Rapid degradation of longer DNA fragments enables the improved estimation of distribution and biomass using environmental DNA

The advent of environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis methods has enabled rapid and wide‐range ecological monitoring in aquatic ecosystems, but there is a dearth of information on eDNA degradation. The results of previous studies suggest that the decay rate of eDNA varies depending on the length of DNA fragments. To examine this hypothesis, we compared temporal change in copy number of long eDNA fragments (719 bp) with that of short eDNA fragments (127 bp). First, we isolated rearing water from a target fish species, Japanese Jack Mackerel (Trachurus japonicus), and then quantified the copy number of the long and short eDNA fragments in 1 L water samples after isolating the water from the fish. Long DNA fragments showed a higher decay rate than short fragments. Next, we measured the eDNA copy numbers of long and short DNA fragments using field samples, and compared them with fish biomass as measured by echo intensity. Although a previous study suggested that short eDNA fragments could be overestimated because of nontarget eDNA from a nearby fish market and carcasses, the eDNA concentrations of long fragments were correlated with echo intensity. This suggests that the concentration of longer eDNA fragments reflects fish biomass more accurately than the previous study by removing the effects of the fish market and carcasses. The length‐related differences in eDNA have a substantial potential to improve estimation of species biomass.     

Absence of short period interspersion of repetitive and non-repetitive sequences in the DNA of Drosophila melanogaster

A sensitive search has been made in Drosophila melanogaster DNA for short repetitive sequences interspersed with single copy sequences. Five kinds of measurements all yield the conclusion that there are few short repetitive sequences in this genome: 1) Comparison of the kinetics of reassociation of short (360 nucleotide) and long (1,830 nucleotide) fragments of DNA; 2) reassociation kinetics of long fragments (2,200 nucleotide) with an excess of short (390 short nucleotide) fragments; 3) measurement of the size of S1 nuclease resistant reassociated repeated sequences; 4) measurement of the hyperchromicity of reassociated repetitive fragments as a function of length; 5) direct assay by kinetics of reassociation of the amount of single copy sequence present on 1,200 nucleotide long fragments which also contain repetitive sequences.     

短DNA片段缩合结构的比较研究

本文利用透射式电镜对四种短DNA片段(500、1100、1500、2700 bP)的缩合结构进行了比较研究得出很有意义的结果。定量研究证实短至500 bP的DNA分子仍可形成复曲面,且分子量相差5倍多的DNA片段缩合形成的复曲面尺度大小一致。复曲面外径为400A左右。从而进一步证实作者与Arscott及Bloomfield关于复曲面尺度独立于DNA分子量,及短DNA片段的缩合是多分子缩合的结论。此外,观测到缩合中间结构的尺度依DNA分子量大小不同而变化,同时分子量愈小的DNA片段产生另一种缩合结构—棒体的几率愈大。     

Deoxyuridine triphosphate pools after polyoma virus infection

The synthesis of polyoma DNA in virus-infected 3T6 mouse fibroblasts is discontinuous with the intermediate formation of short Okazaki fragments. Hydroxyurea, an inhibitor of the enzyme ribonucleotide reductase, inhibits polyoma DNA synthesis, as measured by incorporation of radioactive thymidine. In the inhibited state, almost all incorporation occurs into short fragments. We investigated to what extent formation of short DNA fragments might be the result of incorporation of deoxyuridine triphosphate (dUTP) into DNA, followed by excision and repair reactions. We devised a sensitive enzymatic method for measuring dUTP in cell extracts which allows the determination of the dUTP pool when this pool amounts to between 0.1 and 2% of the dTTP pool. No dUTP was detected in growing mouse fibroblasts. After infection with polyoma virus cell extracts contained 0.4% dUTP (of dTTP) at the peak of DNA synthesis. Addition of hydroxyurea at this point led to a disappearance of dUTP. We conclude that dUTP incorporation can contribute only minimally to the generation of short fragments during polyoma DNA synthesis.     

Molecular profiling of diatom assemblages in tropical lake sediments using taxon-specific PCR and Denaturing High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (PCR-DHPLC)

Here we present a protocol to genetically detect diatoms in sediments of the Kenyan tropical Lake Naivasha, based on taxon-specific PCR amplification of short fragments (approximately 100 bp) of the small subunit ribosomal (SSU) gene and subsequent separation of species-specific PCR products by PCR-based denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC). An evaluation of amplicons differing in primer specificity to diatoms and length of the fragments amplified demonstrated that the number of different diatom sequence types detected after cloning of the PCR products critically depended on the specificity of the primers to diatoms and the length of the amplified fragments whereby shorter fragments yielded more species of diatoms. The DHPLC was able to discriminate between very short amplicons based on the sequence difference, even if the fragments were of identical length and if the amplicons differed only in a small number of nucleotides. Generally, the method identified the dominant sequence types from mixed amplifications. A comparison with microscopic analysis of the sediment samples revealed that the sequence types identified in the molecular assessment corresponded well with the most dominant species. In summary, the PCR-based DHPLC protocol offers a fast, reliable and cost-efficient possibility to study DNA from sediments and other environmental samples with unknown organismic content, even for very short DNA fragments.     

利用烟草基因组DNA构建近随机多肽文库

介绍一种新的方法构建近随机多肽文库。选取从大基因组物种的组织或细胞中提取的基因组DNA ,利用切割频率高的限制性内切酶切割 ,产生的短片段可以近似地认为是随机序列的片段 ,将它们与匹配的载体连接后转化进宿主细胞进行表达 ,从而获得近随机多肽文库。这样的文库可以用于蛋白质相互作用的研究。同一种基因组DNA可以利用不同的酶切 ,再分别连接到表达载体的不同读码框架 ,从而产生不同编码序列的多种近随机多肽文库。介绍了充分利用烟草基因组DNA构建两种不同酶切 ,三种读码框架 ,共六种不同编码序列的近随机多肽文库的方法。     

Tight interaction between densely methylated DNA fragments and the methyl-CpG binding domain of the rat MeCP2 protein attached to a solid support.

In a previous report we have found that a number of short DNA fragments methylated at CpG sequences bound more tightly to a methyl-CpG binding column than DNA fragments having a larger number of methyl-CpG sequences. The column consists of a polypeptide comprising the DNA binding domain of the rat MeCP2 protein attached to a solid support. In the present study, we have investigated the features of short DNA fragments which bind tightly to a methyl-CpG binding column. Tight binding was observed when the DNA fragment had a high density of methyl-CpG sequences. Many of these fragments, derived from human genomic DNA, contained Alu repeated sequences supporting the previous observation that the highly-abundant Alu sequences are highly methylated. Our results suggest that methyl-CpG density is an important factor in the interaction between DNA fragments and the DNA binding domain of MeCP2 attached to a solid support.     

Structural organization of the genome of the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum: interspersion of repetitive and single-copy DNA sequences.

The length and interspersion of reiterated and single-copy DNA sequences in Dictyostelium have been examined. The results indicate that approximately 50-60% of the single-copy sequences in DNA fragments 1500 nucleotides long and 75% of the single-copy sequences in fragments 3000 nucleotides long are linked to short interspersed repeat DNA sequences. The average length of these single-copy sequences is 1500 nucleotides. The length of the reiterated DNA has also been analyzed and shows a bimodal distribution. One half is present in sequences greater than 2000 nucleotides long, while the remainder is present as short fragments 250-450 nucleotides long. These shorter fragments are interspersed with the bulk of the single-copy DNA.     

XbaI, PstI, and BglII restriction enzyme maps of the two orientations of the varicella-zoster virus genome.

Cleavage of varicella-zoster virus DNA with the restriction endonucleases PstI, XbaI, and BglII resulted in 18, 22, and 20 fragments, respectively. Based on the molecular weights and molarities of these fragments, a molecular weight of 84 x 10(6) could be calculated for the varicella-zoster virus genome. In both the XbaI and the BglII patterns, four 0.5 M fragments were identified. The arrangement of the fragments was determined by molecular hybridization techniques, and the terminal fragments were identified by lambda exonuclease digestion. The 0.5 M fragments, of which two were located at the same terminus of the genome, contained repeated sequences: one terminally and one inverted internally. These results were in agreement with the existence of two equimolar subpopulations of the varicella-zoster virus genome, differing in the relative orientation of a short region of unique sequences. This region was bounded by the repeated sequences. From the molecular weights of the submolar fragments, a maximal molecular weight of 5 x 10(6) for the repeated region and a minimal molecular weight of 3.5 x 10(6) for the short unique sequence could be calculated.     

Characterization of the distribution of potential short restriction fragments in nucleic acid sequence databases: Implications for an alternative to chemical synthesis of oligonucleotides

We have searched the GenBank nucleic acid sequence database for potential short restriction fragments. All possible oligonucleotides up to length five are found at least once flanked by known restriction recognition patterns. Thus, searches in the database for a specific sequence corresponding to a desired oligonucleotide would often point to one or more sources of short, retrievable fragments containing that sequence. These results underscore the potential of nucleic acid sequence databases in planning experiments.     

A Stochastic Model of DNA Fragments Rejoining

When cells are exposed to ionizing radiation, DNA damages in the form of single strand breaks (SSBs), double strand breaks (DSBs), base damage or their combinations are frequent events. It is known that the complexity and severity of DNA damage depends on the quality of radiation, and the microscopic dose deposited in small segments of DNA, which is often related to the linear transfer energy (LET) of the radiation. Experimental studies have suggested that under the same dose, high LET radiation induces more small DNA fragments than low-LET radiation, which affects Ku efficiently binding with DNA end and might be a main reason for high-LET radiation induced RBE [1] since DNA DSB is a major cause for radiation-induced cell death. In this work, we proposed a mathematical model of DNA fragments rejoining according to non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) mechanism. By conducting Gillespie''s stochastic simulation, we found several factors that impact the efficiency of DNA fragments rejoining. Our results demonstrated that aberrant DNA damage repair can result predominantly from the occurrence of a spatial distribution of DSBs leading to short DNA fragments. Because of the low efficiency that short DNA fragments recruit repair protein and release the protein residue after fragments rejoining, Ku-dependent NHEJ is significantly interfered with short fragments. Overall, our work suggests that inhibiting the Ku-dependent NHEJ may significantly contribute to the increased efficiency for cell death and mutation observed for high LET radiation.     

Preferential modification of replicating DNA by benz(a)pyrene)

The nuclei of cells from regenerating rat liver were incubated with benzo(a)pyrene and the concentrations of the metabolites that covalently bound to DNA of different nuclear fractions were compared. It appeared that DNA associated with nuclear matrix (containing replicating DNA) is modified most intensively. The synchronized mouse embryo cells were incubated with benzo(a)pyrene during S phase and the levels of modifications in short and long single-stranded DNA fragments were compared. It has been observed that replicating DNA is represented in short fragments. These short DNA fragments were found to be modified by benzo(a)pyrene 4-9 times more intensively than total DNA. The possible mechanisms of both the increase in the number of DNA modifications in proliferating cells and the reason for the enhancement of carcinogenic effect on dividing cells are being discussed.     

A support vector machine approach to the identification of phosphorylation sites

We describe a bioinformatics tool that can be used to predict the position of phosphorylation sites in proteins based only on sequence information. The method uses the support vector machine (SVM) statistical learning theory. The statistical models for phosphorylation by various types of kinases are built using a dataset of short (9-amino acid long) sequence fragments. The sequence segments are dissected around post-translationally modified sites of proteins that are on the current release of the Swiss-Prot database, and that were experimentally confirmed to be phosphorylated by any kinase. We represent them as vectors in a multidimensional abstract space of short sequence fragments. The prediction method is as follows. First, a given query protein sequence is dissected into overlapping short segments. All the fragments are then projected into the multidimensional space of sequence fragments via a collection of different representations. Those points are classified with pre-built statistical models (the SVM method with linear, polynomial and radial kernel functions) either as phosphorylated or inactive ones. The resulting list of plausible sites for phosphorylation by various types of kinases in the query protein is returned to the user. The efficiency of the method for each type of phosphorylation is estimated using leave-one-out tests and presented here. The sensitivities of the models can reach over 70%, depending on the type of kinase. The additional information from profile representations of short sequence fragments helps in gaining a higher degree of accuracy in some phosphorylation types. The further development of an automatic phosphorylation site annotation predictor based on our algorithm should yield a significant improvement when using statistical algorithms in order to quantify the results.     

Excision repair of uracil incorporated in DNA as a result of a defect in dUTPase.

Mutants of Escherichia coli that are severely defective in the enzyme dUTPase (dut) accumulate short (4 to 5 S) Okazaki fragments following brief pulses with [³H]thymidine. The transient appearance of DNA fragments in these mutants is plausibly explained by the misincorporation of uracil in DNA as a result of an increase in available dUTP, followed by its rapid excision and repair. The evidence in support of this interpretation is the following: (1) accumulation of short DNA fragments can be partially suppressed by a mutation in dCTP deaminase, presumably by decreasing the intracellular level of dUTP relative to dTTP; (2) accumulation of the short DNA fragments can be almost completely suppressed by a mutation in uracil N-glycosidase, probably by preventing the introduction of nicks at the sites of uracil incorporation; (3) introduction of DNA polymerase I or DNA ligase mutations into dUTPase-defective strains results in the persistence of the 4 to 5 S fragments and rapid cessation of DNA synthesis. Uracil N-glycosidase, DNA polymerase I and DNA ligase must therefore be involved in the excision repair of uracil-containing DNA.     

A simple method for sequencing small DNAs by introducing precise overlapping ends into restriction digestion fragments.

A method has been devised whereby certain complete restriction digestions can have short overlaps of unique sequence incorporated into the fragments during cloning. Thus one can identify when the DNA fragments are contiguous. Here, this technique is used to produce a contig for a 2.5 kb fragment of genomic DNA. This is a simple approach to ordering digestion fragments without necessarily performing restriction mapping. It is envisaged that this technique will be useful for sequencing cDNAs and small genomic fragments.     

Support-vector-machine classification of linear functional motifs in proteins

Our algorithm predicts short linear functional motifs in proteins using only sequence information. Statistical models for short linear functional motifs in proteins are built using the database of short sequence fragments taken from proteins in the current release of the Swiss-Prot database. Those segments are confirmed by experiments to have single-residue post-translational modification. The sensitivities of the classification for various types of short linear motifs are in the range of 70%. The query protein sequence is dissected into short overlapping fragments. All segments are represented as vectors. Each vector is then classified by a machine learning algorithm (Support Vector Machine) as potentially modifiable or not. The resulting list of plausible post-translational sites in the query protein is returned to the user. We also present a study of the human protein kinase C family as a biological application of our method.     

95 Orientational ordering of short DNA fragments in the polymer matrix

As a vital part of modern nanotechnology, nanofabrication aims to develop nanoscale components and nanomaterials in large quantities at relatively low cost. The promising strategy is the bottom-up self-assembly techniques of chemical assembly and molecular recognition to bring together individual atoms, molecules, or supramolecular building blocks to form useful constructs. The DNA-DNA self-assembly seems to be the key point regulating the polymer composites formation. We address the mixture of a flexible polymer with short double-strand DNA fragments, where the persistence length is in comparable with the contour length of the molecule. We investigate the conditions affecting the orientational order formation of short double-strand DNA fragments, immersed in the flexible polymer. It is shown that short double-strand DNA fragments exhibit the formation of a liquid crystalline ordered phase, in dependence on the value of the Flory–Huggins parameter, aspect ratio , and the attraction energy (Mamasakhlisov et al., 2009; Todd et al., 2008) of the double strand DNA molecules and volume fraction of polymer.     

Terminal short arm domains of basement membrane laminin are critical for its self-assembly

Laminin self-assembles into large polymers by a cooperative two-step calcium-dependent mechanism (Yurchenco, P. D., E. C. Tsilibary, A. S. Charonis, and H. Furthmayr. 1985. J. Biol. Chem. 260:7636-7644). The domain specificity of this process was investigated using defined proteolytically generated fragments corresponding to the NH2-terminal globule and adjacent stem of the short arm of the B1 chain (E4), a complex of the two short arms of the A and B2 chains attached to the proximal stem of a third short arm (E1'), a similar complex lacking the globular domains (P1'), and the distal half of the long arm attached to the adjacent portion of the large globule (E8). Polymerization, followed by an increase of turbidity at 360 nm in neutral isotonic TBS containing CaCl2 at 35 degrees C, was quantitatively inhibited in a concentration-dependent manner with laminin fragments E4 and E1' but not with fragments E8 and P1'. Affinity retardation chromatography was used for further characterization of the binding of laminin domains. The migration of fragment E4, but not of fragments E8 and P1', was retarded in a temperature- and calcium-dependent fashion on a laminin affinity column but not on a similar BSA column. These data are evidence that laminin fragments E4 and E1' possess essential terminal binding domains for the self-aggregation of laminin, while fragments E8 and P1' do not. Furthermore, the individual domain-specific interactions that contribute to assembly are calcium dependent and of low affinity.     

Correlation Between DNase I Hypersensitive Site Distribution and Gene Expression in HeLa S3 Cells

Mapping DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHSs) within nuclear chromatin is a traditional and powerful method of identifying genetic regulatory elements. DHSs have been mapped by capturing the ends of long DNase I-cut fragments (>100,000 bp), or 100-1200 bp DNase I-double cleavage fragments (also called double-hit fragments). But next generation sequencing requires a DNA library containing DNA fragments of 100-500 bp. Therefore, we used short DNA fragments released by DNase I digestion to generate DNA libraries for next generation sequencing. The short segments are 100-300 bp and can be directly cloned and used for high-throughput sequencing. We identified 83,897 DHSs in 2,343,479 tags across the human genome. Our results indicate that the DHSs identified by this DHS assay are consistent with those identified by longer fragments in previous studies. We also found: (1) the distribution of DHSs in promoter and other gene regions of similarly expressed genes differs among different chromosomes; (2) silenced genes had a more open chromatin structure than previously thought; (3) DHSs in 3'untranslated regions (3'UTRs) are negatively correlated with level of gene expression.     

Have we seen all structures corresponding to short protein fragments in the Protein Data Bank? An update

Assembling short fragments from known structures has been a widely used approach to construct novel protein structures. To what extent there exist structurally similar fragments in the database of known structures for short fragments of a novel protein is a question that is fundamental to this approach. This work addresses that question for seven-, nine- and 15-residue fragments. For each fragment size, two databases, a query database and a template database of fragments from high-quality protein structures in SCOP20 and SCOP90, respectively, were constructed. For each fragment in the query database, the template database was scanned to find the lowest r.m.s.d. fragment among non-homologous structures. For seven-residue fragments, there is a 99% probability that there exists such a fragment within 0.7 A r.m.s.d. for each loop fragment. For nine-residue fragments there is a 96% probability of a fragment within 1 A r.m.s.d., while for 15-residue fragments there is a 91% probability of a fragment within 2 A r.m.s.d. These results, which update previous studies, show that there exists sufficient coverage to model even a novel fold using fragments from the Protein Data Bank, as the current database of known structures has increased enormously in the last few years. We have also explored the use of a grid search method for loop homology modeling and make some observations about the use of a grid search compared with a database search for the loop modeling problem.