A newly identified gene Ahed plays essential roles in murine haematopoiesis.

The development of haematopoiesis involves the coordinated action of numerous genes, some of which are implicated in haematological malignancies. However, the biological function of many genes remains elusive and unknown functional genes are likely to remain to be uncovered. Here, we report a previously uncharacterised gene in haematopoiesis, identified by screening mutant embryonic stem cells. The gene, 'attenuated haematopoietic development (Ahed)', encodes a nuclear protein. Conditional knockout (cKO) of Ahed results in anaemia from embryonic day 14.5 onward, leading to prenatal demise. Transplantation experiments demonstrate the incapacity of Ahed-deficient haematopoietic cells to reconstitute haematopoiesis in vivo. Employing a tamoxifen-inducible cKO model, we further reveal that Ahed deletion impairs the intrinsic capacity of haematopoietic cells in adult mice. Ahed deletion affects various pathways, and published databases present cancer patients with somatic mutations in Ahed. Collectively, our findings underscore the fundamental roles of Ahed in lifelong haematopoiesis, implicating its association with malignancies.

Generation of targeted homozygosity in the genome of human induced pluripotent stem cells.

When loss of heterozygosity (LOH) is correlated with loss or gain of a disease phenotype, it is often necessary to identify which gene or genes are involved. Here, we developed a region-specific LOH-inducing system based on mitotic crossover in human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). We first tested our system on chromosome 19. To detect homozygous clones generated by LOH, a positive selection cassette was inserted at the AASV1 locus of chromosome 19. LOHs were generated by the combination of allele-specific double-stranded DNA breaks introduced by CRISPR/Cas9 and suppression of Bloom syndrome (BLM) gene expression by the Tet-Off system. The BLM protein inhibitor ML216 exhibited a similar crossover efficiency and distribution of crossover sites. We next applied this system to the short arm of chromosome 6, where human leukocyte antigen (HLA) loci are located. Genotyping and flow cytometric analysis demonstrated that LOHs associated with chromosomal crossover occurred at the expected positions. Although careful examination of HLA-homozygous hiPSCs generated from parental cells is needed for cancer predisposition and effectiveness of differentiation, they may help to mitigate the current shortcoming of hiPSC-based transplantation related to the immunological differences between the donor and host.

Collection of homozygous mutant mouse embryonic stem cells arising from autodiploidization during haploid gene trap mutagenesis.

Haploid mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs), in which a single hit mutation is sufficient to produce loss-of-function phenotypes, have provided a powerful tool for forward genetic screening. This strategy, however, can be hampered by undesired autodiploidization of haploid ESCs. To overcome this obstacle, we designed a new methodology that facilitates enrichment of homozygous mutant ESC clones arising from autodiploidization during haploid gene trap mutagenesis. Haploid mouse ESCs were purified by fluorescence-activated cell sorting to maintain their haploid property and then transfected with the Tol2 transposon-based biallelically polyA-trapping (BPATrap) vector that carries an invertible G418 plus puromycin double selection cassette. G418 plus puromycin double selection enriched biallelic mutant clones that had undergone autodiploidization following a single vector insertion into the haploid genome. Using this method, we successfully generated 222 homozygous mutant ESCs from 2208 clones by excluding heterozygous ESCs and ESCs with multiple vector insertions. This relatively low efficiency of generating homozygous mutant ESCs was partially overcome by cell sorting of haploid ESCs after Tol2 BPATrap transfection. These results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach to provide an efficient platform for mutagenesis of ESCs and functional analysis of the mammalian genome.

COSMOS: accurate detection of somatic structural variations through asymmetric comparison between tumor and normal samples.

An important challenge in cancer genomics is precise detection of structural variations (SVs) by high-throughput short-read sequencing, which is hampered by the high false discovery rates of existing analysis tools. Here, we propose an accurate SV detection method named COSMOS, which compares the statistics of the mapped read pairs in tumor samples with isogenic normal control samples in a distinct asymmetric manner. COSMOS also prioritizes the candidate SVs using strand-specific read-depth information. Performance tests on modeled tumor genomes revealed that COSMOS outperformed existing methods in terms of F-measure. We also applied COSMOS to an experimental mouse cell-based model, in which SVs were induced by genome engineering and gamma-ray irradiation, followed by polymerase chain reaction-based confirmation. The precision of COSMOS was 84.5%, while the next best existing method was 70.4%. Moreover, the sensitivity of COSMOS was the highest, indicating that COSMOS has great potential for cancer genome analysis.

Enhancement of microhomology-mediated genomic rearrangements by transient loss of mouse Bloom syndrome helicase.

Bloom syndrome, an autosomal recessive disorder of the BLM gene, confers predisposition to a broad spectrum of early-onset cancers in multiple tissue types. Loss of genomic integrity is a primary hallmark of such human malignancies, but many studies using disease-affected specimens are limited in that they are retrospective and devoid of an appropriate experimental control. To overcome this, we devised an experimental system to recapitulate the early molecular events in genetically engineered mouse embryonic stem cells, in which cells undergoing loss of heterozygosity (LOH) can be enriched after inducible down-regulation of Blm expression, with or without site-directed DNA double-strand break (DSB) induction. Transient loss of BLM increased the rate of LOH, whose breakpoints were distributed along the chromosome. Combined with site-directed DSB induction, loss of BLM synergistically increased the rate of LOH and concentrated the breakpoints around the targeted chromosomal region. We characterized the LOH events using specifically tailored genomic tools, such as high-resolution array comparative genomic hybridization and high-density single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping, revealing that the combination of BLM suppression and DSB induction enhanced genomic rearrangements, including deletions and insertions, whose breakpoints were clustered in genomic inverted repeats and associated with junctional microhomologies. Our experimental approach successfully uncovered the detailed molecular mechanisms of as-yet-uncharacterized loss of heterozygosities and reveals the significant contribution of microhomology-mediated genomic rearrangements, which could be widely applicable to the early steps of cancer formation in general.