Evaluation of sensitivity, performance and reproducibility of microarray technology in neuronal tissue

Dietary n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation alters the expression of genes involved in the control of fertility in the bovine uterine endometrium

The potential for dietary supplementation with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) to improve reproductive efficiency in cattle has received much interest. The mechanisms by which n-3 PUFA may affect physiological and biochemical processes in key reproductive tissues are likely to be mediated by significant alterations in gene expression. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of dietary n-3 PUFA supplementation on global uterine endometrial gene expression in cattle. Beef heifers were supplemented with a rumen protected source of either a saturated fatty acid (CON; palmitic acid) or high n-3 PUFA (n-3 PUFA; 275 g) diet per animal per day for 45 days and global gene expression was determined in uterine endometrial tissue using an Affymetrix oligonucleotide bovine array. A total of 1,807 (946 up- and 861 downregulated) genes were differentially expressed following n-3 PUFA supplementation. Dietary n-3 PUFA altered numerous cellular processes potentially important in the control of reproduction in cattle. These included prostaglandin biosynthesis, steroidogenesis and transcriptional regulation, while effects on genes involved in maternal immune response and tissue remodeling were also observed. This study provides new insights into the effects of n-3 PUFA supplementation on the regulation of gene expression in the bovine uterus.

Target gene expression levels and competition between transfected and endogenous microRNAs are strong confounding factors in microRNA high-throughput experiments

Background

MicroRNA (miRNA) target genes tend to have relatively long and conserved 3' untranslated regions (UTRs), but to what degree these characteristics contribute to miRNA targeting is poorly understood. Different high-throughput experiments have, for example, shown that miRNAs preferentially regulate genes with both short and long 3' UTRs and that target site conservation is both important and irrelevant for miRNA targeting.

Results

We have analyzed several gene context-dependent features, including 3' UTR length, 3' UTR conservation, and messenger RNA (mRNA) expression levels, reported to have conflicting influence on miRNA regulation. By taking into account confounding factors such as technology-dependent experimental bias and competition between transfected and endogenous miRNAs, we show that two factors - target gene expression and competition - could explain most of the previously reported experimental differences. Moreover, we find that these and other target site-independent features explain about the same amount of variation in target gene expression as the target site-dependent features included in the TargetScan model.

Conclusions

Our results show that it is important to consider confounding factors when interpreting miRNA high throughput experiments and urge special caution when using microarray data to compare average regulatory effects between groups of genes that have different average gene expression levels.

mRNA turnover rate limits siRNA and microRNA efficacy

Based on a simple model of the mRNA life cycle, we predict that mRNAs with high turnover rates in the cell are more difficult to perturb with RNAi.

We test this hypothesis using a luciferase reporter system and obtain additional evidence from a variety of large-scale data sets, including microRNA overexpression experiments and RT–qPCR-based efficacy measurements for thousands of siRNAs.

Our results suggest that mRNA half-lives will influence how mRNAs are differentially perturbed whenever small RNA levels change in the cell, not only after transfection but also during differentiation, pathogenesis and normal cell physiology.

What determines how strongly an mRNA responds to a microRNA or an siRNA? We know that properties of the sequence match between the small RNA and the mRNA are crucial. However, large-scale validations of siRNA efficacies have shown that certain transcripts remain recalcitrant to perturbation even after repeated redesign of the siRNA (Krueger et al, 2007). Weak response to RNAi may thus be an inherent property of the mRNA, but the underlying factors have proven difficult to uncover.

siRNAs induce degradation by sequence-specific cleavage of their target mRNAs (Elbashir et al, 2001). MicroRNAs, too, induce mRNA degradation, and ∼80% of their effect on protein levels can be explained by changes in transcript abundance (Hendrickson et al, 2009; Guo et al, 2010). Given that multiple factors act simultaneously to degrade individual mRNAs, we here consider whether variable responses to micro/siRNA regulation may, in part, be explained simply by the basic dynamics of mRNA turnover. If a transcript is already under strong destabilizing regulation, it is theoretically possible that the relative change in abundance after the addition of a novel degrading factor would be less pronounced compared with a stable transcript (Figure 1). mRNA turnover is achieved by a multitude of factors, and the influence of such factors on targetability can be explored. However, their combined action, including yet unknown factors, is summarized into a single property: the mRNA decay rate.

First, we explored the theoretical relationship between the pre-existing turnover rate of an mRNA, and its expected susceptibility to perturbation by a small RNA. We assumed a basic model of the mRNA life cycle, in which the rate of transcription is constant and the rate of degradation is described by first-order kinetics. Under this model, the relative change in steady-state expression level will become smaller as the pre-existing decay rate grows larger, independent of the transcription rate. This relationship persists also if we assume various degrees of synergy and antagonism between the pre-existing factors and the external factor, with increasing synergism leading to transcripts being more equally targetable, regardless of their pre-existing decay rate.

We next generated a series of four luciferase reporter constructs with destabilizing AU-rich elements (AREs) of various strengths incorporated into their 3′ UTRs. To evaluate how the different constructs would respond to perturbation, we performed co-transfections with an siRNA targeted at the coding region of the luciferase gene. This reduced the signal of the non-destabilized construct to 26% compared with a control siRNA. In contrast, the most destabilized construct showed 42% remaining reporter activity, and we could observe a dose–response relationship across the series.

The reporter experiment encouraged an investigation of this effect on real-world mRNAs. We analyzed a set of 2622 siRNAs, for which individual efficacies were determined using RT–qPCR 48 h post-transfection in HeLa cells (www.appliedbiosystems.com). Of these, 1778 could be associated with an experimentally determined decay rate (Figure 4A). Although the overall correlation between the two variables was modest (Spearman's rank correlation r_s=0.22, P<1e−20), we found that siRNAs directed at high-turnover (t_1/2<200 min) and medium-turnover (200<t_1/2<1000 min) mRNAs caused significantly less repression than those targeting long-lived (t_1/2>1000 min) transcripts (P<8e−11 and 4e−9, respectively, two-tailed KS-test, Figure 4B). While 41.6% (498/1196) of the siRNAs directed at low-turnover transcripts reached 10% remaining expression or better, only 16.7% (31/186) of the siRNAs that targeted high-turnover mRNAs reached this high degree of silencing (Figure 4B). Reduced targetability (25.2%, 100/396) was also seen for transcripts with medium-turnover rate.

Our results based on siRNA data suggested that turnover rates could also influence microRNA targeting. By assembling genome-wide mRNA expression data from 20 published microRNA transfections in HeLa cells, we found that predicted target mRNAs with short and medium half-life were significantly less repressed after transfection than their long-lived counterparts (P<8e−5 and P<0.03, respectively, two-tailed KS-test). Specifically, 10.2% (293/2874) of long-lived targets versus 4.4% (41/942) of short-lived targets were strongly (z-score <−3) repressed. siRNAs are known to cause off-target effects that are mediated, in part, by microRNA-like seed complementarity (Jackson et al, 2006). We analyzed changes in transcript levels after transfection of seven different siRNAs, each with a unique seed region (Jackson et al, 2006). Putative ‘off-targets' were identified by mapping of non-conserved seed matches in 3′ UTRs. We found that low-turnover mRNAs (t_1/2 >1000 min) were more affected by seed-mediated off-target silencing than high-turnover mRNAs (t_1/2 <200 min), with twice as many long-lived seed-containing transcripts (3.8 versus 1.9%) being strongly (z-score <−3) repressed.

In summary, mRNA turnover rates have an important influence on the changes exerted by small RNAs on mRNA levels. It can be assumed that mRNA half-lives will influence how mRNAs are differentially perturbed whenever small RNA levels change in the cell, not only after transfection but also during differentiation, pathogenesis and normal cell physiology.

The microRNA pathway participates in basic cellular processes and its discovery has enabled the development of si/shRNAs as powerful investigational tools and potential therapeutics. Based on a simple kinetic model of the mRNA life cycle, we hypothesized that mRNAs with high turnover rates may be more resistant to RNAi-mediated silencing. The results of a simple reporter experiment strongly supported this hypothesis. We followed this with a genome-wide scale analysis of a rich corpus of experiments, including RT–qPCR validation data for thousands of siRNAs, siRNA/microRNA overexpression data and mRNA stability data. We find that short-lived transcripts are less affected by microRNA overexpression, suggesting that microRNA target prediction would be improved if mRNA turnover rates were considered. Similarly, short-lived transcripts are more difficult to silence using siRNAs, and our results may explain why certain transcripts are inherently recalcitrant to perturbation by small RNAs.

The salt-responsive transcriptome of chickpea roots and nodules via deepSuperSAGE

BACKGROUND

The combination of high-throughput transcript profiling and next-generation sequencing technologies is a prerequisite for genome-wide comprehensive transcriptome analysis. Our recent innovation of deepSuperSAGE is based on an advanced SuperSAGE protocol and its combination with massively parallel pyrosequencing on Roche's 454 sequencing platform. As a demonstration of the power of this combination, we have chosen the salt stress transcriptomes of roots and nodules of the third most important legume crop chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). While our report is more technology-oriented, it nevertheless addresses a major world-wide problem for crops generally: high salinity. Together with low temperatures and water stress, high salinity is responsible for crop losses of millions of tons of various legume (and other) crops. Continuously deteriorating environmental conditions will combine with salinity stress to further compromise crop yields. As a good example for such stress-exposed crop plants, we started to characterize salt stress responses of chickpeas on the transcriptome level.

RESULTS

We used deepSuperSAGE to detect early global transcriptome changes in salt-stressed chickpea. The salt stress responses of 86,919 transcripts representing 17,918 unique 26 bp deepSuperSAGE tags (UniTags) from roots of the salt-tolerant variety INRAT-93 two hours after treatment with 25 mM NaCl were characterized. Additionally, the expression of 57,281 transcripts representing 13,115 UniTags was monitored in nodules of the same plants. From a total of 144,200 analyzed 26 bp tags in roots and nodules together, 21,401 unique transcripts were identified. Of these, only 363 and 106 specific transcripts, respectively, were commonly up- or down-regulated (>3.0-fold) under salt stress in both organs, witnessing a differential organ-specific response to stress.Profiting from recent pioneer works on massive cDNA sequencing in chickpea, more than 9,400 UniTags were able to be linked to UniProt entries. Additionally, gene ontology (GO) categories over-representation analysis enabled to filter out enriched biological processes among the differentially expressed UniTags. Subsequently, the gathered information was further cross-checked with stress-related pathways. From several filtered pathways, here we focus exemplarily on transcripts associated with the generation and scavenging of reactive oxygen species (ROS), as well as on transcripts involved in Na+ homeostasis. Although both processes are already very well characterized in other plants, the information generated in the present work is of high value. Information on expression profiles and sequence similarity for several hundreds of transcripts of potential interest is now available.

CONCLUSIONS

This report demonstrates, that the combination of the high-throughput transcriptome profiling technology SuperSAGE with one of the next-generation sequencing platforms allows deep insights into the first molecular reactions of a plant exposed to salinity. Cross validation with recent reports enriched the information about the salt stress dynamics of more than 9,000 chickpea ESTs, and enlarged their pool of alternative transcripts isoforms. As an example for the high resolution of the employed technology that we coin deepSuperSAGE, we demonstrate that ROS-scavenging and -generating pathways undergo strong global transcriptome changes in chickpea roots and nodules already 2 hours after onset of moderate salt stress (25 mM NaCl). Additionally, a set of more than 15 candidate transcripts are proposed to be potential components of the salt overly sensitive (SOS) pathway in chickpea. Newly identified transcript isoforms are potential targets for breeding novel cultivars with high salinity tolerance. We demonstrate that these targets can be integrated into breeding schemes by micro-arrays and RT-PCR assays downstream of the generation of 26 bp tags by SuperSAGE.

Quantitative study of the effect of coverage on the hybridization efficiency of surface-bound DNA nanostructures

We demonstrate that, contrary to current understanding, the density of probe molecules is not responsible for the lack of hybridization in high density single-stranded DNA (ss-DNA) self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). To this end, we use nanografting to fabricate well packed ss-DNA nanopatches within a "carpet matrix" SAM of inert thiols on gold surfaces. The DNA surface density is varied by changing the "writing" parameters, for example, tip speed, and number of scan lines. Since ss-DNA is 50 times more flexible than ds-DNA, hybridization leads to a transition to a "standing up" phase. Therefore, accurate height and compressibility measurements of the nanopatches before and after hybridization allow reliable, sensitive, and label-free detection of hybridization. Side-by-side comparison of self-assembled and nanografted DNA-monolayers shows that the latter, while denser than the former, display higher hybridization efficiencies.

Single molecule transcription profiling with AFM

Established techniques for global gene expression profiling, such as microarrays, face fundamental sensitivity constraints. Due to greatly increasing interest in examining minute samples from micro-dissected tissues, including single cells, unorthodox approaches, including molecular nanotechnologies, are being explored in this application. Here, we examine the use of single molecule, ordered restriction mapping, combined with AFM, to measure gene transcription levels from very low abundance samples. We frame the problem mathematically, using coding theory, and present an analysis of the critical error sources that may serve as a guide to designing future studies. We follow with experiments detailing the construction of high density, single molecule, ordered restriction maps from plasmids and from cDNA molecules, using two different enzymes, a result not previously reported. We discuss these results in the context of our calculations.