Beyond the ENCODE project: using genomics and epigenomics strategies to study enhancer evolution.

The complex expression patterns observed for many genes are often regulated by distal transcription enhancers. Changes in the nucleotide sequences of enhancers may therefore lead to changes in gene expression, representing a central mechanism by which organisms evolve. With the development of the experimental technique of chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), in which discrete regions of the genome bound by specific proteins can be identified, it is now possible to identify transcription factor binding events (putative cis-regulatory elements) in entire genomes. Comparing protein-DNA binding maps allows us, for the first time, to attempt to identify regulatory differences and infer global patterns of change in gene expression across species. Here, we review studies that used genome-wide ChIP to study the evolution of enhancers. The trend is one of high divergence of cis-regulatory elements between species, possibly compensated by extensive creation and loss of regulatory elements and rewiring of their target genes. We speculate on the meaning of the differences observed and discuss that although ChIP experiments identify the biochemical event of protein-DNA interaction, it cannot determine whether the event results in a biological function, and therefore more studies are required to establish the effect of divergence of binding events on species-specific gene expression.

Transcriptional enhancers in development and disease.

Distal transcription enhancers are cis-regulatory elements that promote gene expression, enabling spatiotemporal control of genetic programs such as those required in metazoan developmental processes. Because of their importance, their disruption can lead to disease.

Sequence features responsible for intron retention in human.

BACKGROUND: One of the least common types of alternative splicing is the complete retention of an intron in a mature transcript. Intron retention (IR) is believed to be the result of intron, rather than exon, definition associated with failure of the recognition of weak splice sites flanking short introns. Although studies on individual retained introns have been published, few systematic surveys of large amounts of data have been conducted on the mechanisms that lead to IR. RESULTS: TTo understand how sequence features are associated with or control IR, and to produce a generalized model that could reveal previously unknown signals that regulate this type of alternative splicing, we partitioned intron retention events observed in human cDNAs into two groups based on the relative abundance of both isoforms and compared relevant features. We found that a higher frequency of IR in human is associated with individual introns that have weaker splice sites, genes with shorter intron lengths, higher expression levels and lower density of both a set of exon splicing silencers (ESSs) and the intronic splicing enhancer GGG. Both groups of retained introns presented events conserved in mouse, in which the retained introns were also short and presented weaker splice sites. CONCLUSION: Although our results confirmed that weaker splice sites are associated with IR, they showed that this feature alone cannot explain a non-negligible fraction of events. Our analysis suggests that cis-regulatory elements are likely to play a crucial role in regulating IR and also reveals previously unknown features that seem to influence its occurrence. These results highlight the importance of considering the interplay among these features in the regulation of the relative frequency of IR.

A possible role of exon-shuffling in the evolution of signal peptides of human proteins.

It was recently shown that there is a predominance of phase 1 introns near the cleavage site of signal peptides encoded by human genes. It was suggested that this biased distribution was due to intron insertion at AGmid R:G proto-splice sites. However, we found that there is no disproportional excess of AGmid R:G that would support insertion at proto-splice sites. In fact, all nGmid R:G sites are enriched in the vicinity of the cleavage site. Additional analyses support an alternative scenario in which exon-shuffling is largely responsible for such excess of phase 1 introns.

Signs of ancient and modern exon-shuffling are correlated to the distribution of ancient and modern domains along proteins.

Exon-shuffling is an important mechanism accounting for the origin of many new proteins in eukaryotes. However, its role in the creation of proteins in the ancestor of prokaryotes and eukaryotes is still debatable. Excess of symmetric exons is thought to represent evidence for exon-shuffling since the exchange of exons flanked by introns of the same phase does not disrupt the reading frame of the host gene. In this report, we found that there is a significant correlation between symmetric units of shuffling and the age of protein domains. Ancient domains, present in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, are more frequently bounded by phase 0 introns and their distribution is biased towards the central part of proteins. Modern domains are more frequently bounded by phase 1 introns and are present predominantly at the ends of proteins. We propose a model in which shuffling of ancient domains mainly flanked by phase 0 introns was important in the ancestor of eukaryotes and prokaryotes, during the creation of the central part of proteins. Shuffling of modern domains, predominantly flanked by phase 1 introns, accounted for the origin of the extremities of proteins during eukaryotic evolution.

Detection and evaluation of intron retention events in the human transcriptome.

Alternative splicing is a very frequent phenomenon in the human transcriptome. There are four major types of alternative splicing: exon skipping, alternative 3' splice site, alternative 5' splice site, and intron retention. Here we present a large-scale analysis of intron retention in a set of 21,106 known human genes. We observed that 14.8% of these genes showed evidence of at least one intron retention event. Most of the events are located within the untranslated regions (UTRs) of human transcripts. For those retained introns interrupting the coding region, the GC content, codon usage, and the frequency of stop codons suggest that these sequences are under selection for coding potential. Furthermore, 26% of the introns within the coding region participate in the coding of a protein domain. A comparison with mouse shows that at least 22% of all informative examples of retained introns in human are also present in the mouse transcriptome. We discuss that the data we present suggest that a significant fraction of the observed events is not spurious and might reflect biological significance. The analyses also allowed us to generate a reliable set of intron retention events that can be used for the identification of splicing regulatory elements.

A bioinformatics analysis of alternative exon usage in human genes coding for extracellular matrix proteins.

Alternative splicing increases protein diversity through the generation of different mRNA molecules from the same gene. Although alternative splicing seems to be a widespread phenomenon in the human transcriptome, it is possible that different subgroups of genes present different patterns, related to their biological roles. Analysis of a subgroup may enhance common features of its members that would otherwise disappear amidst a heterogeneous population. Extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins are a good set for such analyses since they are structurally and functionally related. This family of proteins is involved in a large variety of functions, probably achieved by the combinatorial use of protein domains through exon shuffling events. To determine if ECM genes have a different pattern of alternative splicing, we compared clusters of expressed sequences of ECM to all other genes regarding features related to the most frequent type of alternative splicing, alternative exon usage (AEU), such as: the number of alternative exon-intron structures per cluster, the number of AEU events per exon-intron structure, the number of exons per event, among others. Although we did not find many differences between the two sets, we observed a higher frequency of AEU events involving entire protein domains in the ECM set, a feature that could be associated with their multi-domain nature. As other subgroups or even the ECM set in different tissues could present distinct patterns of AEU, it may be premature to conclude that alternative splicing is homogeneous among groups of related genes.

A bioinformatics analysis of alternative exon usage in human genes coding for extracellular matrix proteins

Alternative splicing increases protein diversity through the generation of different mRNA molecules from the same gene. Although alternative splicing seems to be a widespread phenomenon in the human transcriptome, it is possible that different subgroups of genes present different patterns, related to their biological roles. Analysis of a subgroup may enhance common features of its members that would otherwise disappear amidst a heterogeneous population. Extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins are a good set for such analyses since they are structurally and functionally related. This family of proteins is involved in a large variety of functions, probably achieved by the combinatorial use of protein domains through exon shuffling events. To determine if ECM genes have a different pattern of alternative splicing, we compared clusters of expressed sequences of ECM to all other genes regarding features related to the most frequent type of alternative splicing, alternative exon usage (AEU), such as: the number of alternative exon-intron structures per cluster, the number of AEU events per exon-intron structure, the number of exons per event, among others. Although we did not find many differences between the two sets, we observed a higher frequency of AEU events involving entire protein domains in the ECM set, a feature that could be associated with their multi-domain nature. As other subgroups or even the ECM set in different tissues could present distinct patterns of AEU, it may be premature to conclude that alternative splicing is homogeneous among groups of related genes.

ORESTES are enriched in rare exon usage variants affecting the encoded proteins.

A significant fraction of the variability found in the human transcriptome is due to alternative splicing, including alternative exon usage (AEU), intron retention and use of cryptic splice sites. We present a comparison of a large-scale analysis of AEU in the human transcriptome through genome mapping of Open Reading Frame ESTs (ORESTES) and conventional ESTs. It is shown here that ORESTES probe low abundant messages more efficiently. In addition, most of the variants detected by ORESTES affect the structure of the corresponding proteins.