Faculty Bibliography

Although the design of the synthetic yeast genome Sc2.0 is highly conservative with respect to gene content, the deletion of several classes of repeated sequences and the introduction of thousands of designer changes may affect genome organization and potentially alter cellular functions. We report here the Hi-C-determined three-dimensional (3D) conformations of Sc2.0 chromosomes. The absence of repeats leads to a smoother contact pattern and more precisely tractable chromosome conformations, and the large-scale genomic organization is globally unaffected by the presence of synthetic chromosome(s). Two exceptions are synIII, which lacks the silent mating-type cassettes, and synXII, specifically when the ribosomal DNA is moved to another chromosome. We also exploit the contact maps to detect rearrangements induced in SCRaMbLE (synthetic chromosome rearrangement and modification by loxP-mediated evolution) strains.

We designed and synthesized a 976,067-base pair linear chromosome, synXII, based on native chromosome XII in Saccharomyces cerevisiae SynXII was assembled using a two-step method, specified by successive megachunk integration and meiotic recombination-mediated assembly, producing a functional chromosome in S. cerevisiae. Minor growth defect "bugs" detected in synXII, caused by deletion of tRNA genes, were rescued by introducing an ectopic copy of a single tRNA gene. The ribosomal gene cluster (rDNA) on synXII was left intact during the assembly process and subsequently replaced by a modified rDNA unit used to regenerate rDNA at three distinct chromosomal locations. The signature sequences within rDNA, which can be used to determine species identity, were swapped to generate a Saccharomyces synXII strain that would be identified as Saccharomyces bayanus by standard DNA barcoding procedures.

We describe complete design of a synthetic eukaryotic genome, Sc2.0, a highly modified Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome reduced in size by nearly 8%, with 1.1 megabases of the synthetic genome deleted, inserted, or altered. Sc2.0 chromosome design was implemented with BioStudio, an open-source framework developed for eukaryotic genome design, which coordinates design modifications from nucleotide to genome scales and enforces version control to systematically track edits. To achieve complete Sc2.0 genome synthesis, individual synthetic chromosomes built by Sc2.0 Consortium teams around the world will be consolidated into a single strain by "endoreduplication intercross." Chemically synthesized genomes like Sc2.0 are fully customizable and allow experimentalists to ask otherwise intractable questions about chromosome structure, function, and evolution with a bottom-up design strategy.

Debugging a genome sequence is imperative for successfully building a synthetic genome. As part of the effort to build a designer eukaryotic genome, yeast synthetic chromosome X (synX), designed as 707,459 base pairs, was synthesized chemically. SynX exhibited good fitness under a wide variety of conditions. A highly efficient mapping strategy called pooled PCRTag mapping (PoPM), which can be generalized to any watermarked synthetic chromosome, was developed to identify genetic alterations that affect cell fitness ("bugs"). A series of bugs were corrected that included a large region bearing complex amplifications, a growth defect mapping to a recoded sequence in FIP1, and a loxPsym site affecting promoter function of ATP2 PoPM is a powerful tool for synthetic yeast genome debugging and an efficient strategy for phenotype-genotype mapping.

As the use of synthetic biology both in industry and in academia grows, there is an increasing need to ensure biocontainment. There is growing interest in engineering bacterial- and yeast-based safeguard (SG) strains. First-generation SGs were based on metabolic auxotrophy; however, the risk of cross-feeding and the cost of growth-controlling nutrients led researchers to look for other avenues. Recent strategies include bacteria engineered to be dependent on nonnatural amino acids and yeast SG strains that have both transcriptional- and recombinational-based biocontainment. We describe improving yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae-based transcriptional SG strains, which have near-WT fitness, the lowest possible escape rate, and nanomolar ligands controlling growth. We screened a library of essential genes, as well as the best-performing promoter and terminators, yielding the best SG strains in yeast. The best constructs were fine-tuned, resulting in two tightly controlled inducible systems. In addition, for potential use in the prevention of industrial espionage, we screened an array of possible "decoy molecules" that can be used to mask any proprietary supplement to the SG strain, with minimal effect on strain fitness.

Cell Systems invited 16 experts to share their views on the field of systems genetics. In questions repeated in the headings, we asked them to define systems genetics, highlight its relevance to researchers outside the field, discuss what makes a strong systems genetics paper, and paint a picture of where the field is heading in the coming years. Their responses, ordered by the journal but otherwise unedited, make it clear that deciphering genotype to phenotype relationships is a central challenge of systems genetics and will require understanding how networks and higher-order properties of biological systems underlie complex traits. In addition, our experts illuminate the applications and relevance of systems genetics to human disease, the gut microbiome, development of tools that connect the global research community, sustainability, drug discovery, patient-specific disease and network models, and personalized treatments. Finally, a table of suggested reading provides a sample of influential work in the field.

Mammalian genomes are replete with interspersed repeats reflecting the activity of transposable elements. These mobile DNAs are self-propagating, and their continued transposition is a source of both heritable structural variation as well as somatic mutation in human genomes. Tailored approaches to map these sequences are useful to identify insertion alleles. Here, we describe in detail a strategy to amplify and sequence long interspersed element-1 (LINE-1, L1) retrotransposon insertions selectively in the human genome, transposon insertion profiling by next-generation sequencing (TIPseq). We also report the development of a machine-learning-based computational pipeline, TIPseqHunter, to identify insertion sites with high precision and reliability. We demonstrate the utility of this approach to detect somatic retrotransposition events in high-grade ovarian serous carcinoma.

Here we describe the development of tightly regulated expression switches in yeast, by engineering distant homologues of Escherichia coli TetR, including the transcriptional regulator PhlF from Pseudomonas and others. Previous studies demonstrated that the PhlF protein bound its operator sequence (phlO) in the absence of 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol (DAPG) but dissociated from phlO in the presence of DAPG. Thus, we developed a DAPG-Off system in which expression of a gene preceded by the phlO-embedded promoter was activated by a fusion of PhlF to a multimerized viral activator protein (VP16) domain in a DAPG-free environment but repressed when DAPG was added to growth medium. In addition, we constructed a DAPG-On system with the opposite behavior of the DAPG-Off system; i.e., DAPG triggers the expression of a reporter gene. Exposure of DAPG to yeast cells did not cause any serious deleterious effect on yeast physiology in terms of growth. Efforts to engineer additional Tet repressor homologues were partially successful and a known mammalian switch, the p-cumate switch based on CymR from Pseudomonas, was found to function in yeast. Orthogonality between the TetR (doxycycline), CamR (d-camphor), PhlF (DAPG), and CymR (p-cumate)-based Off switches was demonstrated by evaluating all 4 ligands against suitably engineered yeast strains. This study expands the toolbox of "On" and "Off" switches for yeast biotechnology.

Alternative splicing increases the diversity of transcriptomes and proteomes in metazoans. The extent to which alternative splicing is active and functional in unicellular organisms is less understood. Here we exploit a single-molecule long-read sequencing technique and develop an open-source software program called SpliceHunter to characterize the transcriptome in the meiosis of fission yeast. We reveal 14353 alternative splicing events in 17669 novel isoforms at different stages of meiosis, including antisense and read-through transcripts. Intron retention is the major type of alternative splicing, followed by alternate 'intron in exon'. 770 novel transcription units are detected; 53 of the predicted proteins show homology in other species and form theoretical stable structures. We report the complexity of alternative splicing along isoforms, including 683 intramolecularly co-associated intron pairs. We compare the dynamics of novel isoforms based on the number of supporting full-length reads with those of annotated isoforms and explore the translational capacity and quality of novel isoforms. The evaluation of these factors indicates that the majority of novel isoforms are unlikely to be both condition-specific and translatable but consistent with the possibility of biologically functional novel isoforms. Moreover, the co-option of these unusual transcripts into newly born genes seems likely. Together, this study highlights the diversity and dynamics at the isoform level in the sexual development of fission yeast.

BACKGROUND: Gliomas are the most common primary brain tumors in adults. We sought to understand the roles of endogenous transposable elements in these malignancies by identifying evidence of somatic retrotransposition in glioblastomas (GBM). We performed transposon insertion profiling of the active subfamily of Long INterspersed Element-1 (LINE-1) elements by deep sequencing (TIPseq) on genomic DNA of low passage oncosphere cell lines derived from 7 primary GBM biopsies, 3 secondary GBM tissue samples, and matched normal intravenous blood samples from the same individuals. RESULTS: We found and PCR validated one somatically acquired tumor-specific insertion in a case of secondary GBM. No LINE-1 insertions present in primary GBM oncosphere cultures were missing from corresponding blood samples. However, several copies of the element (11) were found in genomic DNA from blood and not in the oncosphere cultures. SNP 6.0 microarray analysis revealed deletions or loss of heterozygosity in the tumor genomes over the intervals corresponding to these LINE-1 insertions. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that LINE-1 retrotransposon can act as an infrequent insertional mutagen in secondary GBM, but that retrotransposition is uncommon in these central nervous system tumors as compared to other neoplasias.