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BEN3/BIG2 ARF GEF is Involved in Brefeldin A-Sensitive Trafficking at the trans-Golgi Network/Early Endosome in Arabidopsis thaliana
No full textMembrane traffic at the trans-Golgi network (TGN) is crucial for correctly distributing various membrane proteins to their destination. Polarly localized auxin efflux proteins, including PIN-FORMED1 (PIN1), are dynamically transported between the endosomes and the plasma membrane (PM) in the plant cells. The intracellular trafficking of PIN1 protein is sensitive to a fungal toxin brefeldin A (BFA), which is known to inhibit guanine-nucleotide exchange factors for ADP ribosylation factors (ARF GEFs) such as GNOM. However, the molecular details of the BFA-sensitive trafficking pathway have not been revealed fully. In a previous study, we have identified an Arabidopsis mutant BFA-visualized endocytic trafficking defective 3 (ben3) which exhibited reduced sensitivity to BFA in terms of BFA-induced intracellular PIN1 agglomeration. Here, we show that BEN3 encodes a member of BIG family ARF GEFs, BIG2. Fluorescent proteins tagged BEN3/BIG2 co-localized with markers for TGN / early endosome (EE). Inspection of conditionally induced de novo synthesized PIN1 confirmed that its secretion to the PM is BFA-sensitive and established BEN3/BIG2 as a crucial component of this BFA action at the level of TGN/EE. Furthermore, ben3 mutation alleviated BFA-induced agglomeration of another TGN-localized ARF GEF BEN1/MIN7. Taken together our results suggest that BEN3/BIG2 is an ARF GEF component, which confers BFA sensitivity to the TGN/EE in Arabidopsis
On the mechanistic nature of epistasis in a canonical cis-regulatory element
Get PDFUnderstanding the relation between genotype and phenotype remains a major challenge. The difficulty of predicting individual mutation effects, and particularly the interactions between them, has prevented the development of a comprehensive theory that links genotypic changes to their phenotypic effects. We show that a general thermodynamic framework for gene regulation, based on a biophysical understanding of protein-DNA binding, accurately predicts the sign of epistasis in a canonical cis-regulatory element consisting of overlapping RNA polymerase and repressor binding sites. Sign and magnitude of individual mutation effects are sufficient to predict the sign of epistasis and its environmental dependence. Thus, the thermodynamic model offers the correct null prediction for epistasis between mutations across DNA-binding sites. Our results indicate that a predictive theory for the effects of cis-regulatory mutations is possible from first principles, as long as the essential molecular mechanisms and the constraints these impose on a biological system are accounted for
Algorithmic advances in program analysis and their applications
Get PDFThis dissertation focuses on algorithmic aspects of program verification, and presents modeling and complexity advances on several problems related to the
static analysis of programs, the stateless model checking of concurrent programs, and the competitive analysis of real-time scheduling algorithms.
Our contributions can be broadly grouped into five categories.
Our first contribution is a set of new algorithms and data structures for the quantitative and data-flow analysis of programs, based on the graph-theoretic notion of treewidth.
It has been observed that the control-flow graphs of typical programs have special structure, and are characterized as graphs of small treewidth.
We utilize this structural property to provide faster algorithms for the quantitative and data-flow analysis of recursive and concurrent programs.
In most cases we make an algebraic treatment of the considered problem,
where several interesting analyses, such as the reachability, shortest path, and certain kind of data-flow analysis problems follow as special cases.
We exploit the constant-treewidth property to obtain algorithmic improvements for on-demand versions of the problems,
and provide data structures with various tradeoffs between the resources spent in the preprocessing and querying phase.
We also improve on the algorithmic complexity of quantitative problems outside the algebraic path framework,
namely of the minimum mean-payoff, minimum ratio, and minimum initial credit for energy problems.
Our second contribution is a set of algorithms for Dyck reachability with applications to data-dependence analysis and alias analysis.
In particular, we develop an optimal algorithm for Dyck reachability on bidirected graphs, which are ubiquitous in context-insensitive, field-sensitive points-to analysis.
Additionally, we develop an efficient algorithm for context-sensitive data-dependence analysis via Dyck reachability,
where the task is to obtain analysis summaries of library code in the presence of callbacks.
Our algorithm preprocesses libraries in almost linear time, after which the contribution of the library in the complexity of the client analysis is (i)~linear in the number of call sites and (ii)~only logarithmic in the size of the whole library, as opposed to linear in the size of the whole library.
Finally, we prove that Dyck reachability is Boolean Matrix Multiplication-hard in general, and the hardness also holds for graphs of constant treewidth.
This hardness result strongly indicates that there exist no combinatorial algorithms for Dyck reachability with truly subcubic complexity.
Our third contribution is the formalization and algorithmic treatment of the Quantitative Interprocedural Analysis framework.
In this framework, the transitions of a recursive program are annotated as good, bad or neutral, and receive a weight which measures
the magnitude of their respective effect.
The Quantitative Interprocedural Analysis problem asks to determine whether there exists an infinite run of the program where the long-run ratio of the bad weights over the good weights is above a given threshold.
We illustrate how several quantitative problems related to static analysis of recursive programs can be instantiated in this framework,
and present some case studies to this direction.
Our fourth contribution is a new dynamic partial-order reduction for the stateless model checking of concurrent programs. Traditional approaches rely on the standard Mazurkiewicz equivalence between traces, by means of partitioning the trace space into equivalence classes, and attempting to explore a few representatives from each class.
We present a new dynamic partial-order reduction method called the Data-centric Partial Order Reduction (DC-DPOR).
Our algorithm is based on a new equivalence between traces, called the observation equivalence.
DC-DPOR explores a coarser partitioning of the trace space than any exploration method based on the standard Mazurkiewicz equivalence.
Depending on the program, the new partitioning can be even exponentially coarser.
Additionally, DC-DPOR spends only polynomial time in each explored class.
Our fifth contribution is the use of automata and game-theoretic verification techniques in the competitive analysis and synthesis of real-time scheduling algorithms for firm-deadline tasks.
On the analysis side, we leverage automata on infinite words to compute the competitive ratio of real-time schedulers subject to various environmental constraints.
On the synthesis side, we introduce a new instance of two-player mean-payoff partial-information games, and show
how the synthesis of an optimal real-time scheduler can be reduced to computing winning strategies in this new type of games
Mapping the mouse Allelome reveals tissue specific regulation of allelic expression
Get PDFTo determine the dynamics of allelic-specific expression during mouse development, we analyzed RNA-seq data from 23 F1 tissues from different developmental stages, including 19 female tissues allowing X chromosome inactivation (XCI) escapers to also be detected. We demonstrate that allelic expression arising from genetic or epigenetic differences is highly tissue-specific. We find that tissue-specific strain-biased gene expression may be regulated by tissue-specific enhancers or by post-transcriptional differences in stability between the alleles. We also find that escape from X-inactivation is tissue-specific, with leg muscle showing an unexpectedly high rate of XCI escapers. By surveying a range of tissues during development, and performing extensive validation, we are able to provide a high confidence list of mouse imprinted genes including 18 novel genes. This shows that cluster size varies dynamically during development and can be substantially larger than previously thought, with the Igf2r cluster extending over 10 Mb in placenta
Different patterns of neuronal activity trigger distinct responses of oligodendrocyte precursor cells in the corpus callosum
Get PDFIn the developing and adult brain, oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) are influenced by neuronal activity: they are involved in synaptic signaling with neurons, and their proliferation and differentiation into myelinating glia can be altered by transient changes in neuronal firing. An important question that has been unanswered is whether OPCs can discriminate different patterns of neuronal activity and respond to them in a distinct way. Here, we demonstrate in brain slices that the pattern of neuronal activity determines the functional changes triggered at synapses between axons and OPCs. Furthermore, we show that stimulation of the corpus callosum at different frequencies in vivo affects proliferation and differentiation of OPCs in a dissimilar way. Our findings suggest that neurons do not influence OPCs in "all-or-none" fashion but use their firing pattern to tune the response and behavior of these nonneuronal cells
Orientation and repositioning of chromosomes correlate with cell geometry dependent gene expression
Get PDFExtracellular matrix signals from the microenvironment regulate gene expression patterns and cell behavior. Using a combination of experiments and geometric models, we demonstrate correlations between cell geometry, three-dimensional (3D) organization of chromosome territories, and gene expression. Fluorescence in situ hybridization experiments showed that micropatterned fibroblasts cultured on anisotropic versus isotropic substrates resulted in repositioning of specific chromosomes, which contained genes that were differentially regulated by cell geometries. Experiments combined with ellipsoid packing models revealed that the mechanosensitivity of chromosomes was correlated with their orientation in the nucleus. Transcription inhibition experiments suggested that the intermingling degree was more sensitive to global changes in transcription than to chromosome radial positioning and its orientations. These results suggested that cell geometry modulated 3D chromosome arrangement, and their neighborhoods correlated with gene expression patterns in a predictable manner. This is central to understanding geometric control of genetic programs involved in cellular homeostasis and the associated diseases
Bacterial flagella grow through an injection diffusion mechanism
Get PDFThe bacterial flagellum is a self-assembling nanomachine. The external flagellar filament, several times longer than a bacterial cell body, is made of a few tens of thousands subunits of a single protein: flagellin. A fundamental problem concerns the molecular mechanism of how the flagellum grows outside the cell, where no discernible energy source is available. Here, we monitored the dynamic assembly of individual flagella using in situ labelling and real-time immunostaining of elongating flagellar filaments. We report that the rate of flagellum growth, initially ~1,700 amino acids per second, decreases with length and that the previously proposed chain mechanism does not contribute to the filament elongation dynamics. Inhibition of the proton motive force-dependent export apparatus revealed a major contribution of substrate injection in driving filament elongation. The combination of experimental and mathematical evidence demonstrates that a simple, injection-diffusion mechanism controls bacterial flagella growth outside the cell
Altered surface mGluR5 dynamics provoke synaptic NMDAR dysfunction and cognitive defects in Fmr1 knockout mice
Get PDFMetabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 5 (mGluR5) is crucially implicated in the pathophysiology of Fragile X Syndrome (FXS); however, its dysfunction at the sub-cellular level, and related synaptic and cognitive phenotypes are unexplored. Here, we probed the consequences of mGluR5/Homer scaffold disruption for mGluR5 cell-surface mobility, synaptic N-methyl-D-Aspartate receptor (NMDAR) function, and behavioral phenotypes in the second-generation Fmr1 knockout (KO) mouse. Using single-molecule tracking, we found that mGluR5 was significantly more mobile at synapses in hippocampal Fmr1 KO neurons, causing an increased synaptic surface co-clustering of mGluR5 and NMDAR. This correlated with a reduced amplitude of synaptic NMDAR currents, a lack of their mGluR5-Activated long-Term depression, and NMDAR/hippocampus dependent cognitive deficits. These synaptic and behavioral phenomena were reversed by knocking down Homer1a in Fmr1 KO mice. Our study provides a mechanistic link between changes of mGluR5 dynamics and pathological phenotypes of FXS, unveiling novel targets for mGluR5-based therapeutics
Cytokinesis in vertebrate cells initiates by contraction of an equatorial actomyosin network composed of randomly oriented filaments
Get PDFThe actomyosin ring generates force to ingress the cytokinetic cleavage furrow in animal cells, yet its filament organization and the mechanism of contractility is not well understood. We quantified actin filament order in human cells using fluorescence polarization microscopy and found that cleavage furrow ingression initiates by contraction of an equatorial actin network with randomly oriented filaments. The network subsequently gradually reoriented actin filaments along the cell equator. This strictly depended on myosin II activity, suggesting local network reorganization by mechanical forces. Cortical laser microsurgery revealed that during cytokinesis progression, mechanical tension increased substantially along the direction of the cell equator, while the network contracted laterally along the pole-to-pole axis without a detectable increase in tension. Our data suggest that an asymmetric increase in cortical tension promotes filament reorientation along the cytokinetic cleavage furrow, which might have implications for diverse other biological processes involving actomyosin rings
Multiplexed computations in retinal ganglion cells of a single type
Get PDFIn the early visual system, cells of the same type perform the same computation in different places of the visual field. How these cells code together a complex visual scene is unclear. A common assumption is that cells of the same type will extract a single stimulus feature to form a feature map, but this has rarely been observed directly. Using large-scale recordings in the rat retina, we show that a homogeneous population of fast OFF ganglion cells simultaneously encodes two radically different features of a visual scene. Cells close to a moving object code linearly for its position, while distant cells remain largely invariant to the object's position and, instead, respond non-linearly to changes in the object's speed. Cells switch between these two computations depending on the stimulus. We developed a quantitative model that accounts for this effect and identified a likely disinhibitory circuit that mediates it. Ganglion cells of a single type thus do not code for one, but two features simultaneously. This richer, flexible neural map might also be present in other sensory systems