Dynamic Control of X Chromosome Conformation and Repression by a Histone H4K20 Demethylase.

Chromatin modification and higher-order chromosome structure play key roles in gene regulation, but their functional interplay in controlling gene expression is elusive. We have discovered the machinery and mechanism underlying the dynamic enrichment of histone modification H4K20me1 on hermaphrodite X chromosomes during C. elegans dosage compensation and demonstrated H4K20me1's pivotal role in regulating higher-order chromosome structure and X-chromosome-wide gene expression. The structure and the activity of the dosage compensation complex (DCC) subunit DPY-21 define a Jumonji demethylase subfamily that converts H4K20me2 to H4K20me1 in worms and mammals. Selective inactivation of demethylase activity eliminates H4K20me1 enrichment in somatic cells, elevates X-linked gene expression, reduces X chromosome compaction, and disrupts X chromosome conformation by diminishing the formation of topologically associating domains (TADs). Unexpectedly, DPY-21 also associates with autosomes of germ cells in a DCC-independent manner to enrich H4K20me1 and trigger chromosome compaction. Our findings demonstrate the direct link between chromatin modification and higher-order chromosome structure in long-range regulation of gene expression.

Generating Clinical-Grade Gene-Disease Validity Classifications Through the ClinGen Data Platforms.

Clinical genetic laboratories must have access to clinically validated biomedical data for precision medicine. A lack of accessibility, normalized structure, and consistency in evaluation complicates interpretation of disease causality, resulting in confusion in assessing the clinical validity of genes and genetic variants for diagnosis. A key goal of the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) is to fill the knowledge gap concerning the strength of evidence supporting the role of a gene in a monogenic disease, which is achieved through a process known as Gene-Disease Validity curation. Here we review the work of ClinGen in developing a curation infrastructure that supports the standardization, harmonization, and dissemination of Gene-Disease Validity data through the creation of frameworks and the utilization of common data standards. This infrastructure is based on several applications, including the ClinGen GeneTracker, Gene Curation Interface, Data Exchange, GeneGraph, and website.

ClinGen Variant Curation Interface: a variant classification platform for the application of evidence criteria from ACMG/AMP guidelines.

BACKGROUND: Identification of clinically significant genetic alterations involved in human disease has been dramatically accelerated by developments in next-generation sequencing technologies. However, the infrastructure and accessible comprehensive curation tools necessary for analyzing an individual patient genome and interpreting genetic variants to inform healthcare management have been lacking. RESULTS: Here we present the ClinGen Variant Curation Interface (VCI), a global open-source variant classification platform for supporting the application of evidence criteria and classification of variants based on the ACMG/AMP variant classification guidelines. The VCI is among a suite of tools developed by the NIH-funded Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) Consortium and supports an FDA-recognized human variant curation process. Essential to this is the ability to enable collaboration and peer review across ClinGen Expert Panels supporting users in comprehensively identifying, annotating, and sharing relevant evidence while making variant pathogenicity assertions. To facilitate evidence-based improvements in human variant classification, the VCI is publicly available to the genomics community. Navigation workflows support users providing guidance to comprehensively apply the ACMG/AMP evidence criteria and document provenance for asserting variant classifications. CONCLUSIONS: The VCI offers a central platform for clinical variant classification that fills a gap in the learning healthcare system, facilitates widespread adoption of standards for clinical curation, and is available at https://curation.clinicalgenome.org.

Age-dependent usage of double-strand-break repair pathways.

A DNA double-strand break (DSB) can be repaired by any of several alternative and competing mechanisms. The repaired sequences often differ from the original depending on which mechanism was used so that the cell's "choice" of repair mechanism can have profound genetic consequences. DSBs can accumulate with age , and human diseases that mimic some of the effects of aging, such as increased susceptibility to cancer, are associated with certain defects in DSB repair . The premeiotic germ cells of Drosophila provide a useful model for exploration of the connection between aging and DNA repair because these cells are subject to mortality and other age-related changes , and their DNA repair process is easily quantified. We used Rr3, a repair reporter system in Drosophila, to show that the relative usage of DSB repair mechanisms can change substantially as an organism ages. Homologous repair increased linearly in the male germline from 14% in young individuals to more than 60% in old ones, whereas two other pathways showed a corresponding decrease. Furthermore, the proportion of longer conversion tracts (>156 bp) also increased nearly 2-fold as the flies aged. These findings are relevant to the more general question of how DNA damage and repair are related to aging.

Differential usage of alternative pathways of double-strand break repair in Drosophila.

Double-strand DNA breaks can be repaired by any of several alternative mechanisms that differ greatly in the nature of the final repaired products. We used a reporter construct, designated "Repair reporter 3" (Rr3), to measure the relative usage of these pathways in Drosophila germ cells. The method works by creating a double-strand break at a specific location such that expression of the red fluorescent protein, DsRed, in the next generation can be used to infer the frequency at which each pathway was used. A key feature of this approach is that most data come from phenotypic scoring, thus allowing large sample sizes and considerable precision in measurements. Specifically, we measured the proportion of breaks repaired by (1) conversion repair, (2) nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ), or (3) single-strand annealing (SSA). For conversion repair, the frequency of mitotic crossing over in the germ line indicates the relative prevalence of repair by double Holliday junction (DHJ) formation vs. the synthesis-dependent strand annealing (SDSA) pathway. We used this method to show that breaks occurring early in germ-line development were much more frequently repaired via single-strand annealing and much less likely to be repaired by end joining compared with identical breaks occurring later in development. Conversion repair was relatively rare when breaks were made either very early or very late in development, but was much more frequent in between. Significantly, the changes in relative usage occurred in a compensatory fashion, such that an increase in one pathway was accompanied by decreases in others. This negative correlation is interpreted to mean that the pathways for double-strand break repair compete with each other to handle a given breakage event.

Estimated numbers of new TB cases in Patan, a city in Nepal.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the paper is to show that, despite comprehensive coverage of services for TB provided by a public-private partnership for TB control in Patan, a city in Nepal, case finding is low, compared with the target based on an Annual Risk of Tuberculosis Infection (ARTI) of 4 per cent. Doubts have been raised as to the appropriateness of the target. The objective of the study was to estimate the number of new TB cases occurring in Patan, to assess whether the target was appropriate. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: In the paper doorstep interviews were conducted with all households in the study area, followed by in-depth interviews of households with possible or probable TB cases. The survey findings were validated against the patient registers of the five DOTS centres in Patan. FINDINGS: The paper finds that, among the study population of 36,918, the household survey identified 17 smear-positive TB cases (none privately-treated) and 24 smear-negative/extra-pulmonary cases (including four privately-treated cases). Validation against the DOTS patient registers indicated that the survey was 54 per cent complete. After adjusting for incompleteness, the number of smear-positive cases in the study area was estimated as 31, equivalent to an incidence of 85 smear positives per 100,000 population and an ARTI of 1.7 per cent. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The paper shows that using the ARTI may lead to misleadingly high targets for urban TB control. Unrealistically high targets may cause TB workers to become demoralised, and useful strategies to be abandoned. Therefore, further work is needed to identify better ways of setting targets.

Efficient repair of DNA breaks in Drosophila: evidence for single-strand annealing and competition with other repair pathways.

We show evidence that DNA double-strand breaks induced in the Drosophila germ line can be repaired very efficiently by the single-strand annealing (SSA) mechanism. A double-strand break was made between two copies of a 1290-bp direct repeat by mobilizing a P transposon. In >80% of the progeny that acquired this chromosome, repair resulted in loss of the P element and loss of one copy of the repeat, as observed in SSA. The frequency of this repair was much greater than seen for gene conversion using an allelic template, which is only approximately 7%. A similar structure, but with a smaller duplication of only 158 bp, also yielded SSA-like repair events, but at a reduced frequency, and gave rise to some products by repair pathways other than SSA. The 1290-bp repeats carried two sequence polymorphisms that were examined in the products. The allele nearest to a nick in the putative heteroduplex intermediate was lost most often. This bias is predicted by the SSA model, although other models could account for it. We conclude that SSA is the preferred repair pathway in Drosophila for DNA breaks between sequence repeats, and it competes with gene conversion by the synthesis-dependent strand annealing (SDSA) pathway.

A third link connecting aging with double strand break repair.

Until recently, the connection between aging and DNA repair has rested on two classes of observation. First, DNA damage and unrepaired double-strand breaks (DSBs) accumulate with age. Second, several defects in DNA repair genes are associated with early onset of age-related diseases and other signs of premature aging. Now, a third link has emerged: The mechanisms by which cells repair DSB damage can change dramatically with age, shifting from simpler end-joining processes in younger organisms to homologous mechanisms in which missing genetic information is restored through use of a template. So far this third link between aging and DNA repair has only been observed in a small number of experimental systems, and cannot yet claim the generality of the other two. Here we review the evidence for this phenomenon and present new data testing models for the underlying causes. If the generality of age-related changes in DSB repair pathway usage can be established, it will provide a new insight into the underlying molecular basis of aging and how evolution has shaped these processes.

Ultraconserved elements are associated with homeostatic control of splicing regulators by alternative splicing and nonsense-mediated decay.

Many alternative splicing events create RNAs with premature stop codons, suggesting that alternative splicing coupled with nonsense-mediated decay (AS-NMD) may regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally. We tested this idea in mice by blocking NMD and measuring changes in isoform representation using splicing-sensitive microarrays. We found a striking class of highly conserved stop codon-containing exons whose inclusion renders the transcript sensitive to NMD. A genomic search for additional examples identified>50 such exons in genes with a variety of functions. These exons are unusually frequent in genes that encode splicing activators and are unexpectedly enriched in the so-called "ultraconserved" elements in the mammalian lineage. Further analysis show that NMD of mRNAs for splicing activators such as SR proteins is triggered by splicing activation events, whereas NMD of the mRNAs for negatively acting hnRNP proteins is triggered by splicing repression, a polarity consistent with widespread homeostatic control of splicing regulator gene expression. We suggest that the extreme genomic conservation surrounding these regulatory splicing events within splicing factor genes demonstrates the evolutionary importance of maintaining tightly tuned homeostasis of RNA-binding protein levels in the vertebrate cell.