 5 (Pex5; peroxisomal biogenesis factor 5 homolog), with import persistently elevated in clock mutants. Notably, reducing Pex5 in cortex glia, but not neurons, caused hyperactivity and reduced total sleep. Moreover, brain lipid metabolism was dramatically altered upon Pex5 knockdown, with glia impacting sphingolipids and triacylglycerols, and neurons impacting phospholipids. The cell-type specificity of these Pex5 phenotypes highlights unique roles for peroxisomal import in both sleep and lipid metabolism in the brain.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Das, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Serna, I. M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kalita, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sherpa, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vaughen, J. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.23.661129</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Peroxisomal import is circadian in glia and regulates sleep and lipid metabolism]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.26.661838v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Recessive antimorph alleles reveal novel functions of the OPAQUE1 myosin XI in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.26.661838v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Ideal plant architecture optimizes canopy structure and increases grain yield in maize. However, its underlying genetic mechanisms remain poorly characterized. Two recessive, EMS-induced maize mutants were identified that have reduced stature, opaque kernels, and abnormal subsidiary cell division, and are allelic to opaque1 (o1). These two new missense alleles, o1-2995 and o1-tan62, unlike the loss-of-function alleles previously identified, generate O1 protein but paradoxically generate more severe morphological defects. These defects include reduced internode elongation and partial suppression of excessive tassel and ear branching in ramosa1 (ra1), ra2, and ra3 mutants. We show that o1-2995 and o1-tan62 are novel alleles of o1, and play a role in plant growth via internode elongation, subsidiary cell division positioning, leaf patterning, inflorescence development, and overall plant architecture.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zebosi, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martinez, S. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wimalanathan, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ssengo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Best, N. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Facette, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rasmussen, C. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vollbrecht, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-06-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.26.661838</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Recessive antimorph alleles reveal novel functions of the OPAQUE1 myosin XI in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-06-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.30.662325v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Variability in cadmium accumulation in quinoa grain: potential role of crop domestication and other factors mediating differences in resilience and uptake 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.30.662325v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is a nutritious crop expanding in importance worldwide, though its capacity to accumulate cadmium (Cd) can put consumers at risk. The objective of this study was to identify genotypes that vary in Cd uptake and explore how domestication, saponins, and root-associated microbes could influence these differences. Twelve genotypes representing wild ancestors and modern landraces or cultivars from four distinct ecoregions were grown in a greenhouse trial using potting media amended with Cd. Differences in phenological developmental traits were recorded during growth, and plant biomass, microbial derived amino sugars in roots, and concentrations of Cd and other essential elements in grains were quantified at harvest. Phenological development of Ancestors were more adversely affected by Cd than modern genotypes, and Cd concentrations were higher in those developed later near coastal regions in South America and the United States, suggesting that quinoa become more tolerant over domestication and selection. Concentrations of several elements were also lower in the Ancestors vs. modern genotypes in response to Cd, indicating that modern genotypes may not downregulate root transporters as an adaptation to Cd stress. Fungal derived amino sugars were negatively correlated with Cd concentrations in the Coastal ecotypes which had the highest uptake, suggesting that the presence of root-associated fungi could help restrict translocation aboveground. Results of this study will provide breeders with new insights into factors that could aid in selecting for quinoa with low Cd-uptake. Early genotypes selected in the Altiplano region may be most useful in these breeding programs.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rodriguez-Sanchez, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jimenez-Castaneda, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Filley, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brenner, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Macedo, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Casa, V. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hoagland, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-07-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.06.30.662325</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Variability in cadmium accumulation in quinoa grain: potential role of crop domestication and other factors mediating differences in resilience and uptake]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-07-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.02.662800v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Allelic Variation in CYP3A4 and PLB1 Drives Feed Efficiency and Immunometabolic Resilience in Beef Cattle 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.02.662800v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
We evaluated genetic markers for feed efficiency and immunocompetence in 108 crossbred steers (217 {+/-} 8.2 kg) fed a high-forage total mixed ration for 35 days, using GrowSafe8000 intake nodes to calculate residual feed intake (RFI). From the 20 most efficient (low-RFI) and 20 least efficient (high-RFI) animals, we genotyped three metabolic loci (CYP3A4 rs438103222, PLB1 rs456635825, CRAT rs876019788) and profiled blood mRNA levels of these plus eight innate/adaptive immune genes. Logistic regression revealed that CYP3A4 and PLB1 polymorphisms--but not CRAT--were strongly associated with initial and final body weight, average daily gain, and feed intake: CYP3A4 A/A and PLB1 A-allele carriers achieved superior growth on reduced feed. Haplotype reconstruction across the three loci defined eight multi-SNP combinations, with the C-A-A haplotype enriched in low-RFI steers and combinations harboring CYP3A4 A and PLB1 A alleles linked to low RFI. Intriguingly, these favorable genotypes also overlapped with up-regulation of immune sensors and effectors (e.g., CD14, TLR4, TNF-), indicating a coordinated metabolic-immune adaptation in efficient cattle. Collectively, our results validate CYP3A4 and PLB1 as high-impact quantitative trait nucleotides for marker-assisted selection aimed at simultaneously improving feed efficiency and immune resilience in beef production.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Morenikeji, O. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taiwo, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Idowu, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gratz, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Olabosoye, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>King, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andrews, N. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saccoh, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grytsay, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ogunade, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-07-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.07.02.662800</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Allelic Variation in CYP3A4 and PLB1 Drives Feed Efficiency and Immunometabolic Resilience in Beef Cattle]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-07-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.13.664636v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Heat Stress and Soil Microbial Disturbance Influence Soybean Root Metabolite, Microbiome Profiles, and Nodulation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.13.664636v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Heat stress is a major limiting factor for soybean productivity worldwide. Recent studies have highlighted the critical role of the plant microbiome in enhancing plant resilience to heat stress. However, our understanding of the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying root-microbiome interactions under heat stress remains limited. To elucidate the role of native soil microbes in the heat tolerance of soybean genotypes, we analyzed rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities via 16S rRNA and ITS sequencing, and characterized root metabolites and anatomical traits in response to microbiome composition and heat stress. Soybean plants were grown under controlled conditions in either natural soil containing native microbiota or in microbiome-disturbed soil (via 3-hour autoclaving), under both optimal and elevated temperature regimes. Alpha and beta diversity analyses revealed significant microbial shifts between treatments. Distinct clustering of bacterial, fungal, and metabolite profiles was observed under high temperature and microbial disturbance. Nodule-forming bacteria such as Rhizobium and Janthinobacterium were markedly suppressed, and belowground traits exhibited sensitivity, with significantly reduced nodule numbers and nodulation efficiency under high temperature and soil microbial perturbation. Non-targeted root metabolomics identified 372 differentially accumulated metabolites. Integrative multi-omics analysis revealed associations between metagenomic profiles, metabolite levels, and nitrogen-fixation traits, implying a coordinated modulation of root physiological processes. These findings contribute to a growing understanding of how heat stress interacts with rhizosphere microbial communities and may support future efforts in breeding climate-resilient soybean cultivars.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Elango, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Van der Laan, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gholizadeh, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Premarathne, M. D. G. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dutter, C. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>DePew, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McDaniel, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-07-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.07.13.664636</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Heat Stress and Soil Microbial Disturbance Influence Soybean Root Metabolite, Microbiome Profiles, and Nodulation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-07-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.17.665168v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Population Genomics Informs Conservation Strategies for Critically Endangered Kokia Species in Hawaii 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.17.665168v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Island endemic species are particularly vulnerable to extinction due to their limited geographic ranges and small population sizes. Kokia is a genus found exclusively in the Hawaiian Islands, whose species were once major components of local forests but have experienced significant population reductions due to habitat destruction and the consequences of invasive species. Although conservation of Kokia species has been an ongoing topic for over a century, records regarding historical efforts are sparse. Recently generated genomes for each of the three extant species provide the foundation for understanding genetic diversity and population structure for future conservation work. Whole genome resequencing of K. cookei (n = 23 samples), K. drynarioides (n = 92), and K. kauaiensis (n = 45) suggests that K. drynarioides has the lowest overall diversity, reflecting propagation from a limited part of the remaining gene pool, whereas K. kauaiensis exhibits the most diversity. Diversity in the primarily graft-propagated K. cookei is higher than expected, and slightly higher than in the free-living K. drynarioides. Notably, our analyses identified a source of novel variation in K. cookei in a cultivated plant historically labeled K. drynarioides. Population structure analyses reveal a single population for K. cookei, but three groups for each of the other two species. Importantly, our analyses identify clusters of related individuals, reflected in genetic distance and clustering metrics, which provide valuable information for increasing diversity in managed populations and in ex situ conservation collections. These results provide a genomic framework for ongoing efforts in restoring and maintaining diversity in these critically endangered Hawaiian species.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ning, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kayal, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wendel, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hsu, C.-y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Magbanua, Z. V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pechanova, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yorkston, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morden, C. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Keir, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>VanDeMark, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peterson, D. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arick, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Grover, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-07-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.07.17.665168</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Population Genomics Informs Conservation Strategies for Critically Endangered Kokia Species in Hawaii]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-07-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.04.674358v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genome analysis of Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus brevis isolated from traditionally fermented Ethiopian kocho and their probiotic properties 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.04.674358v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Probiotics are essential for promoting health, with lactic acid bacteria (LAB) from traditional fermented foods like Ethiopian kocho offering valuable benefits. The objective of this study was to systematically analyse the genomic characteristics, bacteriocin production, and probiotic potential of LAB strains isolated from fermented Ethiopian kocho. The research involved isolating LAB from kocho, assessing their tolerance to acid and bile salts, evaluating antimicrobial activity, determining antibiotic susceptibility, and conducting whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to investigate genetic relatedness. Out of 150 LAB isolates, 7 (4.67%) exhibited remarkable acid tolerance, surviving at rates between 50.52-74.05% and 33.33-62.40% after 3 and 6 hours of exposure to pH 2, respectively. These seven acid-tolerant isolates also demonstrated exceptional resistance to 0.3% bile salt, maintaining survival rates ranging from 88.96% to 98.10% over 24 hours. In addition, the isolates displayed inhibitory effects against several important foodborne pathogenic bacteria, underscoring their potential as natural antimicrobial agents. Antibiotic susceptibility testing revealed that all isolates were susceptible to ampicillin, tetracycline, and erythromycin, whereas the most potent isolates exhibited significant resistance to kanamycin. Notably, four of the seven isolates showed resistance to streptomycin, while the remaining three were sensitive. The WGS analysis revealed that the isolates belonged to the Lactobacillus genus, including six Lactobacillus plantarum strains and one Lactobacillus brevis strain. Genomic analysis using the Bayesian Analysis of Gene Essentiality (BAGEL) tool predicted the presence of two class II bacteriocins across all seven strains, further supporting their potential as functional probiotic candidates. Overall, our findings highlight the probiotic potential of the seven Lactobacillus strains, demonstrating their acid and bile salt tolerance, antimicrobial properties, and genetic predisposition for bacteriocin production.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Goulart, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mulaw, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tesfay, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sisay, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Muleta, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Musa, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Narayanan, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-09-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.09.04.674358</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genome analysis of Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus brevis isolated from traditionally fermented Ethiopian kocho and their probiotic properties]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-09-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.07.674752v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Human shields alter antipredator behavior in Guenther's dik-dik (Madoqua guentheri) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.07.674752v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Human activities affect landscape use by wildlife, with many predators actively avoiding areas near humans. In human-occupied areas, prolonged habituation to human activity could therefore lead to relaxed antipredator behavior by prey species, which can be detrimental when predators return or if individuals are translocated to new areas that host predators. We conducted behavioral trials to test whether exposure of Guenthers dik-dik (Madoqua guentheri) to human activity affected habituation to humans and, by extension, response to predation cues. We hypothesized that dik-diks living in areas with higher levels of human activity would exhibit shorter flight initiation distances and spend less time responding to predation cues than those in areas with less human activity, but would respond more strongly to non-specific predation cues (i.e., alarm calls from white-browed sparrow-weavers, a locally common bird) than to cues associated with predators that avoid human activity (i.e., hyena vocalizations). Flight initiation distance and responses to both sparrow-weaver alarm calls and hyena vocalizations varied predictably with differences in human activity: dik-diks living in areas with more human activity had shorter flight initiation distances and spent less time responding to predation cues than those living in areas with less human activity, but responded more strongly to the sparrow-weaver alarm calls than hyena vocalizations in the area with the highest level of human activity. As human populations expand and overlap increasingly with predators, human settlements and activities may increase susceptibility of prey to predators by increasing prey naivety to predators that avoid humans. These results are particularly relevant for ecotourism in working landscapes and translocation of habituated animals, both of which may increase prey naivety.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Owino, R. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hawkins, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Noordermeer, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rodriguez, M. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stanton, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goheen, J. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alston, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-09-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.09.07.674752</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Human shields alter antipredator behavior in Guenther's dik-dik (Madoqua guentheri)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-09-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.08.674934v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Prokineticin-2 Upregulates GDNF in Astrocytes and Pharmacological Modulation of PK2 Receptors offers Neuroprotection in Experimental Models of Parkinson's Disease 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.08.674934v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Despite a wealth of preclinical studies establishing neuroprotective and neurorestorative properties of glial cell-line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in animal models of Parkinsons disease (PD), clinical trials utilizing direct intracranial infusion of GDNF protein, or adeno-associated virus (AAV)-mediated GDNF gene transfer has not achieved the desired efficacy, largely due to challenges in delivery methods. Given GDNFs strong potential for neuroprotection, alternative strategies to elevate its expression by beyond invasive injection or genetic manipulation remain a promising therapeutic avenue for PD. We previously reported that prokineticin signaling provides a compensatory protective response against dopaminergic neuronal degeneration in cell and animal models of PD. Herein, we report a novel finding that PK2 regulates GDNF gene expression in astrocytes, suggesting that PK2 signaling can be harnessed for neuroprotection in PD. Treatment of cultured astrocytes with the PK2 protein, PK2 gene overexpression or prokineticin receptor 1 (PKR1) agonist IS20 significantly induced the GDNF gene expression and the protein secretion, resulting in enhanced dopaminergic cell survival in cell culture models of PD. Importantly, systemic administration of IS20 through intraperitoneal or intranasal routes elevated GDNF levels in the mouse brain, including the nigrostriatal system. Furthermore, IS20 treatment conferred significant neuroprotective effects in both 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-induced and MitoPark transgenic mouse models of PD. Collectively, our translational findings suggest that pharmacological modulation PK2 signaling may unlock the full clinical benefit of GDNF, offering a novel and non-invasive therapeutic strategy for Parkinsons disease.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Luo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clabaugh, G. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Neal, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zenitsky, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jin, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anantharam, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nebigil, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Desaubry, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanthasamy, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-09-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.09.08.674934</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Prokineticin-2 Upregulates GDNF in Astrocytes and Pharmacological Modulation of PK2 Receptors offers Neuroprotection in Experimental Models of Parkinson's Disease]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-09-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.10.675456v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Genetic and environmental factors regulating soybean reproductive stages and their transitions 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.10.675456v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The reproductive stage of soybean is influenced by the effect of genotype, environment, and their interactions. While days to flowering and days to full maturity have been studied, a systematic and comprehensive study that investigates the variation in days to each stage and the role of maturity-related genes and environmental variables is lacking. Therefore, we studied 508 unique accessions from the USDA germplasm collection from maturity group 0-IV, and a set of 67 near-isogenic lines differing for maturity-related genes. Field experiments and evaluations were conducted in central Iowa, USA. The days to each of the reproductive stages, R1-R8, were recorded. We report considerable variation in the duration of reproductive growth stages between flowering and maturity, which is largely explainable by known flowering and maturity genes as well as environmental variables, day length, and growing degree days. Besides the known maturity-related genes E1, E2, and Dt1, we identified two novel SNPs, such as Glyma.01G180600 and Glyma.10G221300, as potential targets for genetic regulation of reproductive stages. We also captured two other loci, Glyma.08G216800 and Glyma.04G088100 for day length and growing degree days, respectively, that revealed dynamic regulation of environmental gradients on the reproductive stages. Furthermore, we developed a random forest-based genetic maturity model that can predict genetic and environmental effects across a wide range of genotypes. This study broadens the understanding of the factors that contribute to reproductive development, which will help to develop cultivars that combine the optimal combinations of stage durations for a higher seed yield and enhanced resilience.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chakrabarty, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shook, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-09-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.09.10.675456</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Genetic and environmental factors regulating soybean reproductive stages and their transitions]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-09-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.11.675613v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A single-cell immune atlas of primary and secondary lymphoid organs in pigs 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.11.675613v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has revolutionized understandings of cellular identities and functions due to the ability to study transcriptome-wide gene expression within individual cells. Multi-tissue scRNA-seq atlases have generated holistic understandings of body-wide cell dynamics and serve as key foundational resources for further scientific studies across a variety of species. Pigs are a valuable biomedical model, and pork is an essential global food source, but minimal understanding of immune cell identities and functions across anatomical locations limits agricultural and health advancements in pigs. To address current limitations, we apply scRNA-seq to create an atlas of immune cells recovered from key immune tissues including primary lymphoid organs (bone marrow and thymus) and secondary lymphoid organs (lymph node and spleen). Thymus data was compared to a previously published scRNA-seq dataset of pig thymus and shared a general consensus while also identifying several new thymic cell populations. Comparison of spleen to a human splenic scRNA-seq dataset also revealed conserved features, including two subsets of innate lymphoid cells conserved between pigs and humans. Spatial reconstruction of lymph node structure from scRNA-seq data revealed follicular organization with similar cell type distributions and cell signaling interactions to those in human lymph nodes. To expand accessibility of the scRNA-seq atlas for biological query, we deploy an interactive application and demonstrate its use for non-computational exploration of diverse cell populations recovered from bone marrow. Overall, results expand current foundational understandings of immune cell identities and functions in pig lymphoid organs and demonstrate pig-to-human immune similarities to consider for future research applications. Materials associated with this work are made readily accessible for others to investigate individual queries requiring foundational knowledge pertaining to pig immunity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wiarda, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kapoor, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sivasankaran, S. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Byrne, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Loving, C. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuggle, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-09-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.09.11.675613</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A single-cell immune atlas of primary and secondary lymphoid organs in pigs]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-09-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.18.676787v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A Structure-Aware Generative Framework for Exploring Protein Sequence and Function Space 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.18.676787v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The rapid expansion of protein sequence databases has far outpaced experimental structure determination, leaving many unannotated sequences, particularly the more remote homologs with low sequence identity. Because protein folds are more conserved and functionally informative than sequences alone, structural information offers a powerful lens for analysis. Here, we introduce a generative, structure-aware framework that integrates geometric encoding and coevolutionary constraints to map, cluster, and design protein sequences. Our approach employs the 3D interaction (3Di) alphabet to convert local residue geometries into compact, 20-state discrete representations. Using ProstT5, we enable bidirectional translation between amino acid sequences and 3Di representations, facilitating sensitive homology detection and structure-guided sequence generation. We then augment the latent generative landscape methodology by combining 3Di-based alignments with direct coupling analysis (DCA) and variational autoencoders (VAE), imbuing tasks such as clustering, annotation, and design with structural information. This integrative framework enhances the detection of coevolutionary signals and enables rational sampling of structural variants, even without functional labels. We demonstrate the utility of our method across diverse protein families, including globins, kinases, and malate dehydrogenases, achieving improved contact prediction, homology inference, and sequence generation. Together, our approach offers a quantitative, generative view of protein structure space, advancing protein evolution and design studies.

Significance StatementProtein sequence databases are growing far faster than our ability to experimentally determine structures, leaving much of protein space poorly annotated, especially for distant homologs. Because protein structure is more conserved and informative than sequence alone, new approaches are needed to exploit structural signals at scale. We present a generative framework that integrates compact structural representations with evolutionary constraints to map, cluster, and design protein sequences. By combining geometric encoding with coevolutionary modeling, our approach enables sensitive homology detection, improved inference of structural contacts, and rational exploration of sequence space without requiring functional labels. This work provides a quantitative bridge between protein sequence and structure, advancing our ability to interpret protein evolution and guide protein design.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shukla, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Morcos, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-09-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.09.18.676787</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A Structure-Aware Generative Framework for Exploring Protein Sequence and Function Space]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-09-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.21.677601v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Soybean aphids exploit abscisic acid signaling to suppress jasmonate defense responses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.21.677601v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
SummaryO_LISoybean aphids (Aphis glycines) can induce susceptibility on soybean (Glycine max) during colonization. However, the mechanism for this process is not known. Based on previous transcriptome analyses, we hypothesized that aphids block effective jasmonate (JA) defenses by inducing an antagonistic abscisic acid (ABA) signal.
C_LIO_LITo test this hypothesis, we used a combination of gene expression analyses, measurements of hormone levels, and aphid bioassays on plants with reduced expression of ABA-related genes.
C_LIO_LIAphid feeding attenuated JA responses in soybean plants and facilitated the growth of a chewing herbivore. Aphid-treated plants had increased levels of cis-JA but not biologically active JA-isoleucine, and aphid feeding induced expression of genes associated with JA-Ile catabolism. In parallel, aphid-feeding induced higher levels of ABA. ABA treatment and knockdown lines impaired in ABA biosynthesis (aba2-RNAi) or signaling (scof-1-RNAi), showed that ABA suppressed wound-induced JA responses. Aphid populations were significantly reduced on ABA-deficient plants and aphid-regulated attenuation of JA signaling was abolished in these lines. Remarkably, plants defective in ABA signaling had increased JA signaling in the absence of stressors.
C_LIO_LIOur results indicate that, in soybean, the ABA pathway is necessary to control basal levels of JA and soybean aphids exploit this ABA-JA antagonism to suppress plant defenses.
C_LI
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hohenstein, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kanobe, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Natukunda, M. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gallardo, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kovinich, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Helms, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tooker, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>MacIntosh, G. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-09-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.09.21.677601</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Soybean aphids exploit abscisic acid signaling to suppress jasmonate defense responses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-09-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680729v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Structurally Informed Fitness Landscapes for Surveillance of Emerging PRRSV Variants 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680729v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Antibodies play a central role in neutralizing pathogens through direct interference with viral entry and recruitment of effector immune cells. However, viruses employ sophisticated escape mechanisms to evade these defenses, primarily through mutations in surface glycoproteins that reduce antibody binding affinity or alter critical functional domains. Antibody escape remains a formidable challenge in drug design efforts for Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV), a pathogen notorious for its rapid evolution and structural plasticity. Here we present EscaPRRS (Escape scoring for PRRS virus), a Bayesian variational autoencoder trained on ESM-2 protein language model embeddings to predict the fitness landscape and escape propensities of 52,622 mutants (recorded over 10 years) of the immunodominant GP5 glycoprotein encoded by PRRSV ORF5 gene. Unlike conventional models that estimate escape propensity only from sequence information, EscaPRRS circumvents the need for extensive alignments, integrating contributions from surface accessibility and biochemical dissimilarity at the binding interface. Our escape propensity scores demonstrate reliable structural and biological fidelity, with EscaPRRS scores correlating with binding affinities on seven different porcine receptor proteins (Pearson r = 0.74). Notably, EscaPRRS captures seasonal trends in immune evasion, highlighting its applicability in forecasting and surveillance of emerging/re-emerging PRRSV variants.

IMPORTANCEPorcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) remains the most economically detrimental illness for swine products, causing more than $1.2 billion in annual production loss in the United States, with indirect implications to food security and human health. PRRSV infection is known to severely affect porcine alveolar macrophages (PAMs), causing respiratory difficulties, following blockage of inflammatory signals that aids easy viral reproduction in the host cell. Identifying critical amino acid mutations at the highly variant GP5 glycoprotein attached to the viral cell membrane provides information on structural features linked to antigenic diversity and antibody neutralization, that potentially lead to clinical outbreaks in sow farms. Our effort employs machine learning approaches to learn patterns from a large number of sequences to map these critical domains to three-dimensional structures to score them for antibody escape tendencies. This greatly enhances our understanding of receptor and antibody binding mechanisms in PRRSV GP5.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Srinivasan Raghunath, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dey, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferdous, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Danurdoro, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>A Zeller, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-10-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.10.06.680729</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Structurally Informed Fitness Landscapes for Surveillance of Emerging PRRSV Variants]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-10-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.08.681177v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PPARG directs trophoblast cell fate and establishment of the uterine-placental interface 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.08.681177v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The expansion and differentiation of trophoblast stem (TS) cells are critical for defining fundamental properties of the placenta. Specialized trophoblast cells exit the placenta and enter and transform the uterus, including restructuring uterine spiral arteries. In the human these cells are named extravillous trophoblast (EVT) cells, whereas in the rat they are termed invasive trophoblast cells. Mechanisms governing invasive trophoblast cell differentiation remain poorly understood. We investigated peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARG) as a potential regulator of EVT/invasive trophoblast cell development. In first trimester human placentas, PPARG was expressed in the EVT cell column and increased in amount as human TS cells differentiated into EVT cells. PPARG disruption impaired EVT cell differentiation. Rat invasive trophoblast cells similarly expressed PPARG. Conditional inactivation of PPARG within rat invasive trophoblast cells was used to assess the in vivo role of PPARG on the uterine-placental interface. PPARG was established as an essential cell-autonomous regulator of the invasive trophoblast cells. In conclusion, PPARG is a conserved regulator of placentation and is essential for directing trophoblast cell-guided uterine transformation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Dominguez, E. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Irusta, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>IQBAL, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Finlinson, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Parrish, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Okae, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arima, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tuteja, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Soares, M. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-10-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.10.08.681177</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PPARG directs trophoblast cell fate and establishment of the uterine-placental interface]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-10-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.11.681799v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Adaptive evolution of Candida maltosa improves the bioconversion of depolymerized plastic feedstock by targeting biosurfactant production 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.11.681799v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Thermal oxo-degradation (TOD) of plastic can transform plastic waste into fermentable feedstocks. Bioconversion of the TOD products could be used as feedstocks in a biorefinery concept and lead to new avenues for plastic waste upcycling. Previous work demonstrated this concept with high density polyethylene (HDPE), the most abundant type of plastic, and identified the nonconventional yeast Candida maltosa as a promising candidate for this application. Here we describe the evolution of an improved strain of C. maltosa and characterize the uptake mechanisms of TOD products from HDPE (TOD_HDPE). Batch cultures in series passaged at the mid-exponential growth phase applied a selective pressure for faster growth and resulted in a >100% increase in specific growth rate when using TOD_HDPE as a carbon source. The evolved strain was compared to the parent strain to identify the cellular and biochemical changes associated with the improved phenotype and the uptake mechanisms involved in the bioconversion of TOD_HDPE. This comparison found that C. maltosa secretes biosurfactants capable of solubilizing hydrocarbons. The adaptive evolution resulted in changes in biosurfactant production that translated to improved emulsification of alkanes and increased solubilization of fatty alcohols and alkanes. In addition to the changes in metabolites, the study identified increases in membrane permeability associated with a reduction in ergosterol that may also play a role in the improved phenotype. These findings support the development of C. maltosa and other potential microbial cell factories for plastic biorefineries and may inform future design strategies.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rodriguez-Ocasio, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Noroozi, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khalid, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brown, R. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Blenner, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jarboe, L. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-10-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.10.11.681799</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Adaptive evolution of Candida maltosa improves the bioconversion of depolymerized plastic feedstock by targeting biosurfactant production]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-10-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.13.681994v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SmartHisto: Bayesian Active Learning for Histology Images 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.13.681994v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Accurate and efficient characterization of biological images is crucial for advancing systems biology and medical research. Recent advancements in deep learning and image processing have enabled neural network models to rapidly accelerate image analysis by utilizing large expert-annotated datasets. However, in histopathology, the size of whole-slide images makes expert annotation expensive, limiting the acquisition of sufficiently large annotated datasets and posing a major challenge for developing automated, AI-driven image analysis pipelines. To address this limitation, we propose a novel active learning-based framework to train image segmentation models interactively. Our approach employs a Bayesian neural network to identify informative regions in unlabeled images rather than entire images, making expert labeling more cost-effective. We validate our framework on multiple benchmark datasets spanning different staining techniques and magnifications, demonstrating substantial reductions in annotation effort. Notably, our method achieves a mean IoU of 0.75, significantly outperforming competing approaches, which average 0.60.

Author summaryHistopathology is fundamental to investigating tissue and immune responses, host-pathogen interactions, and disease mechanisms. However, histopathology is highly resource-intensive and requires specialized training, dramatically increasing the costs of annotating whole-slide images and, consequently, the expenses of large-scale studies involving numerous labs and specialists. We developed a computational tool to overcome these challenges, implementing a robust uncertainty-based sampling algorithm in conjunction with a next-generation Bayesian Convolutional Neural Network. This algorithm can be used for hypothesis testing and discovery by reducing the reliance on large, precisely annotated training datasets required in automated image analysis pipelines. The base model, when trained to identify lung tissue types using a small set of annotated images, outperforms state-of-the-art models and can efficiently annotate thousands of images much more quickly than a human. Models trained by the proposed algorithm will serve as a standardized approach for pathologists and disease researchers to train automated image segmentation pipelines for large-scale histopathology.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Vijendran, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Arruda, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-10-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.10.13.681994</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SmartHisto: Bayesian Active Learning for Histology Images]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-10-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.15.680306v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Large Numbers of New Human Paralogs Discovered 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.15.680306v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The identification of paralogs is critical for understanding protein evolution, function, and for drug design, yet many human proteins remain unannotated and poorly classified. Sequence-based homology detection alone often fails to detect distant paralogs, especially in the "twilight zone" or beyond, regarding sequence identity. Here we present an integrated homolog detection framework that combines results from BLASTp, MMseqs2, Foldseek, and the large protein language model-based tool PROST, followed by validation based on comparison of structures and for enzymes comparison of the specific structures of the catalytic residues. Using all-versus-all exhaustive comparisons across the 20,647 human proteins, we systematically identify novel paralogs and assess their catalytic residues for two serine protease clans. We discovered 14 previously uncharacterized human serine carboxypeptidases, validated against experimentally determined PDB structures, with 11 of these displaying conserved catalytic triads. We further identify 203 new paralogs for human kinases, with 163 of these in the major clusters that represent previously uncharacterized kinase subtypes and 30 putative novel human transcription factors. Across both serine protease subtypes, structural alignments enable the prediction of the previously unknown catalytic residues for those lacking UniProt annotations of active site residues. By integrating sequence, structure, and LPLM embedding-based approaches, the framework enables the discovery of surprisingly large numbers of unknown paralogs, permitting defining catalytic residues, and expands the understanding of protein functional landscapes. These findings provide the foundation for a large number of future functional, evolutionary, and therapeutic investigations.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bk, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Deng, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hemmat, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Daniels, I. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jernigan, R. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-10-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.10.15.680306</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Large Numbers of New Human Paralogs Discovered]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-10-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.21.683719v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Trends in stomatal density and size in maize hybrids representing 100 years of long-term breeding for yield 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.21.683719v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maize hybrid breeding started over 100 years ago, has increased yield and vigor through improved genetics in conjunction with increased fertilizer and pesticide use, planting density, and agricultural mechanization. Stomata are expected to change in response to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration and average temperature anomalies ({degrees}C). Yet, the impact of long-term maize breeding over the past century on stomatal traits and their responses to climate factors remains poorly understood. We evaluated stomatal traits at the seedling stage in 27 maize hybrids released from 1920 to 2022, grown under controlled conditions. Modern hybrids (2013 - 2022) had a smaller total stomatal pore area (9.17 x 108 m2) than (1920 - 2012) historical ERA hybrids (9.94 x 108 m2; p[&le;] 0.001), a higher stomatal density (47.2 per mm-2) vs. historical ERA hybrids (44.5), and a smaller leaf area (17.9 cm2 vs. 20.5 cm2). No significant differences were found in the size (m2), length (m), or width (m) of stomata between the two groups. Stomatal density increased, while all other traits decreased in modern hybrids. Stomatal density was negatively correlated with stomatal size (r = -0.62), length (r = -0.57), width (r = - 0.54), and leaf area (r = -0.54). Stomatal size had a negative correlation with atmospheric CO2 concentration (r = -0.22) and average temperature anomalies ({degrees}C) (r = -0.35) in the hybrids year of release and climate proxies. In contrast, stomatal density had a positive correlation with both atmospheric CO2 concentration and average temperature anomalies ({degrees}C) (r = 0.44) in year of release. Total stomatal pore area negatively correlated with atmospheric CO2 concentration (r = -0.45) and average temperature anomalies ({degrees}C) (r = -0.36). Our study indicates that maize stomatal traits suggest inadvertent selection for key stomatal traits (density and size), total stomatal pore area (per year decline of about 0.02%) associated with yield stability and environmental adaptation.

HighlightsMaize stomatal traits changed through environmental (CO2 and {degrees}C) adaptation but total stomatal pore area, effects indirectly by decreased leaf area in maize hybrids representing 100 years of long-term breeding for yield.
A negative correlation was observed across 27 ERA hybrids between stomatal density and stomatal size, length, width and leaf area. Stomatal density increases while stomata size, length width and leaf area decrease per se.
Over the past 100 years, the total stomatal pore area on leaves decreased, while stomatal density increased as leaf area declined, revealing a connection between these two patterns.
A negative correlation was found between total stomatal pore area and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and temperature over the past century.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bilgici, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ebrahimi, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miranda, L. P. d.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lira, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Borras, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Young, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yavuz, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moore, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dixon, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lubberstedt, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-10-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.10.21.683719</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Trends in stomatal density and size in maize hybrids representing 100 years of long-term breeding for yield]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-10-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.684455v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Modulating inter-mitochondrial contacts to increase membrane potential for mitigating blue light damage 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.24.684455v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) is essential for mitochondrial functions, yet current methods for modulating MMP lack precise spatial and temporal control. Here, we present an optogenetic system that enables reversible formation of inter-mitochondrial contacts (mito-contacts) with high spatiotemporal precision. Blue light stimulation induces rapid formation of mito-contacts, which fully dissipate upon cessation of illumination. These light-induced mito-contacts can enhance MMP, leading to increased ATP production under stress conditions. Moreover, in human retinal cells and C. elegans, high MMP induced by mito-contacts alleviates the deleterious effects of prolonged blue light exposure, restoring energy metabolism and extending organismal lifespan. This optogenetic approach provides a powerful tool for modulating MMP and offers potential therapeutic applications for diseases linked to mitochondrial dysfunction.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qiu, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zou, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Amom, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganjawala, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tian, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Xu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tsai, N.-P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shi, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bai, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zacharias, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Diao, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-10-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.10.24.684455</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Modulating inter-mitochondrial contacts to increase membrane potential for mitigating blue light damage]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-10-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.03.686270v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Viral lineage and mode of exposure modulate within host spatial dynamics of influenza A viruses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.03.686270v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The upper and lower respiratory tracts (URT and LRT) present distinct environments for influenza A virus (IAV) replication. Their differential features have major implications for viral evolutionary dynamics, transmission potential, and pathogenesis. To investigate the implications of differential viral replication in the URT and LRT, we assessed dispersal of IAVs throughout the guinea pig respiratory system. Guinea pigs were inoculated intranasally with a 300 L volume to deliver inoculum to both the URT and LRT. Two strains were used to represent the circulating seasonal IAV lineages: influenza A/TX/50/2012 (H3N2) and influenza A/CA/07/2009 (H1N1) virus. The inclusion of a diverse genetic barcode enabled high-resolution tracing of viral dispersal for the H1N1 virus. While infectious virus was consistently detected in the URT, the H1N1 virus could be detected in LRT while the H3N2 virus could not. To determine whether replication of the H1N1 virus in the LRT extends to other modes of infection, virus distribution was evaluated following infection via aerosol exposure or transmission. Infectious virus in lung homogenates was observed in both cases, confirming the LRT tropism of the H1N1 virus. Sequencing genetic barcodes revealed that diversity was largely maintained in nasal samples and trachea but contracted upon dispersal to the lungs. This loss of diversity was associated with increased distance to and branching from the major airways, implicating long distance dispersal through the airways in imposing within-host population bottlenecks. These data underline the implications for within-host viral dynamics of the distinct environments of the upper and lower respiratory tracts.

ImportanceThe upper (URT) and lower (LRT) respiratory tracts create different conditions for influenza A virus (IAV) spread and evolution. We studied how the virus moves through guinea pigs airways after infection with H3N2 or H1N1 strains of IAV. Whether delivered intranasally, by aerosol or by transmission, the H1N1 virus replicated in the nasal cavity, trachea, and lungs. By contrast, the H3N2 virus stayed mostly in the nasal cavity. Genetic barcodes were used to track how the H1N1 virus moved and changed. The populations replicating in the nasal cavity and trachea maintained high diversity but those sampled from the lungs showed low diversity. This bottlenecking effect was stronger for viral populations present deeper in the lungs. These findings show that the different environments of the URT and LRT strongly shape how influenza spreads and evolves inside a host.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Leyson, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vargas-Maldonado, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gaddy, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Raghunathan, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Matias-Ferreri, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sethi, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Patatanian, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carnaccini, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganti, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>VanInsberghe, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lowen, A. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-03</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.03.686270</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Viral lineage and mode of exposure modulate within host spatial dynamics of influenza A viruses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-03</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.03.686376v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The dominance of gene expression controlled by trans-eQTL hotspots contributes to phenotypic heterosis in maize 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.03.686376v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Heterosis, or hybrid vigor, is a key phenomenon in genetics research and agricultural production, and has been primarily attributed to non-additive genetic effects such as dominance -- a prevailing consensus shaped by decades of empirical research and theoretical debate. Although dominance may arguably arise from distal modifiers, their selective advantage is debated due to presumably small individual effects. To address this long-standing question, particularly how genetic dominance manifests at the transcriptomic level and contributes to phenotypic heterosis, we integrated transcriptomic and phenotypic data from a large population of maize hybrids and their inbred parents. We found that [~] 30% of the expressed seedling genes in a significant proportion of hybrids exhibited expression patterns deviating from the average of the two parents, indicative of non-additivity. Further analysis suggests that while hybrid gene expression per se is primarily regulated by cis-eQTLs, expression dominance (or non-additivity) is disproportionately controlled by trans-eQTLs. These trans-eQTLs cluster into hotspots that regulate the non-additivity of hundreds of target genes, mostly within co-expression networks, and are notably enriched for transcription factors (TFs). Focusing on one such hotspot, we functionally validated a classical maize gene ZmR1, a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) TF associated with multiple seedling trait heterosis, as a candidate regulator of expression dominance across hundreds of genes. Overexpression of ZmR1 enhances expression dominance of downstream genes and increases phenotypic heterosis in both seedling and adult traits. Further experiments confirmed its direct regulatory role in modulating genes involved in anthocyanin biosynthesis and lignin metabolism, driving transcriptome-level dominance. These results provide empirical support for the modifier hypothesis under an omnigenic model, suggesting that heterosis arises not from the modification of a single genes inheritance but through the coordinated regulation of hundreds of phenotype-associated genes, thereby helping to reconcile the long-standing debate over the genetic basis of dominance in heterosis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Xu, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zhang, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kang, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tian, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Luo, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ross-Ibarra, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.03.686376</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The dominance of gene expression controlled by trans-eQTL hotspots contributes to phenotypic heterosis in maize]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.04.686618v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Automated Seizure Detection in Animal EEG Signals 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.04.686618v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Automated seizure detection in animal electroencephalography (EEG) is crucial for accelerating epilepsy research. While machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) techniques have shown promise in seizure detection for human EEG and some rodent models, their application to chemically diverse animal data remains limited. In particular, no prior work has explored deep learning approaches for EEG data where seizure/epilepsy was induced by exposure to Soman (GD), a potent agent known to generate complex and variable seizure dynamics. In this work, we evaluate deep recurrent neural networks--Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) and Long Short-Term Memory networks (LSTM)--for seizure detection in EEG signals acquired by single channel (bipotential electrodes) from the rats exposed to either kainate or GD, which later animals developed epilepsy (measured by spontaneously recurring seizures). We benchmark these models against classical baselines including Random Forest and XGBoost, using intracranial EEG data from eight animals. Our results show that GRU and LSTM substantially outperform other shallow models in both accuracy and robustness across EEG traces.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ganguly, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jiang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Massey, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rao, N. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Thippeswamy, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sarkar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.04.686618</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Automated Seizure Detection in Animal EEG Signals]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.07.687174v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dairy manure analysis reveals significant risk of Antibiotic resistance from Extracellular DNA in Manure storage Pit 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.07.687174v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AbstractDairy manure pit storage systems are significant reservoirs for antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs). These genes occur in both intracellular DNA (iDNA) and extracellular DNA (exDNA), but their distribution across these categories in fresh (loafing pen surface) and pit-stored dairy manure has not been previously characterized. To address this gap, we quantified the abundance of six ARGs (tetG, tetM, tetX- tetracyline, sul1-sulfonamide, and ermB-macrolide) and three mobile genetic elements (MGEs) (intI1, intI2, and intI3) in iDNA and exDNA extracted from fresh and pit-stored manure collected at a dairy farm in Iowa. While total DNA yields were lower in pit-stored relative to fresh manure samples, exDNA-to-iDNA ratios were significantly elevated across all genes (p<0.001), indicating relative enrichment of exDNA during storage. Notably, tetM exhibited a higher free (unattached) to bound (surface-attached) exDNA ratio in pit samples, which suggested an increased potential for gene transfer in the pit. Correlation network analysis revealed similar numbers of strong ARG-MGE associations in pit and fresh exDNA, but lower interconnectivity in pit exDNA. Merging fresh and pit datasets showed wider ARG-MGE associations: intI1 and intI3 strongly co-occurred with tetracyclines and macrolide resistance in iDNA, while sul1 correlated with MGEs only in the exDNA network. Microbial community profiling showed similar taxa in exDNA across manure types, while iDNA communities diverged significantly. This result could support that exDNA is relatively stable over time and in varying environments, and that iDNA is relatively more reflective of selective pressures. Overall, our results highlight exDNA as a critical but overlooked reservoir of resistance determinants, warranting further investigation and targeted management strategies in dairy systems.

ImportanceTo date, extracellular DNA (exDNA) has been shown to contribute to the spread of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment; however, few studies have evaluated its enrichment in dairy pit-stored manure systems. This study demonstrates that dairy manure pits concentrate exDNA during dairy manure storage and serve as a reservoir for ARGs, along with mobile genetic elements that can facilitate subsequent gene transfer. The results of this study are a strong rationale for further investigation and targeted management strategies of exDNA in manure pits.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Sakib, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andersen, D. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jarboe, L. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Howe, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-07</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.07.687174</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dairy manure analysis reveals significant risk of Antibiotic resistance from Extracellular DNA in Manure storage Pit]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-07</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.06.687031v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
AI-assisted Image-Based Phenotyping Reveals Genetic Architecture of Pod Traits in Mungbean (Vigna radiata L.) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.06.687031v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mungbean (Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek) is a vital source of digestible proteins and is well-suited for the plant-based protein industry. In this study, we analyzed pod morphological traits in the Iowa Mungbean Diversity (IMD) panel with 372 genotypes (2022-23) with AI-assisted image phenotyping using 2,418 pod images. Pod morphological traits were extracted using deep learning image analysis, achieving excellent agreement with manual measurements (r>0.96 for pod length and seed per pod). Four complementary GWAS models identified 45 significant SNPs associated with pod curvature, length, width, and seed per pod traits. Notably, a significant SNP (5_35265704) on chromosome 1 was linked to pod dimensional traits, length, width, and curvature. A candidate gene, Vradi01g00001116, was located within the linkage disequilibrium (LD) region of this SNP, is part of the GH3 gene family, and has an Arabidopsis ortholog (AT4G27260) known for influencing organ elongation, pod, and seed development. Another SNP, 5_210437 on chromosome 2, has been found to be significantly associated with both pod length and seed per pod. A candidate gene, Vradi02g00003971, located in the LD region of this SNP, belongs to the potassium transporter family and shares homology with the HAK5 gene family (AT4G13420) in Arabidopsis, which influences pod and seed growth. Image-based measurements achieved genomic prediction accuracies ranging from 0.61 to 0.85 across various traits, exhibiting an improvement of 12-22% over manual methods. These results demonstrate the potential of AI-assisted phenomics integrated with genomic tools to accelerate selection for improved pod architecture in mungbean breeding programs across the Midwestern United States and globally.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Boddepalli, V. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jubery, T. Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dutta, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganapathysubramanian, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.06.687031</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[AI-assisted Image-Based Phenotyping Reveals Genetic Architecture of Pod Traits in Mungbean (Vigna radiata L.)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.06.687062v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Attractors are less stable than their basins: Canalization creates a coherence gap in gene regulatory networks 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.06.687062v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Waddingtons epigenetic landscape has served as biologys central metaphor for cellular differentiation for over half a century, depicting mature cell types as balls resting in stable valley floors. Boolean networks - introduced by Kauffman in 1969 to model gene regulatory dynamics - provide a mathematical formalization of this landscape, where attractors represent phenotypes and basins of attraction correspond to developmental valleys. Traditional stability measures quantify robustness by perturbing arbitrary states, yet biological systems typically reside at attractors rather than in transient states. Here we formalize and systematically analyze attractor coherence - a stability measure Kauffman originally envisioned but never rigorously developed - which quantifies how likely a perturbation of an attractor state causes phenotype switching. Analyzing 122 expertcurated biological Boolean models, we reveal a striking paradox: attractors representing mature cell types are consistently less stable than the developmental trajectories approaching them. Largescale simulations of random networks demonstrate that this coherence gap arises from canalization - a hallmark of biological regulation where individual genes can override others. While canalization increases overall network stability, it disproportionately stabilizes transient states, positioning attractors near basin boundaries. The gaps magnitude is almost perfectly predicted by network bias (Spearmans{rho} = -0.997), itself modulated by canalization. These findings revise Waddingtons landscape: canalization carves deep protective valleys ensuring developmental robustness, yet simultaneously flattens ridges near valley floors, facilitating phenotypic plasticity when multiple fates coexist. This explains how biological systems achieve both reliable development and plasticity, with implications for understanding development, disease-related transitions, and designing robust yet controllable synthetic gene circuits.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bavisetty, V. S. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wheeler, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kadelka, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-08</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.06.687062</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Attractors are less stable than their basins: Canalization creates a coherence gap in gene regulatory networks]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-08</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.09.687504v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Defining the Growth Stages of Mungbean (Vigna radiata L.) using the BBCH Scale 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.09.687504v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mungbean (Vigna radiata L.) is a protein-rich food grain legume that fixes nitrogen and serves as a potential crop for the plant-based protein industry. It can fit in multiple cropping systems as a short-duration and low-water requirement crop. Phenological growth stages of mungbean are described here for the first time according to the BBCH (Biologische Bundesanstalt, Bundessortenamt, and Chemische Industrie) scale. We developed an extended BBCH chart with a two-digit scale to identify different phenological growth stages of mungbean. This study documented and illustrated the key growth stages of mungbean from germination to maturity, correlating them with the number of days after planting and accumulated growing degree days (GDD). It outlines the principal growth stages (PS) as follows: germination (PS-0), leaf development (PS-1), stem elongation (PS-3), flower bud development (PS-5), flowering (PS-6), fruit development (PS-7), ripening (PS-8), and senescence (PS-9). This chart can help track the key mungbean growth and developmental stages. Most importantly, this BBCH growth stages chart fills a gap in the literature by providing a practical tool for researchers and growers to standardize crop management practices, develop simulation models, and assess performance under various environmental conditions. The standardized scale enhances the precision of timing agricultural interventions, ultimately supporting improved mungbean production in the region.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Singh, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boddepalli, V. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.09.687504</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Defining the Growth Stages of Mungbean (Vigna radiata L.) using the BBCH Scale]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687654v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Molecular Evolutionary Analysis for Estimating the Strength of Fluctuating Selection among Individuals (FSI) 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.10.687654v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Fluctuating selection among individuals (FSI) refers to any mutation that exhibits different fitness effects among individuals. Thus, the selection nature of a mutation (deleterious, neutral, or beneficial) should be interpreted by the means of the population average. For instance, a neutral mutation on average could be slightly deleterious in some individuals, and slightly beneficial in others. It has been recently demonstrated that the effect of FSI is important in molecular evolution especially when the effective population size (Ne) is not small. Intriguingly, a novel pattern of molecular evolution called  selection duality, i.e., mutations that are statistically slightly beneficial are subject to a negative selection, emerges under the condition that selective advantage is less than FSI. While FSI sheds some lights on the long-term neutralist-selectionist debate, an immediate question is how to calculate the strength of FSI-genetic drift relative to the Ne-genetic drift. In this article we develop a statistical method the relative FSI strength (F): if F is close to 0, the Ne-genetic drift is dominant; whereas the FSI-genetic drift is dominant if F is close to 1. One may tentatively set F=0.5 as an empirical criterion to weigh between those two genetic drifts. Our case study showed that the relative FSI-strength F is over 0.5 in most species, suggesting that the FSI-genetic drift, rather than the Ne-drift, plays a major role in metazoan genome evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-11</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.10.687654</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Molecular Evolutionary Analysis for Estimating the Strength of Fluctuating Selection among Individuals (FSI)]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-11</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.17.688917v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
SNaQ.jl: Improved Scalability for Phylogenetic Network Inference 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.17.688917v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Phylogenetic networks represent complex biological scenarios that are overlooked in trees, such as hybridization and horizontal gene transfer. Although numerous methods have been developed for phylogenetic network inference, their scalability is severely limited by the computational demands of likelihood optimization and the vastness of network space. Composite (or pseudo-) likelihood approaches like SNaQ have improved computational tractability for network inference, but they remain inadequate for datasets of sizes routinely handled by tree inference methods. Here, we introduce SNaQ.jl, a new standalone Julia package with the composite likelihood inference originally implemented within PhyloNetworks.jl as well as new scalability features that enhance computational efficiency through (1) parallelization of quartet likelihood calculations during composite likelihood computation, (2) weighted random selection of quartets, and (3) probabilistic decision-making during network search. Through a simulation study and empirical data analysis, we show that this new version of SNaQ.jl (version 1.1) improves average runtimes by up to 400% with no change in accuracy.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kolbow, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kong, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chafin, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Justison, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ane, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Solis-Lemus, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.17.688917</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SNaQ.jl: Improved Scalability for Phylogenetic Network Inference]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.18.689042v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Impact of Maternal Antibodies and Weaning Stress on the Replication and Transmission of Human H3N2 Influenza A in Piglets 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.18.689042v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Modern swine production facilitates indoor respiratory contact between human employees and pigs in their care, creating conditions for interspecies transmission of influenza A virus (IAV). Sow vaccination is routinely practiced in the U.S. to transfer maternal derived antibodies (MDA) to piglets. Weaning is a highly stressful period for piglets that requires increased human interaction. This study investigates the effect of maternal antibodies on the susceptibility of weaned piglets to a human-origin H3N2 IAV. Weaned piglets often possess mixed immunity from MDA, which may be antigenically matched or mismatched to circulating viruses. Given the repeated spillover of human seasonal H3N2 into swine, we specifically examined how matched and mismatched MDA, acquired from vaccinated sows, influenced piglet susceptibility. Additionally, we assessed the impact of weaning-related stress on the outcome of viral challenge. The H3N2 virus was generated by reverse genetics to mimic the 2010.1 H3N2 introduction from humans to swine. Challenged seeder piglets were divided by immune and weaning status. Two days post inoculation, naive direct contact pigs were placed with seeders. IAV qRT-PCR and virus titration were performed on nasal swabs and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid to evaluate shedding and transmission kinetics. Matched MDA were effective in reducing shedding in challenged pigs and minimizing transmission to contacts. There was an increase in shedding and transmission in weaned pigs compared to littermates that remained on the sow. These results identify critical control points in production where changing practices could mitigate human-to-swine and swine-to-swine transmission to prevent establishment of novel lineages in pig populations.

ImportanceDefining the factors that increase the susceptibility of pigs to infection with human influenza A viruses (IAV) is critical to understand why those viruses transmit to the new host. IAV is frequently detected in nursing pigs, where it was shown that maternal derived antibodies (MDA) may reduce clinical signs but may not prevent infection and transmission. Infected weaned piglets can then move viruses from the sow farm to offsite nurseries, where they can cause outbreaks with clinical disease as MDA wanes. Determining management practices that can be modified to reduce interspecies transmission of viruses to pigs is economically beneficial to the swine industry and could help define measures to prevent new spillover events. Reducing spillover of human IAV into pig populations also benefits public health by reducing genomic and phenotypic diversity in swine and the subsequent potential for zoonotic transmission.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ciacci Zanella, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cardenas Perez, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hutter, C. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Snyder, C. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wymore Brand, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>(Wilberts) Arruda, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Perez, D. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rajao, D. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baker, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.18.689042</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Impact of Maternal Antibodies and Weaning Stress on the Replication and Transmission of Human H3N2 Influenza A in Piglets]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.19.689354v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Molecular Evolution under Macro-Perturbation Barrier and the Fixation Process of Polyploidization 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.19.689354v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The Neutral Theory in molecular evolution mainly addresses the allele frequency change of individual loci, postulating that the fixation process of a mutant is independent of other loci. For instance, the basic formula of molecular evolution claims that the rate of molecular evolution ({lambda}) is determined by the mutation rate (v), the coefficient of selection (s) and the effective population size (Ne), asserting the basic rule of molecular evolution: {lambda}>v if s>0 (positive selection), {lambda}=v if s=0 (neutrality) or {lambda}<v if s<0 (negative selection). However, many studies have indicated that this independent assumption should be examined carefully. This paper studies focused on the effect of major-perturbation barrier on molecular evolution, which refers to a rare, randomly occurred major genetic, epigenetic or environmental event that virtually stopped the fixation process of a mutation, resulting in loss of the mutation. A special diffusion model called KAC model was invoked, which allows the stochastic trajectory of gene frequency toward fixation can be randomly stopped at any time with a certain rate. The analytical form of the rate of molecular evolution showed that a strictly neutral mutant would evolve more slowly than the mutation rate due to the macro-perturbation barrier. A further quasi-neutrality analysis (the rate of molecular evolution equals to the mutation rate) was carried out, based upon the balance between the selection advantage of the mutant and the macro-perturbation barrier. Finally, the theory of macro-perturbation barrier was illustrated by the fixation process of polyploidization, as the outcome of the short-term selective advantages and the genome instability.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-20</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.19.689354</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Molecular Evolution under Macro-Perturbation Barrier and the Fixation Process of Polyploidization]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-20</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.19.689358v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The Pleiotropy Hypothesis of Molecular Evolution 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.19.689358v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
AbstractUnder the nearly-neutral model of protein evolution, the evolutionary rate is virtually determined by the selection intensity (S), which can be decomposed into S=-KxB0, where K is the gene pleiotropy defined by the number of fitness-related traits (molecular phenotypes) and B0 is the baseline of the selection intensity. Hence, the variation of S (sequence conservation) among genes may have two resources: one is the variation of gene pleiotropy among genes (K-mode), and the other is the variation of baseline intensity among genes (B-mode). While K can be effectively estimated (denoted by Ke) based on the phylogenetic analysis of protein sequences, the correlation between Ke and empirical pleiotropy measures remains uninvestigated. In this paper, we show positive correlations of effective gene pleiotropy with protein-protein interactions, expression broadness, enzyme connections, and involved biological processes. We thus propose the pleiotropy hypothesis (K-mode), suggesting that the rate variation among proteins is mainly due to the variation of gene pleiotropy, revealing a sophisticated display of multiple gene functionality.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.19.689358</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Pleiotropy Hypothesis of Molecular Evolution]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.21.689810v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Gene-transcription factor regulatory networks implicate primary cilia in the evolution of vertebrate sex determination and expand models of epigenetic regulation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.21.689810v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The genetic architecture underlying diverse vertebrate sex-determining systems remains elusive despite evidence of changes in upstream regulators and downstream mediators. Here we modeled species-specific regulatory networks of gonadal development for turtles with contrasting mechanisms [Apalone spinifera - ZZ/ZW genotypic sex determination (GSD), and Chrysemys picta - temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD)] using matched time-course sampling. We uncovered key steps in the evolutionary transition in sex determination by testing for conservation or divergence of network modular components. Specifically, we tested these alternative hypotheses: first, transcription factor (TF) hubs and their target genes are conserved between species (null H0); second, the same TF hub acquired a new set of target genes in a species, retaining or not ancestral functions (H1 and variants); third, a new TF hub takes over the regulation of the former gene targets of an ancestral TF (H2); and finally, complete overhaul occurs where both ancestral TF hubs and their target genes were replaced in a species (H3). Results implicate primary cilia as integrators of environmental signals underlying TSD, as known thermosensitive TSD components (e.g., calcium-redox, pSTAT3, Wnt/Rspo1/B-catenin, Dhh) are linked to primary cilia. TFs that evolved between species also regulate primary cilia and point to key changes in their sensory machinery that accompanied TSD-GSD transitions (e.g., calcium/ion channels or membrane transport components in Chrysemys versus structural elements and ciliogenesis in Apalone). This novel Primary Cilia Integration hypothesis expands current models of epigenetic regulation of turtle sexual development, the evolution of plasticity versus canalization, and warrants functional validation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gessler, T. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adams, D. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Valenzuela, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.21.689810</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Gene-transcription factor regulatory networks implicate primary cilia in the evolution of vertebrate sex determination and expand models of epigenetic regulation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.26.686905v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Initial identification of genomic islands in Taylorella equigenitalis and Taylorella asinigenitalis and their distribution in isolates from around the world 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.26.686905v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Taylorella equigenitalis, the causative agent of contagious equine metritis (CEM), is endemic in several countries throughout the world and impacts the global movement of horses. It presents with symptoms ranging from non-clinical to endometritis, vaginitis, and acute infertility in females while males remain asymptomatic. Studies of the disease have focused primarily on understanding pathology, transmission dynamics, diagnostics, and phenotypic and genotypic characteristics. The goal of this study was to establish a more comprehensive global phylogenetic structure and generate reference-quality genomes for each major clade of the tree where such data were absent. Seven of these genomes along with 44 other publicly available genome assemblies, including Taylorella asinigenitalis, were then used to predict genomic islands. Exploration of the NCBI annotations in the genomic islands indicate links to virulence and ecological fitness. An additional 97 T. equigenitalis and 48 T. asinigenitalis short-read isolates from this study and 215 publicly available genomes were used to examine distribution of each genomic island across the phylogenetic tree for evidence of horizontal movement. The stability of these genomic islands in their natural environment was evaluated utilizing 141 isolates recovered from a recent CEM outbreak in the United States. The results obtained in this study demonstrate mobile genomic islands in T. equigenitalis genomes, sites of concern for their contribution to the potential virulence of the organism.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Hicks, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Petry, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Duquesne, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Choi, J. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Overesh, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lantz, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Robbe Austerman, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Huang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-11-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.26.686905</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Initial identification of genomic islands in Taylorella equigenitalis and Taylorella asinigenitalis and their distribution in isolates from around the world]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-11-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.26.690843v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Widespread sex-biased gene expression reflects female-biased longevity in a species with environmental sex determination 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.26.690843v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Sexes frequently differ in life history traits including body size, lifespan, and age at sexual maturity. Aging, the progressive decline in physiological function and cellular resilience over time, is a central process contributing to sex-specific life histories, yet the mechanisms driving sex differences in aging remain largely unresolved. Long-term mark-recapture efforts revealed a striking pattern of female-biased longevity in the painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), a species with temperature-dependent sex determination. As a result, this species provides a compelling system to examine the mechanisms of sex-specific aging in the absence of sex chromosomes. Here, we characterize sex- and age-associated patterns in the blood transcriptomes of wild painted turtles (n = 93). We identified widespread gene expression differences between females and males (2,347 genes; 13.4% of all filtered genes). In contrast, only six genes showed significant linear relationships with continuous age in both sexes. We also employed a machine learning approach which identified distinct sets of genes for which expression was predictive of age in each sex. Age-related gene expression patterns highlight both conserved molecular pathways with known roles in aging as well as novel gene targets. These findings suggest sex-specific molecular processes underlie sex-biased demographic aging and raise questions regarding the environmental and developmental drivers of sex-biased gene expression.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Bock, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hoekstra, L. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hagerty, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schmidt, R. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Judson, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Adorsoo, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Singh, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Janzen, F. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bronikowski, A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.1101/2025.11.26.690843</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Widespread sex-biased gene expression reflects female-biased longevity in a species with environmental sex determination]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.05.692614v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Developmental conditions shape lifetime reproductive strategies in a wild mammal 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.05.692614v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Coping with developmental hardship is a defining feature of resilience across the tree of life. Compensatory strategies that preserve fitness after a poor start are hypothesized to be favored by natural selection, but empirical evidence is rare. Using over three decades of data on >1,000 reproductive attempts across the lifetimes of 405 wild female red squirrels, we show that developmental adversity prompts adaptive reorganization of reproductive investment across the lifespan. Hardships reduced lifetime reproductive opportunities, but triggered opposing strategies. Extrinsic mortality risk predicted frontloading of reproduction at debut, while poor maternal investment predicted terminal reproductive effort at a cost to future generations. Both strategies preserved lifetime fitness, revealing how context-dependent reproductive plasticity over the life course can rescue the fitness consequences of developmental hardship.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Petrullo, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Delaney, D. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boutin, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lane, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McAdam, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dantzer, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.05.692614</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Developmental conditions shape lifetime reproductive strategies in a wild mammal]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.08.693040v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Finite-State Likelihood: an Approximation for Genome Phylogeny Inference based on Generalized Gene Contents 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.08.693040v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Rapid growth of entire genome data has revolutionized the field of phylogenomics, i.e., the problem of tree of life. Substantial studies demonstrated that genome phylogeny can be inferred based upon the generalized gene content approach. Two simple types were widely-used: the first-order gene content (J=1) for the presence or absence of a gene family, and the second-order gene content (J=2) for the extended gene content (absence, single-copy, or duplicates). Moreover, a specific form of birth-death-input process was invoked to model the evolutionary process of a gene family, taking gene duplication, gene loss and new gene origin or horizontal gene transfer into account.

Gu X. Genome distance and phylogenetic inference accommodating gene duplication, loss and new gene input, Mol Phylogenet Evol 2023].

Though genome distance methods have been successful for genome phylogeny inference, the maximum likelihood (ML) approach is subject to a huge computation burden. In this article, I formulate a finite-state ML approximation to solve this problem. For a given J-order gene contents, the evolution of a gene family along a phylogeny is modeled by a stochastic process with a finite (J+1) number of states. Consequently, the computational cost of a finite-state likelihood for a given phylogeny is comparable to a typical sequence-based likelihood function. Two analyses were carried out as a proof of concept, including a simulation study to examine the performance of phylogenetic inference, and a case study to evaluate to what extent the Fixed-State ML can be used to determine the root of the genome phylogeny. Overall, the Fixed-State ML may shed lights on the feasibility of phylogenetic likelihood analysis on the pattern of genome evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.08.693040</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Finite-State Likelihood: an Approximation for Genome Phylogeny Inference based on Generalized Gene Contents]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.08.693052v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Population Genetics of Fluctuating Selection among Individuals (FSI): a New Paradigm of Molecular Evolution 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.08.693052v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The FSI (fluctuating selection among individuals) theory of population genetics postulates that the fitness effect of a mutation may fluctuate among individuals with the same genotype (heterozygote or homozygote), whereas the wildtype fitness remains a constant. We conducted a comprehensive population genetic analysis and demonstrated profound impacts on the current wisdom of population genetics and molecular evolution. First, genetic drift induced by FSI, FSI-genetic drift for short, may play an important role in molecular evolution when the Ne-genetic drift is weak, i.e., the effective population size is not very small. Second, FSI toppled the golden-standard of neutrality in molecular evolution: the substitution rate equals to the mutation rate if and only if the mutation is strictly neutral. Instead, the concept of selection-duality claims that, under FSI, slightly beneficial mutations may be subject to a negative selection, resulting in a substitution rate less than the mutations rate. Consequently, there are three types of neutrality under FSI: the fixation neutrality (substitution rate equals to mutation rate), the generic neutrality (the population mean of selection coefficient is zero), and the FSI-neutrality (the midpoint of fixation neutrality and generic neutrality). Intriguingly, our theoretical analysis shows that the null hypothesis ( = 0) of MacDonald-Kreitman (MK) test exactly corresponds to the FSI-neutrality. Rejection of the null that, say, favors the alternative  > 0, could lead to two interpretations: when the observed  is below a threshold, the selection-duality is favored; otherwise an adaptive evolution is favored. We calculated the threshold for several mammals (human, macaque, lemur and vole), and found that all those observed  values (from 3.5% to 29%) were below the threshold and so they be interpreted by the selection duality rather than adaptive evolution.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-10</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.08.693052</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Population Genetics of Fluctuating Selection among Individuals (FSI): a New Paradigm of Molecular Evolution]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-10</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.11.693571v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Detection of Mid-parent Heterosis Genes in Large-Scale Unreplicated RNA-Seq Experiments 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.11.693571v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Mid-parent heterosis (MPH), characterized by hybrid trait values deviating from the mid-parent average, is a well-documented phenomenon whose genetic basis remains poorly understood. Identifying genes associated with MPH is crucial for uncovering the molecular mechanisms underlying heterosis. Recent large-scale RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) experiments enable the evaluation of heterosis genes across numerous families; however, replication is often infeasible due to cost and labor constraints, resulting in unreplicated large-scale datasets and posing statistical challenges for dispersion estimation and reliable inference. To address this issue, we propose a novel two-stage likelihood ratio test (2sLRT) for detecting MPH genes in unreplicated RNA-seq experiments. In the first stage, genes and families without evidence of differential expression across varieties are identified, and the corresponding varieties are used as pseudo-replicates to estimate dispersion. In the second stage, a likelihood ratio test based on the negative binomial distribution is employed to test for MPH. Simulation studies demonstrate that 2sLRT achieves higher power and better false discovery rate control compared to existing approaches. Application of 2sLRT to a maize RNA-seq dataset with 599 families further highlights the methods effectiveness in revealing meaningful patterns of MPH gene expression.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Qi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-14</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.11.693571</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Detection of Mid-parent Heterosis Genes in Large-Scale Unreplicated RNA-Seq Experiments]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-14</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.10.693575v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Four Decades of Breeding and Increasing Plant Density Management Reshaped Maize Root System Architecture 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.10.693575v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Understanding how crop root system architecture (RSA) is influenced by genetics and management is vital for root-based improvement. We examined the impact of four decades of maize breeding on RSA using a panel of maize hybrids planted at different densities across six site-years in the Midwest. Root crowns were shovel-excavated and imaged via X-ray tomography, generating dozens of fine-grained 3D traits. Modern root systems were significantly smaller with fewer, thinner roots at higher density compared to older hybrids. However, the total amount of roots in the topsoil extrapolated across an acre was indistinguishable, revealing an equilibrium between crown size and density. Surprisingly, there was a 20% increase in the soil volume explored by individual modern hybrids, indicating increased overlap of root systems. We estimated modern hybrids share 43-46% of the topsoil with neighbors, compared to 14% in the oldest. Furthermore, when the oldest hybrids were grown at modern densities, their root crowns became more elliptical than modern hybrids, highlighting potential differences in avoidance response. Root systems of modern hybrids may be more intertwined and less competitive, revealing an adaptation to increased density stress in maize agriculture with implications for trait-based approaches to engineer more productive, efficient systems.

HIGHLIGHTThis study uses a new panel of maize hybrids to explore how decades of yield-focused breeding and advancements in planting density have indirectly impacted maize root systems.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Thies, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sciarresi, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Trifunovic, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eudy, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vyn, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Archontoulis, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Topp, C. N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.10.693575</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Four Decades of Breeding and Increasing Plant Density Management Reshaped Maize Root System Architecture]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.17.695009v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Nano-Sieve Enabled On Chip Concentration and Multiplexed Detection of Raman-Dye Labeled Nanocubes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.17.695009v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
To address persistent challenges in molecular detection--particularly signal variability, low analyte abundance, and poor spectral reproducibility--a portable bead-stacked nano-sieve platform was engineered to enable robust on-chip Raman signal amplification using silver nanocubes (AgNCs) functionalized with Raman-active thiolated ligands. The microdevice integrates deformable elastomeric channels with magnetic bead stacking to immobilize and concentrate AgNCs within confined nanoscopic junctions, thereby generating densely packed plasmonic hot-spot architectures that markedly enhance Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) efficiency. Time-resolved measurements revealed substantial increases in Raman intensity for both 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4-MBA) and 4-aminothiophenol (4-ATP), outperforming corresponding off-chip assays and maintaining stable enhancement factors over a four-hour operational window. Furthermore, the platform successfully demonstrated multiplexed sensing capability: mixed-analyte experiments containing 4-MBA, 4-ATP, and cysteamine produced clearly distinguishable spectral fingerprints, even under serial dilution and dynamically pulsed sample delivery. Collectively, these results establish the bead-stacked nano-sieve as a versatile, label-free, and scalable diagnostic architecture capable of achieving high sensitivity and spectral fidelity under continuous-flow conditions. Our technology holds significant promise for real-time, non-invasive molecular surveillance, point-of-care diagnostics, and early disease monitoring in resource-limited or field-deployable settings.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ng, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yang, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yoon, K.-J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guo, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bok, E.-Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lao, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Do, Y. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yan, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Du, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.17.695009</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nano-Sieve Enabled On Chip Concentration and Multiplexed Detection of Raman-Dye Labeled Nanocubes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.22.696057v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dynamic ASK1 proximity networks uncover SCF-dependent and noncanonical roles in ABA and drought adaptation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.22.696057v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Plants rely on rapid proteome remodeling to withstand fluctuating environmental conditions, yet how the ubiquitin system dynamically coordinates these multilayered responses remains unclear. Here we define the in vivo proximity interactome of ARABIDOPSIS SKP1-LIKE 1 (ASK1), the core adaptor of SCF ubiquitin ligases, under acute abscisic acid (ABA) signaling and prolonged drought. TurboID-based proximity labeling coupled with quantitative proteomics revealed that ASK1 assembles highly condition-specific protein networks, distinguishing canonical SCF modules from broader noncanonical associations with transcriptional, chromatin, translational, vesicle-trafficking, and proteostasis machinery. Acute ABA exposure rapidly recruits F-box proteins and ABA-responsive transcription factors while engaging ribosomal and chromatin modules, whereas drought drives ASK1 into expanded proteostasis and stress-signaling assemblies, including chaperone-cochaperone systems, transcriptional repressors, and autophagy-endomembrane components. Global proteomics shows that ASK1 overexpression enhances accumulation of drought-protective and ABA-responsive proteins while repressing immune and ROS-scavenging pathways, indicating a shift in resource allocation. Together, these results describe ASK1 as a multifunctional proteostasis and signaling hub that integrates SCF-dependent and SCF-independent pathways to coordinate transcriptional, translational, and proteolytic reprogramming during plant adaptation to stress.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rodriguez-Zaccaro, F. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moe-Lange, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Malik, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Montes-Serey, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hamada, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Groover, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Walley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shabek, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-25</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.22.696057</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dynamic ASK1 proximity networks uncover SCF-dependent and noncanonical roles in ABA and drought adaptation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-25</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.30.697048v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The interaction of the Arabidopsis Xyloglucan Xylosyltransferases XXTs with the COPII member SAR1 via their di-Arginine motifs is critical for delivery to the Golgi. 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.30.697048v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Golgi-localized Xyloglucan Xylosyltransferases (XXT2 and XXT5) participate in xyloglucan biosynthesis, and to do this, they require the proper localization. The COPII complex is responsible for delivering cargo proteins from the ER to the Golgi, which is facilitated by the complexs member proteins Sec24 and Sar1. Additionally, the N-termini of glycosyltransferases (GTs) play a crucial role in their transportation and localization. In this study, we demonstrated for the first time that XXTs interact with Sar1 protein in the COPII complex but not with Sec24, which was previously reported to be the main recruiter of cargo proteins into COPII-coated vesicles. The mutation of the arginine to glutamine residues of di-arginine motifs in the N-termini of XXT2 and XXT5 caused protein mislocalization and significantly reduced the strength of the interaction with Sar1. These mutations caused 90% of XXTs to either remain in the ER or localize to non-Golgi small compartments. In turn, such mislocalization significantly suppressed the recovery of xyloglucan biosynthesis in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) mutant plants (xxt1xxt2 and xxt3xxt4xxt5), failing to restore their root phenotypes to normal. Our results demonstrate the interaction between cargo proteins and Sar1 proteins, highlighting the critical role of di-arginine motifs in this interaction. These results provide new insights into the mechanism of ER-to-Golgi delivery of plant GTs, which significantly advances our understanding of polysaccharide biosynthesis in the Golgi and the enzymes responsible for it.

Significance statementThis study demonstrates that plant glycosyltransferases directly interact with the SAR1 protein of the COPII complex. The di-arginine motifs present in the N-termini of glycosyltransferases play a critical role in cargo selection and transport from the ER to the Golgi apparatus via COPII-coated vesicles, while interacting with SAR1.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Zhang, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Julian, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zabotina, O. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.30.697048</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The interaction of the Arabidopsis Xyloglucan Xylosyltransferases XXTs with the COPII member SAR1 via their di-Arginine motifs is critical for delivery to the Golgi.]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.30.697098v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
MATERNAL AUTOPHAGY CONTRIBUTES TO GRAIN YIELD IN MAIZE 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.30.697098v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Maize is an important crop species that is cultivated worldwide, and increasing maize yield is one of the major goals of plant breeding. The subcellular degradation and recycling pathway known as autophagy is involved in many plant developmental processes including vegetative growth, reproductive development, seed development, and senescence. Here, we demonstrate that maize autophagy-defective atg10 mutants have delayed flowering and reduced kernel size, weight and number, leading to reduced grain yield. Reciprocal crosses between mutant and parental lines indicate that the maternal plant is the major contributor to the kernel phenotype in atg10 mutants, rather than the seed genotype. We hypothesize that this may be due to detrimental effects on nutrient remobilization from maternal tissue to seeds during kernel development, leading to reduced yield.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Tang, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Avin-Wittenberg, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vollbrecht, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bassham, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2025-12-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.30.697098</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[MATERNAL AUTOPHAGY CONTRIBUTES TO GRAIN YIELD IN MAIZE]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2025-12-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.31.697224v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Effects of atmospheric CO2 levels on the susceptibility of maize to diverse pathogens 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.31.697224v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Rising atmospheric CO2 has profound implications for crop productivity and food security. Based on studies in C3 plants, elevated CO2 (eCO2) can shape plant-pathogen interactions, although the outcomes are often variable. The question of how eCO2 influences immunity and disease development in C4 plants, such as the globally important cereal crop maize (Zea mays L.), has not been systematically examined. We challenged maize plants grown under ambient CO2 (aCO2, 420 ppm) and eCO2 (550 ppm) with bacterial, viral, fungal, and oomycete pathogens. Plants grown in eCO2 were more susceptible to sugarcane mosaic virus, suggesting compromised antiviral defenses, less susceptible to Clavibacter nebraskensis, Exserohilum turcicum, and Colletotrichum graminicola, and susceptibility to Puccinia sorghi and Pythium sylvaticum was unchanged. Reduced susceptibility to C. nebraskensis was associated with enhanced basal immune responses. These results establish a foundation for dissecting eCO2-responsive defense mechanisms, and they highlight a critical need to understand how eCO2 will impact plant responses to microbes, pests, and abiotic stresses under future conditions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Khwanbua, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Qi, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ssengo, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Graham, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-02</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2025.12.31.697224</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Effects of atmospheric CO2 levels on the susceptibility of maize to diverse pathogens]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-02</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.06.697884v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
DNA methylation reveals evolved buffering responses to climate-driven sex ratio skew in sea turtles 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.06.697884v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Species with temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), including all sea turtles which produce females at warmer temperatures, face projections of demographic collapse under climate-driven sex ratio skews. However, the accuracy of such predictions remains uncertain, as current models rely heavily on indirect sex ratio proxies due to the lack of a scalable, non-invasive method for sexing hatchlings. Through whole methylome sequencing, we identified 777 sex-associated DNA methylation markers from blood samples of sex-verified loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) hatchlings incubated at three controlled temperatures. Applying these markers to a large-scale field experiment showed that classic nest temperature-based models overestimated female production by an average of up to 60.2%, suggesting the presence of evolved buffering mechanisms against thermal effects on sex determination. Our findings highlight the need to revise climate-driven sex ratio forecasts with empirical field data, such as methylation-based assessments, to better understand and safeguard the hidden resilience of vulnerable TSD species.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Yen, E. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Carvajal, G. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bazely, J. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gilbert, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Taxonera, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fairweather, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lopes, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Afonso, I. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Newlands, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bentley, B. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Correia, S. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Allen, C. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Staman, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sifuentes-Romero, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Martin-Duran, J. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Komoroske, L. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wyneken, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eizaguirre, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.06.697884</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[DNA methylation reveals evolved buffering responses to climate-driven sex ratio skew in sea turtles]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.06.698019v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
3D genome architecture regulates the traffic of transcription factors throughout human chromosomes 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.06.698019v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Transcription factors (TFs) control the rate of transcription of genetic information by binding to specific DNA sequences. The time needed for a TF to find its specific target sites is a bottleneck to the genetic response mechanism. While TF target site search is a well-studied problem, the effect of genome 3D architecture on the TF target search times is poorly understood. Here, we use accurate and cell-specific 3D structural ensembles of human chromosomes to investigate how the spatial organization of binding sites on chromosomes influences the dynamics of TFs. We use Chromatin Immuno-Precipitation data to map the position of binding sites for several TFs on chromosomal structures and simulate the dynamics of individual TF within chromosomal territories. We find that the distribution of binding sites along chromosomes cooperates with the 3D folding of the chromatin fiber to induce dynamics in which TFs tend to visit sites distributed sequentially along the genome. In this way, genome 3D architecture appears to reduce the time each TF spends in the unbound state while commuting from one target site to the other. At the same time, genome 3D architecture further reduces the flux of TFs between binding sites already well separated along the genome, effectively isolating distant clusters of binding sites. We compare the TF traffic patterns generated by the 3D structures of human chromosomes with those generated by several alternative structural models characterized by increasing randomness. Finally, we study the effect of lengthwise compaction and phase separation, known architectural features of the human genome, in TFs target search. In short, our analysis demonstrates that genome architecture regulates the traffic of TFs within chromosomal territories and reduces the time each TF spends commuting between binding sites.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Das, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cheng, R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Potoyan, D. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Di Pierro, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-06</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.06.698019</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[3D genome architecture regulates the traffic of transcription factors throughout human chromosomes]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-06</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.12.695941v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Characterization of the clade 4 non-toxigenic C. difficile isolate L-NTCD03 carrying the cfr(B) gene 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.12.695941v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is a toxin-mediated gastro-intestinal disease. Yet, C. difficile is a phylogenetically diverse species that includes many non-toxigenic strains. In general, these are understudied, despite having significant potential impact for our understanding of the colonization process and as therapeutic modalities. Here, we present an in-depth characterization - including the complete genome sequence - of the non-toxigenic C. difficile strain L-NTCD03. This strain belongs to PCR ribotype 416, clade 4 and multilocus sequence type 39. It is resistant to multiple antimicrobials, but not those used for treatment of CDI. We validated the relevance of the cfr(B) gene from this strain in antimicrobial resistance to clindamycin, linezolid, retapamulin and streptogramin A. We found the L-NTCD03 strain to be non-toxic in various assays. Altogether, L-NTCD03 is a promising candidate for developing into a live biotherapeutic product.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Nibbering, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nooij, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harmanus, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanders, I. M. J. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Miedema, I. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Vossen, R. H. A. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kloet, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ardis, C. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Britton, R. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Yousefi, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bayne, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Charavaryamath, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Law, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Murphy, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sponseller, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burrough, E. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mooyottu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Opriessnig, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuijper, E. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Smits, W. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.12.695941</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Characterization of the clade 4 non-toxigenic C. difficile isolate L-NTCD03 carrying the cfr(B) gene]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.15.699694v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Novel Protoporphyrinogen oxidase 1 mutations endow resistance to PPO-inhibiting herbicides in Bassia scoparia 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.15.699694v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
PPO-inhibiting herbicides are widely used to manage weeds in different cropping systems, yet resistance evolution threatens their long-term efficacy. Here, we investigated the molecular basis of resistance to PPO-inhibiting herbicides in Bassia scoparia biotypes collected from four locations in North Dakota, USA. Greenhouse dose-response assays revealed high levels of resistance to saflufenacil and carfentrazone-ethyl, while fomesafen retained full efficacy across all biotypes. Resistant plants did not show increased copy number or elevated expression of PPO1 or PPO2. Sequencing of survivor plants revealed conserved PPO2 sequences, but consistent target-site substitutions at position F454 in PPO1, including F454I, F454L, and F454V. In vitro enzyme assays demonstrated that these substitutions impair PPO1 sensitivity to saflufenacil and carfentrazone-ethyl, but not to fomesafen. Ectopic expression of B. scoparia PPO1 F454 mutant variants in Arabidopsis thaliana conferred tolerance to saflufenacil and carfentrazone-ethyl, but not to fomesafen, supporting greenhouse and in vitro results. Molecular modeling indicated that the conformational flexibility and interaction profile of fomesafen enables it to maintain binding to mutated PPO1 variants, in contrast to the more rigid structures of saflufenacil and carfentrazone-ethyl. A yeast-based complementation system further confirmed that F454 substitutions decrease herbicide sensitivity. In addition, developmental profiling showed distinct expression patterns of PPO1 and PPO2 during early growth stages in B. scoparia and Amaranthus spp., highlighting isoform-specific roles. Together, these findings represent the first reported PPO1 target-site mutations in a broadleaf weed species as a key mechanism of resistance and highlight that fomesafen is effective to control resistant B. scoparia populations.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Porri, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Geddes, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Law, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ikley, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Willingham, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Johnen, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Meiners, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Al-Sammarraie, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crommar, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ouwerkerk, P. B. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Betz, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jenks, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Heiser, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baumann, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Braendle, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lerchl, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-15</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.15.699694</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Novel Protoporphyrinogen oxidase 1 mutations endow resistance to PPO-inhibiting herbicides in Bassia scoparia]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-15</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.18.700187v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Foliar fungal symbionts in sympatric yellow monkeyflowers along elevation gradients in the Sierra Nevada 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.18.700187v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
1Microbial symbionts have the potential to contribute to host-plants ecological and evolutionary success, especially in plants adaptions to harsh environments, however their role has often been overlooked. Conversely, how host local adaptation (e.g., trait divergence across elevation) shapes the composition of associated microbial symbiont communities remains poorly understood. We explored how foliar endophytic fungi (FEF) abundance, richness, and community composition in three sympatric Monkeyflowers, an ecologically diverse group of flowering plants, change across elevation in the Sierra Nevada, CA, USA. We asked: Q1) Are there differences in leaf functional traits and FEF communities among sympatric Mimulus species populations at similar elevations? Q2) How do traits and FEF communities change across elevation within species? Q3) Are FEF richness, diversity and community composition correlated with leaf functional traits and/or elevation? Q4) How does FEF community composition differ with geographic distance within each species? We collected M. guttatus, M. nasutus, and M.laciniatus individuals from natural populations across the Sierra Nevada, measured leaf functional traits and used ITS sequencing to describe the leaf endophyte community. We found significant associations of FEF community composition with host species, and elevation, suggesting that these factors influence fungal community composition. Furthermore, FEF community dissimilarity was correlated with geographic distance indicating isolation by distance and limited dispersal of fungal endophytes. We detected the prevalence of Vishniacozyma victoriae, an endophyte found most commonly in Antarctica, across all Sierran Mimulus populations. The presence of V. victoriae could play a role in the adaptation of Mimulus to cold, high elevation environments. Our findings offer novel insights into the intricate interactions between fungal endophyte communities, plant traits, and elevation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Rolon, B. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferris, K. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Van Bael, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.18.700187</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Foliar fungal symbionts in sympatric yellow monkeyflowers along elevation gradients in the Sierra Nevada]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.21.700913v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PDLP5 regulates aquaporin-mediated hydrogen peroxide transport in Arabidopsis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.21.700913v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Aquaporins facilitate the diffusion of water and small neutral molecules, including hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). In Arabidopsis, plasma membrane intrinsic proteins (PIPs, members of aquaporins) mediate H2O2 transport; however, the regulatory mechanisms governing their activity are not fully understood. Here, we show that plasmodesmata-located protein 5 (PDLP5), a key regulator of plasmodesmal function, negatively regulates PIP-dependent H2O2 transport. PDLP5 forms complexes with PIPs, with its extracellular domain predicted to associate with the extracellular face of the channel. PDLP5 overexpression suppresses H2O2 uptake and confers reduced sensitivity to H2O2-induced root growth inhibition, whereas pdlp5 mutants display the opposite phenotype. We further identify PIP2;5 as a critical component of PDLP5-mediated regulation. These findings reveal an extracellular mechanism for modulating aquaporin function, expanding current models of channel regulation in plants.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Li, Z.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, S.-L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Islam, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clements, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chen, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aung, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.21.700913</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PDLP5 regulates aquaporin-mediated hydrogen peroxide transport in Arabidopsis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.21.700920v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
FSI (Fluctuating Selection among Individuals) Reduces the Mean Fixation Time (Generations) of a Mutation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.21.700920v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
A common assumption in molecular evolution is the fixed selection nature of a mutation, for instance, a neutral mutation is selectively neutral for all individuals who carry the mutation, and so forth a deleterious or beneficial mutation. Our recent work challenged this presumption, postulating that individuals with a specific mutation exhibit a fluctuation in fitness, short for FSI (fluctuating selection among individuals). Moreover, an intriguing phenomenon called selection-duality emerges, that is, a slightly beneficial mutation could be a negative selection (the substitution rate less than the mutation rate). It appears that selection-duality is bounded: the low-bound is the generic neutrality where the mutation is neutral by the means of fitness on average, while the up-bound is the substitution neutrality where the substitution rate equals to the mutation rate. In this paper, we conducted a thorough theoretical analysis to evaluate how many generations needed for a selection-duality mutation to be fixed in a finite population. A striking finding is that the mean fixation time of a selection-duality mutant, including the generic neutrality and the substitution neutrality, is approximately identical, which is considerably shorter than the case of strict neutrality without FSI. One may further envisage that the fast-fixation nature of selection-duality mutations could result in a considerable genetic reduction at linked sites.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Gu, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.21.700920</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[FSI (Fluctuating Selection among Individuals) Reduces the Mean Fixation Time (Generations) of a Mutation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.27.701996v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Quantification of Aspergillus nidulans Actin Dynamics during Early Growth and Septum Formation 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.27.701996v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Filamentous fungi have complex, three-dimensional growth patterns and a non-adherent nature, which can present challenges for live-cell imaging for quantitative assessment of dynamic cellular processes. To address these challenges, a live-cell imaging system has been modified to constrain the model fungus Aspergillus nidulans to growth in a single focal plane. This enables high-resolution time-lapse imaging of actin dynamics throughout development using a Lifeact actin marker. This system was used to perform kymographic analysis to quantify actin velocity and hyphal extension rates during early hyphal development. Results show two distinct growth phases: germ tube extension (0.58 m/min) and hyphal extension (1.52 m/min). Actin exhibited bi-directional transport along hyphae with biased movement toward the spore body. Actin was also observed re-localizing from hyphal tips to sites of septum formation indicating active redistribution of cytoskeletal resources based on cellular demands. This technological advancement overcomes longstanding limitations in fungal live-cell imaging and provides a new platform for quantitative systems-level analysis of mycelial development, offering new insights into the spatiotemporal coordination of cytoskeletal dynamics during filamentous growth.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Huso, W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hill, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tarimala, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Doan, A. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lee, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gray, K. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Edwards, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Harris, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Marten, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.27.701996</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Quantification of Aspergillus nidulans Actin Dynamics during Early Growth and Septum Formation]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-28</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.29.702648v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Targeted mutagenesis in Ehrlichia canis deleting the phage head-to-tail connector protein gene and its assessment as a vaccine candidate preventing canine ehrlichiosis 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.29.702648v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Ehrlichia canis is primarily a Rhipicephalus sanguineus tick-borne rickettsial pathogen initially identified as causing canine monocytic ehrlichiosis, and infections in people have also been reported in Venezuela, Mexico, and parts of Europe. It is of high importance to have a vaccine suitable in protecting the canine host, which will aid in lessening E. canis infections also in people. Gene inactivation mutations in the phage head-to-tail connector protein genes (phtcp) from E. chaffeensis and A. marginale caused attenuated growth, and prior infection with the mutated bacteria induced protective immunity against wild-type bacterial infections in natural hosts, independent of blood-borne infection or tick-transmission infection. In the current study, we describe the development of targeted mutagenesis for the first time in E. canis genome and with a novel modification to avoid introducing antibiotic resistance cassettes to delete the phtcp ortholog from E. canis. The mutated E. canis was then assessed for its in vivo growth and the induction of host immunity exerted following the mutant infection aiding to protect against wild-type infection challenge in the canine host. We assessed systemic pathogen loads, hematological parameters, IgG immune responses, and plasma cytokines following the mutant infection relative to uninfected dogs. Similarly, the assessments were carried out following wild-type pathogen infections in dogs with or without prior mutant infection challenges. The study demonstrates that prior infection of dogs with the mutant induces immunity to prevent infection establishment by wild-type E. canis. Similarly, the mutant infection resulted in clear biological differences compared to the wild-type infection. This study establishes that the molecular genetic methods are broadly applicable to pathogens belonging to the family Anaplasmataceae and that the modified live vaccines with phtcp gene orthologs are valuable in reducing the diseases caused by the tick-borne rickettsial pathogens belong to Anaplasmataceae, including E. canis.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ferm, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nair, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ferm, J. D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Liu, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crosby, L. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>McGill, J. F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Latre de Late, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Stoll, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chauhan, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Choudhury, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Madesh, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganta, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Burne, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ozubek, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ganta, R. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-01-30</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.01.29.702648</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Targeted mutagenesis in Ehrlichia canis deleting the phage head-to-tail connector protein gene and its assessment as a vaccine candidate preventing canine ehrlichiosis]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-01-30</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.703366v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Comparison of environmental DNA and bulk DNA metabarcoding for assessing terrestrial arthropod diversity across three habitat types on Guam 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.703366v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
DNA based methods offer a rapid and cost-effective way for detecting species occurrence and monitoring biodiversity; among them bulk DNA metabarcoding is well-established, and recently developed environmental DNA (eDNA)-based methods offer a non-destructive alternative. With a goal to develop suitable methods for assessing insect biodiversity in ecosystems for which DNA reference libraries are not well developed and incomplete, such as remote islands, we compared established bulk DNA metabarcoding methods with eDNA across three replicated terrestrial ecosystem types (limestone forest, degraded forest, and grassland) in Guam. Using two mitochondrial COI primer pairs, we performed bulk DNA metabarcoding of standard entomological collection methods (malaise traps, pan traps, vegetation beating), and compared the assessment of biodiversity with that from different eDNA sources (flowers, spider webs, leaves, tree trunks). In our samples, eDNA and bulk DNA metabarcoding both detected a large proportion of overall taxa (OTUs, 86.6% and 60.3%, respectively). Although DNA metabarcoding detected significantly more taxa, eDNA proved to be a reasonable non-destructive alternative. As expected, because of limitations in existing reference databases for remote habitats, species-level identification was achieved for only a few OTUs. Overall, the sampling approach was the dominant driver of arthropod diversity, explaining [~]17% of the observed variation, while habitat type accounted for [~]4%. Thus, each sampling approach captured some unique diversity signals and contributed to the complementary effect of maximizing detection. For rapid insect biodiversity surveys of terrestrial arthropods, we recommend an integrated metabarcoding approach, and in sensitive habitats where insect capture is undesirable, eDNA offers a powerful alternative to monitor diversity and community change.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Al-Bayer, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Calaor, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Weber, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Graham, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>C. Andersen, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>P. Economo, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kennedy, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Krehenwinkel, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gillespie, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Roderick, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rogers, H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>P. Puliafico, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-04</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.02.703366</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Comparison of environmental DNA and bulk DNA metabarcoding for assessing terrestrial arthropod diversity across three habitat types on Guam]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-04</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.04.703680v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Hierarchical organization in sparse gene regulatory networks shapes structural coherence and emergent regulatory coordination 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.04.703680v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
How large-scale regulatory coordination in biological systems emerges from local signed and directed interactions in sparse gene regulatory networks (GRNs) remains an unanswered fundamental question. We introduce the coherence matrix, a topology-based framework that captures the consistency of regulatory influence between gene pairs by integrating information across all direct and indirect paths. Analysis of synthetic networks reveals that structural coherence - a metric derived from the coherence matrix - dictates global coordination: while highly coherent motifs maintain aligned regulatory coordination across widely varying network sparsity values, motifs with low coherence allow such coordination only at biologically unrealistic sparsity values. Our investigation of six whole-organism GRNs and further analysis of synthetic networks highlighted that hierarchical organization in GRNs a dense middle layer enriched in feedback loops that mediates coordination between input and output layers - serves as a structural buffer to allow regulatory coordination even for sparse networks. Finally, comparison with Escherichia coli transcriptomic modules further shows that the coherence matrix accurately predicts the sign of coordinated gene contribution, emphasizing its biological application, while also serving as a unifying descriptor integrating local interactions and global network architecture to explain the emergent regulatory coordination.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Harlapur, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jagadeesan, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ribeiro, A. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kadelka, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jolly, M. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-05</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.04.703680</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Hierarchical organization in sparse gene regulatory networks shapes structural coherence and emergent regulatory coordination]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-05</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.11.705406v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Viromics in flat mites from Hawaii shows abundant arrays of viruses, expands the evolutionary origin of plant viruses, and provides a surveillance tool for Brevipalpus-transmitted viruses 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.11.705406v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Flat mites (Tenuipalpidae) are diverse phytophagous arthropods, among which Brevipalpus species are economically important pests capable of transmitting plant viruses. Brevipalpus-transmitted viruses (BTVs) cause localized infections in plants and are classified into two major groups based on cytopathology and genome organization: BTV-C (genera Cilevirus and Higrevirus, family Kitaviridae) and BTV-N (genus Dichorhavirus, family Rhabdoviridae). Despite their significance, the virome of tenuipalpid mite vectors remains poorly characterized. Using high-throughput sequencing (HTS), we analyzed virus populations associated with Brevipalpus and Dolichotetranychus mites collected from multiple plant hosts across two Hawaiian Islands. We identified a diverse assemblage of viral sequences affiliated with Kitaviridae, negeviruses, Picornavirales, Narnaviridae, Tombusviridae, Solemoviridae, Ourmiaviridae, Reoviridae, and Potyviridae. Near-complete genomes of citrus leprosis virus C2H and hibiscus green spot virus 2 (both BTV-C) were recovered, highlighting the utility of HTS-based viromics for surveillance of BTVs in mite vectors. In addition, multiple divergent virus-like contigs were identified based on viral hallmark genes and sequence divergence, including Brevipalpus-associated negevirus, Brevipalpus-associated bluner-like virus, and Dolichotetranychus-associated cile-like virus, all showing evolutionary affinities to BTV-C-related viruses. Phylogenetic analyses support evolutionary links between negeviruses and kitavirids, consistent with the hypothesis that Kitaviridae evolved from arthropod-associated ancestors. While some detected plant viruses may reflect ingestion rather than active replication in mites, this study establishes a robust framework for virome-based surveillance of tenuipalpid mites, advancing our understanding of plant virus evolution and supporting agricultural biosecurity and pest management efforts.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Olmedo-Velarde, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nakasato, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Larrea-Sarmiento, A. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Melzer, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-12</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.11.705406</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Viromics in flat mites from Hawaii shows abundant arrays of viruses, expands the evolutionary origin of plant viruses, and provides a surveillance tool for Brevipalpus-transmitted viruses]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-12</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.13.703290v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
FHOD3 and DIAPH3 control cell migration and differentially shift the balance of parallel and perpendicular stress fibers 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.13.703290v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cell morphology, dictated by the filamentous actin (F-actin) cytoskeleton, is fundamental to cell migration during wound healing and cancer metastasis. Cell morphology is shaped by the extracellular matrix (ECM), which provides mechanical cues in the form of ECM stiffness. These mechanical cues regulate the assembly of the F-actin cytoskeleton which in turn controls cell morphology and cell migration. Formins are key regulators of linear F-actin, assembling it into stress fibers, yet the specific roles of individual formins in controlling distinct stress fiber subpopulations to control cell morphology and migration remain poorly defined. Here, we characterize formin expression across different cell types and leverage the inherent expression and cell morphology differences to identify FHOD3 and DIAPH3 as strongly correlated with cell elongation. We demonstrate that these formins regulate complementary but distinct stress fiber networks. In contractile, but less motile cells, FHOD3 knock-down shifts the balance towards stress fibers oriented perpendicular to the long axis of the cell. In contrast, DIAPH3 knock-down shifts the balance towards stress fibers oriented parallel to the long axis of the cell. However, in less contractile and highly motile cells, knockdown of either formin significantly impairs cell migration speed, suggesting both F-actin fiber networks are necessary for cell migration. Our work establishes a model where FHOD3 and DIAPH3 function through non-overlapping mechanisms to control the F-actin architecture that governs cell shape and motility.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Namanda, F. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Foroozandehfar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Schneider, I. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-16</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.13.703290</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[FHOD3 and DIAPH3 control cell migration and differentially shift the balance of parallel and perpendicular stress fibers]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-16</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.15.706012v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
FiCOPS: Hardware/Software Co-Design of FPGA Computational Framework for Mass Spectrometry-Based Peptide Database Search 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.15.706012v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Improving the speed and efficiency of database search algorithms that deduce peptides from mass spectrometry (MS) data has been an active area of research for more than three decades. The significance of the need for faster database search methods has rapidly increased due to the growing interest in studying non-model organisms, meta-proteomics, and proteogenomic data, which are notorious for their enormous search space. Poor scalability of serial algorithms with the growing size of the database and increasing parameters of post-translational modifications is a widely recognized problem. While high-performance computing techniques can be used on supercomputing machines, the need for real-time, on-the-instrument solutions necessitates the development of an efficient sytem-on-chip that optimizes design constraints such as cost, performance, and power of the system. To show case that such a system can work, we present an FPGA-based computational framework called FiCOPS to accelerate database search using a hardware/software co-design methodology. First, we theoretically analyze the database-search algorithm (closed-search) to reveal opportunities for parallelism and uncover computational bottlenecks. We then design an FPGA-based architectural template to exploit parallelism inherent in the search workload. We also formulate an analytical performance model for the architecture template to perform rapid design space exploration and find a near-optimal accelerator configuration. Finally, we implement our design on the Intel Stratix 10 FPGA platform and evaluate it using real-world datasets. Our experiments demonstrate that FiCOPS achieves 3.5 x speed-up over existing CPU solutions and 3x and 5x reduction in power consumption compared to existing CPU and GPU solutions.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Kumar, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zambreno, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khokhar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Akram, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Saeed, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-17</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.15.706012</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[FiCOPS: Hardware/Software Co-Design of FPGA Computational Framework for Mass Spectrometry-Based Peptide Database Search]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-17</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.22.707045v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Validation of TRIzol-Based Inactivation Protocol with Failure Scenario Testing for Bacterial Select Agent Surrogates 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.22.707045v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Validated inactivation procedures are required for the safe handling and downstream analysis of highly pathogenic organisms, particularly those categorized as biological select agents and toxins (BSATs). TRIzol-based extraction methods are widely used for nucleic acid and protein isolation, yet their reliability for bacterial inactivation has not been comprehensively evaluated. In this study, we assessed TRIzol-based extraction methods for sample quality and inactivation reliability across a series of mock failure scenarios using five attenuated bacterial isolates: Francisella tularensis holarctica LVS, Bacillus anthracis Sterne, Yersinia enterocolitica, Mycobacterium marinum, and Burkholderia cepacia. Dilution of TRIzol to induce incomplete cell lysis for the initial extraction step, including 0% TRIzol, consistently inactivated all surrogate organisms, suggesting that downstream precipitation and sample washing reagents, including isopropanol and 70% ethanol, were sufficient to inactivate organisms in the absence of TRIzol. Several protocol failure scenarios were then evaluated to simulate human error by omitting extraction, precipitation, and washing steps individually or in combination for the most resistant organism, B. anthracis Sterne strain. Failure-scenario testing demonstrated that reliable inactivation of B. anthracis required strict adherence to the complete protocol due to the spore-forming ability of B. anthracis. Collectively, this work provides a reference with experimental evidence supporting the use of TRIzol-based extraction as a bacterial inactivation strategy for a wide range of bacterial pathogens.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Shahid, U. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lueth, P. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bellaire, B. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-22</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.22.707045</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Validation of TRIzol-Based Inactivation Protocol with Failure Scenario Testing for Bacterial Select Agent Surrogates]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-22</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.21.707195v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The sugar-beet cyst nematode effector Hs2B11 targets the Arabidopsis serine protease inhibitor AtPR-6 to favor parasitism 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.21.707195v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Cyst nematodes secrete effector proteins to manipulate host cell biology and suppress immunity, yet the mechanisms underlying these interactions remain largely unexplored. In this study, we characterize the function of Hs2B11, a Heterodera schachtii effector that was previously shown to be expressed in the dorsal gland of sugar-beet cyst nematodes (BCN). Here, we report that in Arabidopsis thaliana Hs2B11 functions as an immune regulator that modulates the production of elicitor-induced oxidative species, likely to favor parasitism. To elucidate the molecular basis of this immune suppression, we performed a yeast-two-hybrid screen and identified the host serine protease inhibitor AtPR-6 as a direct interactor of Hs2B11. We show that AtPR-6 acts as a positive regulator of plant immunity; its expression is induced upon nematode infection and knock-out of AtPR-6 compromises oxidative species production leading to higher susceptibility to H. schachtii infection. Conversely, AtPR-6 overexpression enhances immune responses resulting in increased resistance to BCN infection. Detailed analysis of this interaction demonstrated that Hs2B11 interacts with AtPR-6 using its carboxyl-terminal domain. AlphaFold2 predicts that the C-terminal domain forms a beta-solenoid-like structure with a ladder of serine residues organized across one of its surfaces. We propose that using this interface, Hs2B11 targets AtPR-6 via molecular titration, preventing the inhibitor from regulating host proteases that control immune signaling. These findings highlight a counter-defense strategy where a nematode effector neutralizes a specific host protease inhibitor to subvert plant immunity.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mejias, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bredow, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kumar, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Juvale, P. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Maier, T. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Khwanbua, E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Whitham, S. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eves-van den Akker, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Baum, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.21.707195</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The sugar-beet cyst nematode effector Hs2B11 targets the Arabidopsis serine protease inhibitor AtPR-6 to favor parasitism]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.21.707214v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
A PLUM Job: Peptide modeLs for Understanding and engineering antiMicrobial therapeutics 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.21.707214v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationAntibiotic-resistant infections in humans and animals are rising, creating an urgent need for new antimicrobial strategies. This challenge extends beyond clinical settings to food production systems; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that foodborne pathogens cause over 48 million illnesses annually in the U.S. alone. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a promising alternative, with broad activity and lower risk of resistance. However, rational design remains challenging, especially when simultaneously controlling sequence, function, and peptide length.

ResultsWe introduce Peptide modeLs for Understanding and engineering antiMicrobial therapeutics (PLUM), a structured conditional Variational Autoencoder for controlled AMP generation. PLUM disentangles sequence, function, and length in its latent space, enabling de novo and prototype-conditioned generation of peptides 5-35 amino acids long, allowing capture of larger functional domains. Across 45,000 generated peptides, PLUM achieved the highest AMP yield (0.885, 7% higher than HydrAMP) and increased AMP diversity (14% higher than HydrAMP), while maintaining the highest non-AMP sequence yield 0.895 (19% higher than HydrAMP). For prototype-conditioned generation, PLUM produced 37% more AMPs than HydrAMP, generating sequences that closely matched real peptide compositions with low predicted toxicity. Integrated AMP classifiers enabled robust evaluation of identity and potency across diverse bacteria. These results establish PLUM as a scalable, versatile platform for designing AMPs and next-generation therapeutics.

Availabilityhttps://github.com/priyamayur/PLUM

Contactpb11@iastate.edu, idoerg@iastate.edu, brued@iastate.edu, oeulen@iastate.edu
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Banerjee, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rued, B. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-23</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.21.707214</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[A PLUM Job: Peptide modeLs for Understanding and engineering antiMicrobial therapeutics]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-23</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.23.707489v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
How Not to be Seen: Predicting Unseen Enzyme Functions using Contrastive Learning 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.23.707489v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationPredicting enzyme function from its sequence is still an unsolved problem in the life sciences. Moreover, with the explosion of annotated genome data, we are inundated with potential enzymatic sequences that have not yet been biochemically characterized. While it is not possible to assign a not-yet-existing label to such a sequence, there is high value in placing the sequence as accurately as possible in known function space. Doing so can help provide more accurate falsifiable hypotheses for experimentalists wishing to characterize enzymes from specific functional families.

ResultsHere we present a contrastive learning algorithm for predicting enzyme function from sequence. Our method, EnzPlacer, predicts the third, second, and first EC numbers for a protein whose fourth EC number is not in the training corpus. This novel prediction mechanism accurately places a protein sequence within a narrowed-down functional context, even if the precise function remains unknown.

AvailabilityEnzPlacer is available from https://github.com/drxiangma/EnzPlacer under a GPL3 license.

Contactqli@iastate.edu
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Ma, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Joshi, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Friedberg, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Li, Q.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-24</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.23.707489</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[How Not to be Seen: Predicting Unseen Enzyme Functions using Contrastive Learning]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-24</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.25.708075v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Structural and Metabolic Characterization of Ni(I)-inhibitors Provide a Robust Anti-Methanogenicity Scoring System 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.25.708075v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Atmospheric methane (CH4) acts as a key contributor to global warming and a short-lived climate forcer. CH4 mitigation represents the most promising means to address short-term climate change. Ruminant enteric CH4 produced by methanogenic archaea represents 27.2% of global CH4 emissions. Only a few of the direct methanogenesis inhibitors identified bear high mitigation potential hence it is important to investigate their underlying modes of action. Here, we elucidated biophysical and thermodynamic interplay between known inhibitors and cofactor F430, to determine their stoichiometric ratios and binding affinities. We leverage this prior in a robust contrastive learning approach to functionally cluster known sixteen inhibitors and 53,959 bovine-linked metabolites. We demonstrate a multi-factor optimization protocol to identify putative inhibitors with: (i) high bacterial membrane permeability, (ii) no adverse effect to ruminal fermentation, (iii) known degradation pathway, and (iv) direct commercial availability. Subsequent in vitro assays and community metabolic modeling with a first set of eight treatment molecules revealed structo-metabolic priors that tie thermodynamic signatures of inhibition to metabolic flux shifts. We established a multi-scale workflow that transforms ostensibly negative compounds into mechanistic insight, linking rumen metabolic flux shifts to MCR-F430-Ni(I) inhibition chemistry as a foundation for rational methane-mitigation design.

COVER ABSTRACT

O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=147 SRC="FIGDIR/small/708075v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1">
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org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1d38d21org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1d681d9org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1e70c0corg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1c8223f_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP  M_FIG C_FIG
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Aryee, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zargar, M. R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>SR, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>B, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dey, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mohammed, N. S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sanjeevan, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Frazier, N. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Koziel, J. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beck, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Mansell, T. J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-02-27</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.02.25.708075</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Structural and Metabolic Characterization of Ni(I)-inhibitors Provide a Robust Anti-Methanogenicity Scoring System]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-02-27</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.15.711921v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
PREMISE: A Quality-Aware Probabilistic Framework for Pathogen Resolution and Source Assignment in Viral mNGS 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.15.711921v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
The circulation of Influenza A viruses (IAVs) in wildlife and livestock presents a significant public health threat due to their zoonotic potential and rapid genomic diversification. Accurate classification of viral subtypes and characterization of within-host diversity are crucial for risk assessment and vaccine development. Although metagenomic sequencing facilitates early detection, prevalent memory-efficient k-mer-based pipelines often discard critical linkage information. This loss of information can result in missed or imprecise pathogen identification, potentially delaying clinical and public health responses. We introduce PREMISE (Pathogen Resolution via Expectation Maximization In Sequencing Experiments), a probabilistic, alignment-based framework implemented in RUST for high-resolution viral genome identification. By integrating advanced string data structures for efficient alignment with a quality-score-aware Expectation-Maximization algorithm, PREMISE accurately identifies source strains, estimates relative abundances, and performs precise read assignments. This framework provides superior source estimation with statistical confidence, enabling the identification of mixed infections, recombination, and IAV-reassortment directly from raw data. Validated against simulated and empirical datasets, PREMISE outperforms state-of-the-art k-mer methods. Ultimately, this framework represents a significant advancement in viral identification, providing a foundation for novel approaches that can automatically flag reassorted viruses or recombination events in the future, thereby improving the detection of emerging pathogens with zoonotic potential.

Availabilityhttps://github.com/sriram98v/premise under a MIT license.

Contactsriramv@iastate.edu
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Vijendran, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Anderson, T. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Eulenstein, O.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-03-18</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.03.15.711921</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[PREMISE: A Quality-Aware Probabilistic Framework for Pathogen Resolution and Source Assignment in Viral mNGS]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-03-18</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.17.711623v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Polypharmacology of an Optimal Kinase Library 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.17.711623v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Despite decades of research, current understanding of the spectrum of targets bound by kinase inhibitors remains incomplete. This complicates mechanism of action studies, drug repurposing, and understanding of adverse responses. Here, we describe kinome-wide profiling of an optimal kinase library (OKL) comprising 192 small molecules selected based on stage of clinical development, chemical diversity, and target coverage. Our results show that polypharmacology is widespread among kinase inhibitors independent of regulatory approval. The generally understood ("assigned") targets of approved molecules are not necessarily the most potently inhibited and off targets include multiple understudied kinases. Moreover, median selectivity has not increased over time. We illustrate the use of synoptic OKL-kinome profiles in identifying potential toxicity targets, repurposing anti-inflammatory drugs for neurodegenerative and infectious diseases, and performing chemical genetic studies. Our studies illustrate how much remains to be discovered about the chemistry and biology of one of the largest classes of human therapeutics.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Mills, C. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hug, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sajeevan, K. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Clark, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Victor, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chung, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rawat, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aldridge, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Albers, M. W.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chowdhury, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gyori, B. M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Sorger, P. K.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-03-19</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.03.17.711623</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Polypharmacology of an Optimal Kinase Library]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-03-19</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.20.713283v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Dispersal, adaptation and persistence of H5N1 in the sub-Antarctic and Antarctica 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.20.713283v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
High pathogenicity avian influenza virus (HPAIV) H5N1 reached the sub-Antarctic and Antarctica in 2023, subsequently spreading to remote locations within this region where it had devastating impacts on seal, penguin and albatross populations. The threat to marine wildlife over this broad area exemplifies the need to understand H5N1 long-distance dispersal and evolution. We obtained 104 novel viral genomic sequences from samples that we collected at South Georgia, Kerguelen, Crozet, Prince Edward, Falklands/Malvinas Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula in a region spanning 8,000 kilometers. Using recent phylogeographic modeling advances we show that H5N1 spread encompassed numerous transmission events between distant locations, accumulating mammalian-adaptive mutations in the process. Seals are the most affected species, but we reveal that the long-distance eastward virus dispersal better aligns with the long-distance movements of large petrels and albatrosses. The risk of H5N1 endemisation, dispersal to other locations and ongoing evolution are highly concerning.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Clessin, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Brusselmans, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Hong, S. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Tornos, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lejeune, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Shao, Y.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Briand, F.-X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Abolnik, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kaza, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Suchard, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Aguado, B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Alcami, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Barbraud, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Beer, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bennison, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bonadonna, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bonnet, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bost, C.-A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Boucheron, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Bralet, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Catry, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Cleeland, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Connan, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Coombes, H. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Delord, K. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>de Pasquale, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dewar, M. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dong, X. C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Emerit, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fischer, R.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Fountain-Jones, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Galimberti, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gonzalez-Solis, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Guinet, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gunn, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gunther, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Iervolino, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>James, J.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ji, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jonsen, I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Jones, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuepfer, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kuiken, T.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lebohec, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lisovski, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Zu</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-03-21</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.03.20.713283</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Dispersal, adaptation and persistence of H5N1 in the sub-Antarctic and Antarctica]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-03-21</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.30.715112v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
Denatured Albumin Gains a Function of Regulating Platelet Activity 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.30.715112v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Platelets are blood cells that play a critical role in hemostasis and thrombosis. Serum albumin, which constitutes approximately 50% of plasma proteins, has traditionally been considered non-interactive with platelets and not involved in platelet function. Here, using a molecular force sensor and platelet adhesion and aggregation assays, we show that serum albumin, if denatured, specifically binds to integrin IIb{beta}3 in platelets and transmits platelet contractile forces, regulating platelet activation, adhesion and aggregation as effectively as fibrinogen (the clotting factor I). 0.1% ethanol or 10 {micro}M hydrogen peroxide, physiologically attainable in blood through alcohol intake or disease-elevated oxidative stress, are sufficient to denature albumin into a functional platelet ligand. These findings revealed albumin as a previously unrecognized but important regulator of platelet functions, with broad implications for the thrombotic risk in the context of physiological conditions that induce albumin denaturation.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pandey, V.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kundu, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, S.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pyne, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Que, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wang, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-03-31</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.03.30.715112</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Denatured Albumin Gains a Function of Regulating Platelet Activity]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-03-31</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.30.713641v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
The emergence and molecular evolution of H5N1 influenza viruses in United States dairy cattle 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.30.713641v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Prior to 2024, highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b viruses circulated predominantly in wild birds and poultry. In 2024 and 2025, 2.3.4.4b genotypes B3.13 and D1.1 were detected in United States dairy cattle. Using whole-genome and segment-specific phylodynamic inference, we estimate that B3.13 and D1.1 spilled over from wild birds into dairy cattle in late 2023 and late 2024, respectively. Spillover occurred shortly after the formation of the reassortant genotypes and was followed by months of cryptic transmission prior to detection. We found that both B3.13 and D1.1 evolved at higher rates in cattle relative to birds, primarily due to relaxed purifying selection. Site-specific analyses identified genomic sites under positive selection in cattle relative to birds, indicating adaptation and likely contributing to improved viral fitness after spillover. Intensified genomic surveillance in dairy cattle is essential as population immunity introduces additional selection pressures, with ever-changing risk for human emergence.
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Pekar, J. E.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gangavarapu, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Crespo-Bellido, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Peacock, T. P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Wertheim, J. O.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dudas, G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Joy, J. B.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Chand, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Debarre, F.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Gangavarapu, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Goldhill, D. H.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Groves, N.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ji, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Malpica Serrano, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Moncla, L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rasmussen, A. L.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Ruis, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Venkatesh, D.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kraemer, M. U. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Pybus, O. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Andersen, K. G.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Suchard, M. A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Nelson, M. I.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Lemey, P.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Worobey, M.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Rambaut, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-04-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.03.30.713641</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The emergence and molecular evolution of H5N1 influenza viruses in United States dairy cattle]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-04-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
<item rdf:about="https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.30.715378v1?rss=1">
<title>
<![CDATA[
CLEAR: Concise List Enrichment Analysis Reducing Redundancy 
]]>
</title>
<link>https://biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.30.715378v1?rss=1</link>
<description><![CDATA[
MotivationHigh-throughput experiments generate genome-wide measurements for thousands of genes, which are often tested marginally. Biological processes are driven by coordinated groups of genes rather than individual genes, making gene set enrichment analysis an essential post hoc interpretation tool. Traditional approaches such as Over-Representation Analysis and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis test gene sets independently, which ignores the hierarchical and overlapping structure of gene set collections such as the Gene Ontology, and often leads to redundant enrichment results. Set-based approaches such as MGSA address this issue by modeling multiple gene sets simultaneously, but they rely on binary gene activation states derived from arbitrary thresholds on gene-level statistics.

ResultsWe introduce Concise List Enrichment Analysis Reducing Redundancy (CLEAR), a Bayesian gene set enrichment framework that jointly models gene sets while incorporating continuous gene-level statistics such as test statistics or p-values. CLEAR extends model-based gene set analysis by replacing threshold-based gene activation with a probabilistic model for continuous gene-level statistics. This approach preserves the redundancy-reduction advantages of set-based enrichment methods while avoiding the information loss introduced by binarization. Using both simulated datasets and human gene expression data, we show that CLEAR improves sensitivity compared with existing enrichment approaches while producing a more concise and interpretable set of enriched gene sets.

Availability and implementationThe source code, data, and a brief tutorial are freely available at https://github.com/jiatuya/CLEAR
]]></description>
<dc:creator>Jia, X.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Phan, A.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Dorman, K.</dc:creator>
<dc:creator>Kadelka, C.</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2026-04-01</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>doi:10.64898/2026.03.30.715378</dc:identifier>
<dc:title><![CDATA[CLEAR: Concise List Enrichment Analysis Reducing Redundancy]]></dc:title>
<dc:publisher>Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press</dc:publisher>
<prism:publicationDate>2026-04-01</prism:publicationDate>
<prism:section></prism:section>
</item>
</rdf:RDF>
