scholarly journals The Nicrophorus vespilloides genome and methylome, a beetle with complex social behavior

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher B Cunningham ◽  
Lexiang Ji ◽  
R. Axel W Wiberg ◽  
Jennifer M Shelton ◽  
Elizabeth C McKinney ◽  
...  

Testing for conserved and novel mechanisms underlying phenotypic evolution requires a diversity of genomes available for comparison spanning multiple independent lineages. For example, complex social behavior in insects has been investigated primarily with eusocial lineages, nearly all of which are Hymenoptera. If conserved genomic influences on sociality do exist, we need data from a wider range of taxa that also vary in their levels of sociality. Here we present information on the genome of the subsocial beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides, a species long used to investigate evolutionary questions of complex social behavior. We used this genome to address two questions. First, does life history predict overlap in gene models more strongly than phylogenetic groupings? Second, like other insects with highly developed social behavior but unlike other beetles, does N. vespilloides have DNA methylation? We found the overlap in gene models was similar between N. vespilloides and all other insect groups regardless of life history. Unlike previous studies of beetles, we found strong evidence of DNA methylation, which allows this species to be used to address questions about the potential role of methylation in social behavior. The addition of this genome adds a coleopteran resource to answer questions about the evolution and mechanistic basis of sociality.

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (10) ◽  
pp. 5215-5226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin P. Larkin ◽  
Sarah J. Glastras ◽  
Hui Chen ◽  
Carol A. Pollock ◽  
Sonia Saad

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayukh Choudhury ◽  
Clara A. Amegandjin ◽  
Vidya Jadhav ◽  
Josianne Nunes Carriço ◽  
Ariane Quintal ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTMutations in regulators of the Mechanistic Target Of Rapamycin Complex 1 (mTORC1), such as Tsc1/2, lead to neurodevelopmental disorders associated with autism, intellectual disabilities and epilepsy. Whereas the effects of mTORC1 signaling dysfunction within diverse cell types are likely critical for the onset of the diverse neurological symptoms associated with mutations in mTORC1 regulators, they are not well understood. In particular, the effects of mTORC1 dys-regulation in specific types of inhibitory interneurons are unclear.Here, we showed that Tsc1 haploinsufficiency in parvalbumin (PV)-positive GABAergic interneurons either in cortical organotypic cultures or in vivo caused a premature increase in their perisomatic innervations, followed by a striking loss in adult mice. This effects were accompanied by alterations of AMPK-dependent autophagy in pre-adolescent but not adult mice. PV cell-restricted Tsc1 mutant mice showed deficits in social behavior. Treatment with the mTOR inhibitor Rapamycin restricted to the third postnatal week was sufficient to permanently rescue deficits in both PV cell innervation and social behavior in adult conditional haploinsufficient mice. All together, these findings identify a novel role of Tsc1-mTORC1 signaling in the regulation of the developmental time course and maintenance of cortical PV cell connectivity and provide a mechanistic basis for the targeted rescue of autism-related behaviors in disorders associated with deregulated mTORC1 signaling.


2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1838) ◽  
pp. 20161023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Pilakouta ◽  
Per T. Smiseth

A maternal effect is a causal influence of the maternal phenotype on the offspring phenotype over and above any direct effects of genes. There is abundant evidence that maternal effects can have a major impact on offspring fitness. Yet, no previous study has investigated the potential role of maternal effects in influencing the severity of inbreeding depression in the offspring. Inbreeding depression is a reduction in the fitness of inbred offspring relative to outbred offspring. Here, we tested whether maternal effects due to body size alter the magnitude of inbreeding depression in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides . We found that inbreeding depression in larval survival was more severe for offspring of large females than offspring of small females. This might be due to differences in how small and large females invest in an inbred brood because of their different prospects for future breeding opportunities. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence for a causal effect of the maternal phenotype on the severity of inbreeding depression in the offspring. In natural populations that are subject to inbreeding, maternal effects may drive variation in inbreeding depression and therefore contribute to variation in the strength and direction of selection for inbreeding avoidance.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Shen ◽  
Shuang Wang ◽  
Abby B. Siegel ◽  
Helen Remotti ◽  
Qiao Wang ◽  
...  

Background.Previous studies, including ours, have examined the regulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) by DNA methylation, but whether this regulation occurs at a genome-wide level in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is unclear.Subjects/Methods.Using a two-phase study design, we conducted genome-wide screening for DNA methylation and miRNA expression to explore the potential role of methylation alterations in miRNAs regulation.Results.We found that expressions of 25 miRNAs were statistically significantly different between tumor and nontumor tissues and perfectly differentiated HCC tumor from nontumor. Six miRNAs were overexpressed, and 19 were repressed in tumors. Among 133 miRNAs with inverse correlations between methylation and expression, 8 miRNAs (6%) showed statistically significant differences in expression between tumor and nontumor tissues. Six miRNAs were validated in 56 additional paired HCC tissues, and significant inverse correlations were observed for miR-125b and miR-199a, which is consistent with the inactive chromatin pattern found in HepG2 cells.Conclusion.These data suggest that the expressions of miR-125b and miR-199a are dramatically regulated by DNA hypermethylation that plays a key role in hepatocarcinogenesis.


Epigenomes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Gully ◽  
Jean-Marc Celton ◽  
Alexandre Degrave ◽  
Sandra Pelletier ◽  
Marie-Noelle Brisset ◽  
...  

Under natural growth conditions, plants experience various and repetitive biotic and abiotic stresses. Salicylic acid (SA) is a key phytohormone involved in the response to biotic challenges. Application of synthetic SA analogues can efficiently prime defense responses, and leads to improved pathogen resistance. Because SA analogues can result in long-term priming and memory, we identified genes for which expression was affected by the SA analogue and explored the role of DNA methylation in this memorization process. We show that treatments with an SA analogue can lead to long-term transcriptional memory of particular genes in Arabidopsis. We found that subsequent challenging of such plants with a bacterial elicitor reverted this transcriptional memory, bringing their expression back to the original pre-treatment level. We also made very similar observations in apple (Malus domestica), suggesting that this expression pattern is highly conserved in plants. Finally, we found a potential role for DNA methylation in the observed transcriptional memory behavior. We show that plants defective in DNA methylation pathways displayed a different memory behavior. Our work improves our understanding of the role of transcriptional memory in priming, and has important implication concerning the application of SA analogues in agricultural settings.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 3383-3396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Cunningham ◽  
Lexiang Ji ◽  
R. Axel W. Wiberg ◽  
Jennifer Shelton ◽  
Elizabeth C. McKinney ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (10) ◽  
pp. S345
Author(s):  
Tiffani Berkel ◽  
Huaibo Zhang ◽  
Evan Kyzar ◽  
Tara Teppen ◽  
Harish Krishnan ◽  
...  

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