TY - JOUR AB - Bioluminescence is found across the entire tree of life, conferring a spectacular set of visually oriented functions from attracting mates to scaring off predators. Half a dozen different luciferins, molecules that emit light when enzymatically oxidized, are known. However, just one biochemical pathway for luciferin biosynthesis has been described in full, which is found only in bacteria. Here, we report identification of the fungal luciferase and three other key enzymes that together form the biosynthetic cycle of the fungal luciferin from caffeic acid, a simple and widespread metabolite. Introduction of the identified genes into the genome of the yeast Pichia pastoris along with caffeic acid biosynthesis genes resulted in a strain that is autoluminescent in standard media. We analyzed evolution of the enzymes of the luciferin biosynthesis cycle and found that fungal bioluminescence emerged through a series of events that included two independent gene duplications. The retention of the duplicated enzymes of the luciferin pathway in nonluminescent fungi shows that the gene duplication was followed by functional sequence divergence of enzymes of at least one gene in the biosynthetic pathway and suggests that the evolution of fungal bioluminescence proceeded through several closely related stepping stone nonluminescent biochemical reactions with adaptive roles. The availability of a complete eukaryotic luciferin biosynthesis pathway provides several applications in biomedicine and bioengineering. AU - Kotlobay, Alexey A. AU - Sarkisyan, Karen AU - Mokrushina, Yuliana A. AU - Marcet-Houben, Marina AU - Serebrovskaya, Ekaterina O. AU - Markina, Nadezhda M. AU - Gonzalez Somermeyer, Louisa AU - Gorokhovatsky, Andrey Y. AU - Vvedensky, Andrey AU - Purtov, Konstantin V. AU - Petushkov, Valentin N. AU - Rodionova, Natalja S. AU - Chepurnyh, Tatiana V. AU - Fakhranurova, Liliia AU - Guglya, Elena B. AU - Ziganshin, Rustam AU - Tsarkova, Aleksandra S. AU - Kaskova, Zinaida M. AU - Shender, Victoria AU - Abakumov, Maxim AU - Abakumova, Tatiana O. AU - Povolotskaya, Inna S. AU - Eroshkin, Fedor M. AU - Zaraisky, Andrey G. AU - Mishin, Alexander S. AU - Dolgov, Sergey V. AU - Mitiouchkina, Tatiana Y. AU - Kopantzev, Eugene P. AU - Waldenmaier, Hans E. AU - Oliveira, Anderson G. AU - Oba, Yuichi AU - Barsova, Ekaterina AU - Bogdanova, Ekaterina A. AU - Gabaldón, Toni AU - Stevani, Cassius V. AU - Lukyanov, Sergey AU - Smirnov, Ivan V. AU - Gitelson, Josef I. AU - Kondrashov, Fyodor AU - Yampolsky, Ilia V. ID - 5780 IS - 50 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America SN - 00278424 TI - Genetically encodable bioluminescent system from fungi VL - 115 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The plant hormone gibberellic acid (GA) is a crucial regulator of growth and development. The main paradigm of GA signaling puts forward transcriptional regulation via the degradation of DELLA transcriptional repressors. GA has also been shown to regulate tropic responses by modulation of the plasma membrane incidence of PIN auxin transporters by an unclear mechanism. Here we uncovered the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which GA redirects protein trafficking and thus regulates cell surface functionality. Photoconvertible reporters revealed that GA balances the protein traffic between the vacuole degradation route and recycling back to the cell surface. Low GA levels promote vacuolar delivery and degradation of multiple cargos, including PIN proteins, whereas high GA levels promote their recycling to the plasma membrane. This GA effect requires components of the retromer complex, such as Sorting Nexin 1 (SNX1) and its interacting, microtubule (MT)-associated protein, the Cytoplasmic Linker-Associated Protein (CLASP1). Accordingly, GA regulates the subcellular distribution of SNX1 and CLASP1, and the intact MT cytoskeleton is essential for the GA effect on trafficking. This GA cellular action occurs through DELLA proteins that regulate the MT and retromer presumably via their interaction partners Prefoldins (PFDs). Our study identified a branching of the GA signaling pathway at the level of DELLA proteins, which, in parallel to regulating transcription, also target by a nontranscriptional mechanism the retromer complex acting at the intersection of the degradation and recycling trafficking routes. By this mechanism, GA can redirect receptors and transporters to the cell surface, thus coregulating multiple processes, including PIN-dependent auxin fluxes during tropic responses. AU - Salanenka, Yuliya AU - Verstraeten, Inge AU - Löfke, Christian AU - Tabata, Kaori AU - Naramoto, Satoshi AU - Glanc, Matous AU - Friml, Jirí ID - 428 IS - 14 JF - PNAS TI - Gibberellin DELLA signaling targets the retromer complex to redirect protein trafficking to the plasma membrane VL - 115 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Imaging is a dominant strategy for data collection in neuroscience, yielding stacks of images that often scale to gigabytes of data for a single experiment. Machine learning algorithms from computer vision can serve as a pair of virtual eyes that tirelessly processes these images, automatically detecting and identifying microstructures. Unlike learning methods, our Flexible Learning-free Reconstruction of Imaged Neural volumes (FLoRIN) pipeline exploits structure-specific contextual clues and requires no training. This approach generalizes across different modalities, including serially-sectioned scanning electron microscopy (sSEM) of genetically labeled and contrast enhanced processes, spectral confocal reflectance (SCoRe) microscopy, and high-energy synchrotron X-ray microtomography (μCT) of large tissue volumes. We deploy the FLoRIN pipeline on newly published and novel mouse datasets, demonstrating the high biological fidelity of the pipeline’s reconstructions. FLoRIN reconstructions are of sufficient quality for preliminary biological study, for example examining the distribution and morphology of cells or extracting single axons from functional data. Compared to existing supervised learning methods, FLoRIN is one to two orders of magnitude faster and produces high-quality reconstructions that are tolerant to noise and artifacts, as is shown qualitatively and quantitatively. AU - Shabazi, Ali AU - Kinnison, Jeffery AU - Vescovi, Rafael AU - Du, Ming AU - Hill, Robert AU - Jösch, Maximilian A AU - Takeno, Marc AU - Zeng, Hongkui AU - Da Costa, Nuno AU - Grutzendler, Jaime AU - Kasthuri, Narayanan AU - Scheirer, Walter ID - 62 IS - 1 JF - Scientific Reports TI - Flexible learning-free segmentation and reconstruction of neural volumes VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Dendritic cells (DCs) are sentinels of the adaptive immune system that reside in peripheral organs of mammals. Upon pathogen encounter, they undergo maturation and up-regulate the chemokine receptor CCR7 that guides them along gradients of its chemokine ligands CCL19 and 21 to the next draining lymph node. There, DCs present peripherally acquired antigen to naïve T cells, thereby triggering adaptive immunity. AU - Leithner, Alexander F AU - Renkawitz, Jörg AU - De Vries, Ingrid AU - Hauschild, Robert AU - Haecker, Hans AU - Sixt, Michael K ID - 437 IS - 6 JF - European Journal of Immunology TI - Fast and efficient genetic engineering of hematopoietic precursor cells for the study of dendritic cell migration VL - 48 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Insects are exposed to a variety of potential pathogens in their environment, many of which can severely impact fitness and health. Consequently, hosts have evolved resistance and tolerance strategies to suppress or cope with infections. Hosts utilizing resistance improve fitness by clearing or reducing pathogen loads, and hosts utilizing tolerance reduce harmful fitness effects per pathogen load. To understand variation in, and selective pressures on, resistance and tolerance, we asked to what degree they are shaped by host genetic background, whether plasticity in these responses depends upon dietary environment, and whether there are interactions between these two factors. Females from ten wild-type Drosophila melanogaster genotypes were kept on high- or low-protein (yeast) diets and infected with one of two opportunistic bacterial pathogens, Lactococcus lactis or Pseudomonas entomophila. We measured host resistance as the inverse of bacterial load in the early infection phase. The relationship (slope) between fly fecundity and individual-level bacteria load provided our fecundity tolerance measure. Genotype and dietary yeast determined host fecundity and strongly affected survival after infection with pathogenic P. entomophila. There was considerable genetic variation in host resistance, a commonly found phenomenon resulting from for example varying resistance costs or frequency-dependent selection. Despite this variation and the reproductive cost of higher P. entomophila loads, fecundity tolerance did not vary across genotypes. The absence of genetic variation in tolerance may suggest that at this early infection stage, fecundity tolerance is fixed or that any evolved tolerance mechanisms are not expressed under these infection conditions. AU - Kutzer, Megan AU - Kurtz, Joachim AU - Armitage, Sophie ID - 617 IS - 1 JF - Journal of Evolutionary Biology SN - 1010-061X TI - Genotype and diet affect resistance, survival, and fecundity but not fecundity tolerance VL - 31 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Despite the remarkable number of scientific breakthroughs of the last 100 years, the treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability) remains a great challenge. Recent advancements in genomics, such as whole-exome or whole-genome sequencing, have enabled scientists to identify numerous mutations underlying neurodevelopmental disorders. Given the few hundred risk genes that have been discovered, the etiological variability and the heterogeneous clinical presentation, the need for genotype — along with phenotype- based diagnosis of individual patients has become a requisite. In this review we look at recent advancements in genomic analysis and their translation into clinical practice. AU - Tarlungeanu, Dora-Clara AU - Novarino, Gaia ID - 5888 IS - 8 JF - Experimental & Molecular Medicine SN - 2092-6413 TI - Genomics in neurodevelopmental disorders: an avenue to personalized medicine VL - 50 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We prove upper and lower bounds on the ground-state energy of the ideal two-dimensional anyon gas. Our bounds are extensive in the particle number, as for fermions, and linear in the statistics parameter (Formula presented.). The lower bounds extend to Lieb–Thirring inequalities for all anyons except bosons. AU - Lundholm, Douglas AU - Seiringer, Robert ID - 295 IS - 11 JF - Letters in Mathematical Physics TI - Fermionic behavior of ideal anyons VL - 108 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Conventional wisdom has it that proteins fold and assemble into definite structures, and that this defines their function. Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are different. In most cases the structures they form have a low degree of order, even when interacting with proteins. Here, we discuss how physical features common to all GAGs — hydrophilicity, charge, linearity and semi-flexibility — underpin the overall properties of GAG-rich matrices. By integrating soft matter physics concepts (e.g. polymer brushes and phase separation) with our molecular understanding of GAG–protein interactions, we can better comprehend how GAG-rich matrices assemble, what their properties are, and how they function. Taking perineuronal nets (PNNs) — a GAG-rich matrix enveloping neurons — as a relevant example, we propose that microphase separation determines the holey PNN anatomy that is pivotal to PNN functions. AU - Richter, Ralf AU - Baranova, Natalia AU - Day, Anthony AU - Kwok, Jessica ID - 555 JF - Current Opinion in Structural Biology TI - Glycosaminoglycans in extracellular matrix organisation: Are concepts from soft matter physics key to understanding the formation of perineuronal nets? VL - 50 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Around 150 million years ago, eusocial termites evolved from within the cockroaches, 50 million years before eusocial Hymenoptera, such as bees and ants, appeared. Here, we report the 2-Gb genome of the German cockroach, Blattella germanica, and the 1.3-Gb genome of the drywood termite Cryptotermes secundus. We show evolutionary signatures of termite eusociality by comparing the genomes and transcriptomes of three termites and the cockroach against the background of 16 other eusocial and non-eusocial insects. Dramatic adaptive changes in genes underlying the production and perception of pheromones confirm the importance of chemical communication in the termites. These are accompanied by major changes in gene regulation and the molecular evolution of caste determination. Many of these results parallel molecular mechanisms of eusocial evolution in Hymenoptera. However, the specific solutions are remarkably different, thus revealing a striking case of convergence in one of the major evolutionary transitions in biological complexity. AU - Harrison, Mark AU - Jongepier, Evelien AU - Robertson, Hugh AU - Arning, Nicolas AU - Bitard Feildel, Tristan AU - Chao, Hsu AU - Childers, Christopher AU - Dinh, Huyen AU - Doddapaneni, Harshavardhan AU - Dugan, Shannon AU - Gowin, Johannes AU - Greiner, Carolin AU - Han, Yi AU - Hu, Haofu AU - Hughes, Daniel AU - Huylmans, Ann K AU - Kemena, Karsten AU - Kremer, Lukas AU - Lee, Sandra AU - López Ezquerra, Alberto AU - Mallet, Ludovic AU - Monroy Kuhn, Jose AU - Moser, Annabell AU - Murali, Shwetha AU - Muzny, Donna AU - Otani, Saria AU - Piulachs, Maria AU - Poelchau, Monica AU - Qu, Jiaxin AU - Schaub, Florentine AU - Wada Katsumata, Ayako AU - Worley, Kim AU - Xie, Qiaolin AU - Ylla, Guillem AU - Poulsen, Michael AU - Gibbs, Richard AU - Schal, Coby AU - Richards, Stephen AU - Belles, Xavier AU - Korb, Judith AU - Bornberg Bauer, Erich ID - 448 IS - 3 JF - Nature Ecology and Evolution TI - Hemimetabolous genomes reveal molecular basis of termite eusociality VL - 2 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Escaping local optima is one of the major obstacles to function optimisation. Using the metaphor of a fitness landscape, local optima correspond to hills separated by fitness valleys that have to be overcome. We define a class of fitness valleys of tunable difficulty by considering their length, representing the Hamming path between the two optima and their depth, the drop in fitness. For this function class we present a runtime comparison between stochastic search algorithms using different search strategies. The (1+1) EA is a simple and well-studied evolutionary algorithm that has to jump across the valley to a point of higher fitness because it does not accept worsening moves (elitism). In contrast, the Metropolis algorithm and the Strong Selection Weak Mutation (SSWM) algorithm, a famous process in population genetics, are both able to cross the fitness valley by accepting worsening moves. We show that the runtime of the (1+1) EA depends critically on the length of the valley while the runtimes of the non-elitist algorithms depend crucially on the depth of the valley. Moreover, we show that both SSWM and Metropolis can also efficiently optimise a rugged function consisting of consecutive valleys. AU - Oliveto, Pietro AU - Paixao, Tiago AU - Pérez Heredia, Jorge AU - Sudholt, Dirk AU - Trubenova, Barbora ID - 723 IS - 5 JF - Algorithmica TI - How to escape local optima in black box optimisation when non elitism outperforms elitism VL - 80 ER -