SUPPRESSOR OF GAMMA RESPONSE1 Links DNA Damage Response to Organ Regeneration.

In Arabidopsis, DNA damage-induced programmed cell death is limited to the meristematic stem cell niche and its early descendants. The significance of this cell-type-specific programmed cell death is unclear. Here, we demonstrate in roots that it is the programmed destruction of the mitotically compromised stem cell niche that triggers its regeneration, enabling growth recovery. In contrast to wild-type plants, sog1 plants, which are defective in damage-induced programmed cell death, maintain the cell identities and stereotypical structure of the stem cell niche after irradiation, but these cells fail to undergo cell division, terminating root growth. We propose DNA damage-induced programmed cell death is employed by plants as a developmental response, contrasting with its role as an anticarcinogenic response in animals. This role in plants may have evolved to restore the growth of embryos after the accumulation of DNA damage in seeds.

Comparative assessments of CRISPR-Cas nucleases' cleavage efficiency in planta.

Custom-designed nucleases can enable precise plant genome editing by catalyzing DNA-breakage at specific targets to stimulate targeted mutagenesis or gene replacement. The CRISPR-Cas system, with its target-specifying RNA molecule to direct the Cas9 nuclease, is a recent addition to existing nucleases that bind and cleave the target through linked protein domains (e.g. TALENs and zinc-finger nucleases). We have conducted a comparative study of these different types of custom-designed nucleases and we have assessed various components of the CRISPR-Cas system. For this purpose, we have adapted our previously reported assay for cleavage-dependent luciferase gene correction in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves (Johnson et al. in Plant Mol Biol 82(3):207-221, 2013). We found that cleavage by CRISPR-Cas was more efficient than cleavage of the same target by TALENs. We also compared the cleavage efficiency of the Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 protein based on expression using three different Cas9 gene variants. We found significant differences in cleavage efficiency between these variants, with human and Arabidopsis thaliana codon-optimized genes having the highest cleavage efficiencies. We compared the activity of 12 de novo-designed single synthetic guide RNA (sgRNA) constructs, and found their cleavage efficiency varied drastically when using the same Cas9 nuclease. Finally, we show that, for one of the targets tested with our assay, we could induce a germinally-transmitted deletion in a repeat array in A. thaliana. This work emphasizes the efficiency of the CRISPR-Cas system in plants. It also shows that further work is needed to be able to predict the optimal design of sgRNAs or Cas9 variants.

Phenotypic changes associated with RNA interference silencing of chalcone synthase in apple (Malus × domestica).

We have identified in apple (Malus × domestica) three chalcone synthase (CHS) genes. In order to understand the functional redundancy of this gene family RNA interference knockout lines were generated where all three of these genes were down-regulated. These lines had no detectable anthocyanins and radically reduced concentrations of dihydrochalcones and flavonoids. Surprisingly, down-regulation of CHS also led to major changes in plant development, resulting in plants with shortened internode lengths, smaller leaves and a greatly reduced growth rate. Microscopic analysis revealed that these phenotypic changes extended down to the cellular level, with CHS-silenced lines showing aberrant cellular organisation in the leaves. Fruit collected from one CHS-silenced line was smaller than the 'Royal Gala' controls, lacked flavonoids in the skin and flesh and also had changes in cell morphology. Auxin transport experiments showed increased rates of auxin transport in a CHS-silenced line compared with the 'Royal Gala' control. As flavonoids are well known to be key modulators of auxin transport, we hypothesise that the removal of almost all flavonoids from the plant by CHS silencing creates a vastly altered environment for auxin transport to occur and results in the observed changes in growth and development.

A rapid assay to quantify the cleavage efficiency of custom-designed nucleases in planta.

Custom-designed nucleases are a promising technology for genome editing through the catalysis of double-strand DNA breaks within target loci and subsequent repair by the host cell, which can result in targeted mutagenesis or gene replacement. Implementing this new technology requires a rapid means to determine the cleavage efficiency of these custom-designed proteins in planta. Here we present such an assay that is based on cleavage-dependent luciferase gene correction as part of a transient dual-luciferase(®) reporter (Promega) expression system. This assay consists of co-infiltrating Nicotiana benthamiana leaves with two Agrobacterium tumefaciens strains: one contains the target sequence embedded within a luciferase reporter gene and the second strain contains the custom-designed nuclease gene(s). We compared repair following site-specific nuclease digestion through non-homologous DNA end-joining, as opposed to single strand DNA annealing, as a means to restore an out-of-frame luciferase gene cleavage-reporter construct. We show, using luminometer measurements and bioluminescence imaging, that the assay for non-homologous end-joining is sensitive, quantitative, reproducible and rapid in estimating custom-designed nucleases' cleavage efficiency. We detected cleavage by two out of three transcription activator-like effector nucleases that we custom-designed for targets in the Arabidopsis CRUCIFERIN3 gene, and we compared with the well-established 'QQR' zinc-finger nuclease. The assay we report requires only standard equipment and basic plant molecular biology techniques, and it can be carried out within a few days. Different types of custom-designed nucleases can be preliminarily tested in our assay system before their downstream application in plant genome editing.

Study the Longitudinal in vivo and Cross-Sectional ex vivo Brain Volume Difference for Disease Progression and Treatment Effect on Mouse Model of Tauopathy Using Automated MRI Structural Parcellation.

Brain volume measurements extracted from structural MRI data sets are a widely accepted neuroimaging biomarker to study mouse models of neurodegeneration. Whether to acquire and analyze data in vivo or ex vivo is a crucial decision during the phase of experimental designs, as well as data analysis. In this work, we extracted the brain structures for both longitudinal in vivo and single-time-point ex vivo MRI acquired from the same animals using accurate automatic multi-atlas structural parcellation, and compared the corresponding statistical and classification analysis. We found that most gray matter structures volumes decrease from in vivo to ex vivo, while most white matter structures volume increase. The level of structural volume change also varies between different genetic strains and treatment. In addition, we showed superior statistical and classification power of ex vivo data compared to the in vivo data, even after resampled to the same level of resolution. We further demonstrated that the classification power of the in vivo data can be improved by incorporating longitudinal information, which is not possible for ex vivo data. In conclusion, this paper demonstrates the tissue-specific changes, as well as the difference in statistical and classification power, between the volumetric analysis based on the in vivo and ex vivo structural MRI data. Our results emphasize the importance of longitudinal analysis for in vivo data analysis.

In Vivo Imaging of Tau Pathology Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging Textural Analysis.

Background: Non-invasive characterization of the pathological features of Alzheimer's disease (AD) could enhance patient management and the development of therapeutic strategies. Magnetic resonance imaging texture analysis (MRTA) has been used previously to extract texture descriptors from structural clinical scans in AD to determine cerebral tissue heterogeneity. In this study, we examined the potential of MRTA to specifically identify tau pathology in an AD mouse model and compared the MRTA metrics to histological measures of tau burden. Methods: MRTA was applied to T2 weighted high-resolution MR images of nine 8.5-month-old rTg4510 tau pathology (TG) mice and 16 litter matched wild-type (WT) mice. MRTA comprised of the filtration-histogram technique, where the filtration step extracted and enhanced features of different sizes (fine, medium, and coarse texture scales), followed by quantification of texture using histogram analysis (mean gray level intensity, mean intensity, entropy, uniformity, skewness, standard-deviation, and kurtosis). MRTA was applied to manually segmented regions of interest (ROI) drawn within the cortex, hippocampus, and thalamus regions and the level of tau burden was assessed in equivalent regions using histology. Results: Texture parameters were markedly different between WT and TG in the cortex (E, p < 0.01, K, p < 0.01), the hippocampus (K, p < 0.05) and in the thalamus (K, p < 0.01). In addition, we observed significant correlations between histological measurements of tau burden and kurtosis in the cortex, hippocampus and thalamus. Conclusions: MRTA successfully differentiated WT and TG in brain regions with varying degrees of tau pathology (cortex, hippocampus, and thalamus) based on T2 weighted MR images. Furthermore, the kurtosis measurement correlated with histological measures of tau burden. This initial study indicates that MRTA may have a role in the early diagnosis of AD and the assessment of tau pathology using routinely acquired structural MR images.

Comparison of In Vivo and Ex Vivo MRI for the Detection of Structural Abnormalities in a Mouse Model of Tauopathy.

With increasingly large numbers of mouse models of human disease dedicated to MRI studies, compromises between in vivo and ex vivo MRI must be fully understood in order to inform the choice of imaging methodology. We investigate the application of high resolution in vivo and ex vivo MRI, in combination with tensor-based morphometry (TBM), to uncover morphological differences in the rTg4510 mouse model of tauopathy. The rTg4510 mouse also offers a novel paradigm by which the overexpression of mutant tau can be regulated by the administration of doxycycline, providing us with a platform on which to investigate more subtle alterations in morphology with morphometry. Both in vivo and ex vivo MRI allowed the detection of widespread bilateral patterns of atrophy in the rTg4510 mouse brain relative to wild-type controls. Regions of volume loss aligned with neuronal loss and pathological tau accumulation demonstrated by immunohistochemistry. When we sought to investigate more subtle structural alterations in the rTg4510 mice relative to a subset of doxycycline-treated rTg4510 mice, ex vivo imaging enabled the detection of more regions of morphological brain changes. The disadvantages of ex vivo MRI may however mitigate this increase in sensitivity: we observed a 10% global shrinkage in brain volume of the post-mortem tissues due to formalin fixation, which was most notable in the cerebellum and olfactory bulbs. However, many central brain regions were not adversely affected by the fixation protocol, perhaps due to our "in-skull" preparation. The disparity between our TBM findings from in vivo and ex vivo MRI underlines the importance of appropriate study design, given the trade-off between these two imaging approaches. We support the utility of in vivo MRI for morphological phenotyping of mouse models of disease; however, for subtler phenotypes, ex vivo offers enhanced sensitivity to discrete morphological changes.

Imaging the accumulation and suppression of tau pathology using multiparametric MRI.

Mouse models of Alzheimer's disease have served as valuable tools for investigating pathogenic mechanisms relating to neurodegeneration, including tau-mediated and neurofibrillary tangle pathology-a major hallmark of the disease. In this work, we have used multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in a longitudinal study of neurodegeneration in the rTg4510 mouse model of tauopathy, a subset of which were treated with doxycycline at different time points to suppress the tau transgene. Using this paradigm, we investigated the sensitivity of multiparametric MRI to both the accumulation and suppression of pathologic tau. Tau-related atrophy was discernible from 5.5 months within the cortex and hippocampus. We observed markedly less atrophy in the treated rTg4510 mice, which was enhanced after doxycycline intervention from 3.5 months. We also observed differences in amide proton transfer, cerebral blood flow, and diffusion tensor imaging parameters in the rTg4510 mice, which were significantly less altered after doxycycline treatment. We propose that these non-invasive MRI techniques offer insight into pathologic mechanisms underpinning Alzheimer's disease that may be important when evaluating emerging therapeutics targeting one of more of these processes.