The interaction networks of structured RNAs

All pairwise interactions occurring between bases which could be detected in three-dimensional structures of crystallized RNA molecules are annotated on new planar diagrams. The diagrams attempt to map the underlying complex networks of base–base interactions and, especially, they aim at conveying key relationships between helical domains: co-axial stacking, bending and all Watson–Crick as well as non-Watson–Crick base pairs. Although such wiring diagrams cannot replace full stereographic images for correct spatial understanding and representation, they reveal structural similarities as well as the conserved patterns and distances between motifs which are present within the interaction networks of folded RNAs of similar or unrelated functions. Finally, the diagrams could help devising methods for meaningfully transforming RNA structures into graphs amenable to network analysis.     

DMS footprinting of structured RNAs and RNA-protein complexes

We describe a protocol in which dimethyl sulfate (DMS) modification of the base-pairing faces of unpaired adenosine and cytidine nucleotides is used for structural analysis of RNAs and RNA-protein complexes (RNPs). The protocol is optimized for RNAs of small to moderate size (< or = 500 nt). The RNA or RNP is first exposed to DMS under conditions that promote formation of the folded structure or complex, as well as 'control' conditions that do not allow folding or complex formation. The positions and extents of modification are then determined by primer extension, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and quantitative analysis. From changes in the extent of modification upon folding or protein binding (appearance of a 'footprint'), it is possible to detect local changes in the secondary and tertiary structure of RNA, as well as the formation of RNA-protein contacts. This protocol takes 1.5-3 d to complete, depending on the type of analysis used.     

The amazing world of bacterial structured RNAs

The discovery of several new structured non-coding RNAs in bacterial and archaeal genomes and metagenomes raises burning questions about their biological and biochemical functions.     

pIQPNNI: parallel reconstruction of large maximum likelihood phylogenies

SUMMARY: IQPNNI is a program to infer maximum-likelihood phylogenetic trees from DNA or protein data with a large number of sequences. We present an improved and MPI-parallel implementation showing very good scaling and speed-up behavior.     

Optimizing splinted ligation of highly structured small RNAs

The synthesis of highly structured small RNAs containing nonstandard nucleotides is of high interest for structural and functional investigations. A general approach is the joining, by T4 DNA ligase-mediated splinted ligation, of two or more RNA fragments, each of which may contain its own set of modified nucleotides. The RNA fragments hybridize with a complementary DNA splint to form a ternary ligation-competent-complex (LCC), which is then turned over by the DNA ligase. We studied the formation of the LCC and its precursors using size exclusion chromatography combined with a fluorescence detector. The spatial proximity of two cyanine-dye-labeled RNA fragments in LCCs was detected by monitoring FRET. An observed correlation of LCC formation and ligation yields suggests the use of long splints to stabilize LCCs. Splint oligos of increasing length, which in general appear to reduce the number of different hybridization intermediate species found in a reaction mixture, were applied to the synthesis by T4-DNA-ligation of two highly structured target molecules, one a 73 mer tRNA, the other a 49 mer synthetic ribozyme. A stable LCC could be isolated and turned over with>95% ligation efficiency. In conclusion, the use of long splints presents a generally applicable means to overcome the low propensity of highly structured RNAs for hybridization, and thus to significantly improve ligation efficiencies.     

Accurate and efficient in vitro splicing of purified precursor RNAs specified by early region 2 of the adenovirus 2 genome.

Polyadenylated and deproteinized nuclear RNA precursors encoded by early region 2 of the adenovirus 2 genome are spliced in vitro by nuclear extracts prepared from MOPC-315 mouse myeloma cells. The in vitro reaction excises sequences from two introns and attaches 5' sequences to the mRNA body. The nucleotide sequence across the splice junctions in the E2 RNAs processed in vitro was investigated by performing primer extensions in the presence of dideoxynucleotides and direct sequencing on polyacrylamide gels. We conclude that the in vitro splicing reaction is accurate and has the same precision as that of in vivo E2 cytoplasmic mRNA prepared from Ad2 infected cells. The efficiency of in vitro splicing by the nuclear extracts is very high. Approximately 80% of E2 RNA precursor, on a molar basis, are spliced in vitro to a mature RNA. These findings provide evidence that a nuclear extract prepared from MOPC-315 mouse myeloma cells is capable of accurate and efficient splicing of E2 RNA precursors.     

Comparative genomics reveals 104 candidate structured RNAs from bacteria,archaea, and their metagenomes

Background  

Structured noncoding RNAs perform many functions that are essential for protein synthesis, RNA processing, and gene regulation. Structured RNAs can be detected by comparative genomics, in which homologous sequences are identified and inspected for mutations that conserve RNA secondary structure.     

Primate diversification inferred from phylogenies and fossils

Biodiversity arises from the balance between speciation and extinction. Fossils record the origins and disappearance of organisms, and the branching patterns of molecular phylogenies allow estimation of speciation and extinction rates, but the patterns of diversification are frequently incongruent between these two data sources. I tested two hypotheses about the diversification of primates based on ～600 fossil species and 90% complete phylogenies of living species: (1) diversification rates increased through time; (2) a significant extinction event occurred in the Oligocene. Consistent with the first hypothesis, analyses of phylogenies supported increasing speciation rates and negligible extinction rates. In contrast, fossils showed that while speciation rates increased, speciation and extinction rates tended to be nearly equal, resulting in zero net diversification. Partially supporting the second hypothesis, the fossil data recorded a clear pattern of diversity decline in the Oligocene, although diversification rates were near zero. The phylogeny supported increased extinction ～34 Ma, but also elevated extinction ～10 Ma, coinciding with diversity declines in some fossil clades. The results demonstrated that estimates of speciation and extinction ignoring fossils are insufficient to infer diversification and information on extinct lineages should be incorporated into phylogenetic analyses.     

深海沉积物高效脱氮菌筛选分离及其脱氮特性研究

【背景】深海海域具有高压、低温、无光等环境条件,蕴含着丰富而独特的微生物资源。【目的】从深海沉积物中定向分离、筛选脱氮效率高的好氧脱氮菌株资源,并揭示其脱氮特性,为开发水体脱氮微生物技术提供物质基础。【方法】以东太平洋、南大西洋、西南印度洋共10个站位的深海沉积物为研究材料,在28°C下使用无机氮源连续进行两轮富集培养,然后定性筛选可以脱除氨氮、亚硝态氮和硝态氮的菌株,并通过形态学和16S rRNA基因序列分析进行初步分类鉴定;对优选得到的功能菌株,分别采用以氨氮、亚硝态氮、硝态氮为唯一氮源的培养基定量研究其生长和脱氮性能。【结果】从10份大洋深海沉积物样品中共分离得到49株好氧反硝化菌,其中3株在有氧条件下反硝化效率较高,分别命名为Pseudomonassp.G111、Pseudomonassp.G112和Dietziamaris W023a,其中菌株G111和G112与模式菌株博岑假单胞菌Pseudomonas bauzanensis BZ93T的16S rRNA基因序列相似度为99.2%,菌株W023a与模式菌株海洋迪茨氏菌DietziamarisATCC35013T的16SrRNA基因序列相似度为99.9%。菌株G111、G112和W023a培养48h后,对氨氮的脱除率分别为98.0%、85.2%和97.6%;对亚硝态氮的脱除率分别为71.9%、67.5%和34.7%;对硝态氮的脱除率分别为66.0%、52.6%和56.3%。菌株G111、G112和W023a均为异养硝化-好氧反硝化菌,可通过好氧反硝化作用将亚硝态氮和硝态氮还原为含氮气体,也可通过异养硝化-好氧反硝化作用将氨氮转化为含氮气体。【结论】从深海沉积物中分离筛选得到3株高效好氧反硝化菌,所获得的菌株在水体净化、污水处理、生态系统修复等领域具有应用潜力。     

A fast and efficient gene-network reconstruction method from multiple over-expression experiments

Background  

Reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks presents one of the big challenges in systems biology. Gene regulatory networks are usually inferred from a set of single-gene over-expressions and/or knockout experiments. Functional relationships between genes are retrieved either from the steady state gene expressions or from respective time series.     

A neutral pH thermal hydrolysis method for quantification of structured RNAs

Riboswitch aptamers adopt diverse and complex tertiary structural folds that contain both single-stranded and double-stranded regions. We observe that this high degree of secondary structure leads to an appreciable hypochromicity that is not accounted for in the standard method to calculate extinction coefficients using nearest-neighbor effects, which results in a systematic underestimation of RNA concentrations. Here we present a practical method for quantifying riboswitch RNAs using thermal hydrolysis to generate the corresponding pool of mononucleotides, for which precise extinction coefficients have been measured. Thermal hydrolysis can be performed at neutral pH without reaction quenching, avoids the use of nucleases or expensive fluorescent dyes, and does not require generation of calibration curves. The accuracy of this method for determining RNA concentrations has been validated using quantitative ³¹P-NMR calibrated to an external standard. We expect that this simple procedure will be generally useful for the accurate quantification of any sequence-defined RNA sample, which is often a critical parameter for in vitro binding and kinetic assays.     

Global signatures of protein binding on structured RNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Protein binding is essential to the transport,decay and regulation of almost all RNA molecules.However,the structural preference of protein binding on RNAs and their cellular functions and dynamics upon changing environmental conditions are poorly understood.Here,we integrated various high-throughput data and introduced a computational framework to describe the global interactions between RNA binding proteins(RBPs)and structured RNAs in yeast at single-nucleotide resolution.We found that on average,in terms of percent total lengths,~15%of mRNA untranslated regions(UTRs),~37%of canonical non-coding RNAs(ncRNAs)and~11%of long ncRNAs(lncRNAs)are bound by proteins.The RBP binding sites,in general,tend to occur at single-stranded loops,with evolutionarily conserved signatures,and often facilitate a specific RNA structure conformation in vivo.We found that four nucleotide modifications of tRNA are significantly associated with RBP binding.We also identified various structural motifs bound by RBPs in the UTRs of mRNAs,associated with localization,degradation and stress responses.Moreover,we identified>200 novel lncRNAs bound by RBPs,and about half of them contain conserved secondary structures.We present the first ensemble pattern of RBP binding sites in the structured non-coding regions of a eukaryotic genome,emphasizing their structural context and cellular functions.     

Accurate assembly of minority viral haplotypes from next-generation sequencing through efficient noise reduction

Rapidly evolving RNA viruses continuously produce minority haplotypes that can become dominant if they are drug-resistant or can better evade the immune system. Therefore, early detection and identification of minority viral haplotypes may help to promptly adjust the patient’s treatment plan preventing potential disease complications. Minority haplotypes can be identified using next-generation sequencing, but sequencing noise hinders accurate identification. The elimination of sequencing noise is a non-trivial task that still remains open. Here we propose CliqueSNV based on extracting pairs of statistically linked mutations from noisy reads. This effectively reduces sequencing noise and enables identifying minority haplotypes with the frequency below the sequencing error rate. We comparatively assess the performance of CliqueSNV using an in vitro mixture of nine haplotypes that were derived from the mutation profile of an existing HIV patient. We show that CliqueSNV can accurately assemble viral haplotypes with frequencies as low as 0.1% and maintains consistent performance across short and long bases sequencing platforms.     

Frequency-based haplotype reconstruction from deep sequencing data of bacterial populations

Clonal populations accumulate mutations over time, resulting in different haplotypes. Deep sequencing of such a population in principle provides information to reconstruct these haplotypes and the frequency at which the haplotypes occur. However, this reconstruction is technically not trivial, especially not in clonal systems with a relatively low mutation frequency. The low number of segregating sites in those systems adds ambiguity to the haplotype phasing and thus obviates the reconstruction of genome-wide haplotypes based on sequence overlap information.Therefore, we present EVORhA, a haplotype reconstruction method that complements phasing information in the non-empty read overlap with the frequency estimations of inferred local haplotypes. As was shown with simulated data, as soon as read lengths and/or mutation rates become restrictive for state-of-the-art methods, the use of this additional frequency information allows EVORhA to still reliably reconstruct genome-wide haplotypes. On real data, we show the applicability of the method in reconstructing the population composition of evolved bacterial populations and in decomposing mixed bacterial infections from clinical samples.     

SMOTIF: efficient structured pattern and profile motif search

Background  

A structured motif allows variable length gaps between several components, where each component is a simple motif, which allows either no gaps or only fixed length gaps. The motif can either be represented as a pattern or a profile (also called positional weight matrix). We propose an efficient algorithm, called SMOTIF, to solve the structured motif search problem, i.e., given one or more sequences and a structured motif, SMOTIF searches the sequences for all occurrences of the motif. Potential applications include searching for long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons and composite regulatory binding sites in DNA sequences.     

RNAstrand: reading direction of structured RNAs in multiple sequence alignments

Motivation

Genome-wide screens for structured ncRNA genes in mammals, urochordates, and nematodes have predicted thousands of putative ncRNA genes and other structured RNA motifs. A prerequisite for their functional annotation is to determine the reading direction with high precision.

Results

While folding energies of an RNA and its reverse complement are similar, the differences are sufficient at least in conjunction with substitution patterns to discriminate between structured RNAs and their complements. We present here a support vector machine that reliably classifies the reading direction of a structured RNA from a multiple sequence alignment and provides a considerable improvement in classification accuracy over previous approaches.

Software

RNAstrand is freely available as a stand-alone tool from http://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/Software/RNAstrand and is also included in the latest release of RNAz, a part of the Vienna RNA Package.