Dopachrome tautomerase variants in patients with oculocutaneous albinism.

PURPOSE: Albinism is a clinically and genetically heterogeneous condition. Despite analysis of the 20 known genes, ~30% patients remain unsolved. We aimed to identify new genes involved in albinism. METHODS: We sequenced a panel of genes with known or predicted involvement in melanogenesis in 230 unsolved albinism patients. RESULTS: We identified variants in the Dopachrome tautomerase (DCT) gene in two patients. One was compound heterozygous for a 14-bp deletion in exon 9 and c.118T>A p.(Cys40Ser). The second was homozygous for c.183C>G p.(Cys61Trp). Both patients had mild hair and skin hypopigmentation, and classical ocular features. CRISPR-Cas9 was used in C57BL/6J mice to create mutations identical to the missense variants carried by the patients, along with one loss-of-function indel. When bred to homozygosity the three mutations revealed hypopigmentation of the coat, milder for Cys40Ser compared with Cys61Trp or the frameshift mutation. Histological analysis identified significant hypopigmentation of the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) indicating that defective RPE melanogenesis could be associated with eye and vision defects. DCT loss of function in zebrafish embryos elicited hypopigmentation both in melanophores and RPE cells. CONCLUSION: DCT is the gene for a new type of oculocutaneous albinism that we propose to name OCA8.

Lysine demethylases KDM6A and UTY: The X and Y of histone demethylation.

Histone demethylases remove transcriptional repressive marks from histones in the nucleus. KDM6A (also known as UTX) is a lysine demethylase which acts on the trimethylated lysine at position 27 in histone 3. The KDM6A gene is located on the X chromosome but escapes X inactivation even though it is not located in the pseudoautosomal region. There is a homologue of KDM6A on the Y chromosome, known as UTY. UTY was thought to have lost its demethylase activity and to represent a non-functional remnant of the ancestral KDM6A gene. However, results with knockout mice suggest that the gene is expressed and the protein performs some function within the cell. Female mice with homozygous deletion of Kdm6a do not survive, but hemizygous males are viable, attributed to the presence of the Uty gene. KDM6A is mutated in the human condition Kabuki syndrome type 2 (OMIM 300867) and in many cases of cancer. The amino acid sequence of KDM6A has been conserved across animal phyla, although it is only found on the X chromosome in eutherian mammals. In this review, we reanalyse existing data from various sources (protein sequence comparison, evolutionary genetics, transcription factor binding and gene expression analysis) to determine the function, expression and evolution of KDM6A and UTY and show that UTY has a functional role similar to KDM6A in metabolism and development.

CRISPR-Cas9 Editing of Human Histone Deubiquitinase Gene USP16 in Human Monocytic Leukemia Cell Line THP-1.

USP16 is a histone deubiquitinase which facilitates G2/M transition during the cell cycle, regulates DNA damage repair and contributes to inducible gene expression. We mutated the USP16 gene in a high differentiation clone of the acute monocytic leukemia cell line THP-1 using the CRISPR-Cas9 system and generated four homozygous knockout clones. All were able to proliferate and to differentiate in response to phorbol ester (PMA) treatment. One line was highly proliferative prior to PMA treatment and shut down proliferation upon differentiation, like wild type. Three clones showed sustained expression of the progenitor cell marker MYB, indicating that differentiation had not completely blocked proliferation in these clones. Network analysis of transcriptomic differences among wild type, heterozygotes and homozygotes showed clusters of genes that were up- or down-regulated after differentiation in all cell lines. Prior to PMA treatment, the homozygous clones had lower levels than wild type of genes relating to metabolism and mitochondria, including SRPRB, encoding an interaction partner of USP16. There was also apparent loss of interferon signaling. In contrast, a number of genes were up-regulated in the homozygous cells compared to wild type at baseline, including other deubiquitinases (USP12, BAP1, and MYSM1). However, three homozygotes failed to fully induce USP3 during differentiation. Other network clusters showed effects prior to or after differentiation in the homozygous clones. Thus the removal of USP16 affected the transcriptome of the cells, although all these lines were able to survive, which suggests that the functions attributed to USP16 may be redundant. Our analysis indicates that the leukemic line can adapt to the extreme selection pressure applied by the loss of USP16, and the harsh conditions of the gene editing and selection protocol, through different compensatory pathways. Similar selection pressures occur during the evolution of a cancer in vivo, and our results can be seen as a case study in leukemic cell adaptation. USP16 has been considered a target for cancer chemotherapy, but our results suggest that treatment would select for escape mutants that are resistant to USP16 inhibitors.

The Transcriptional Network That Controls Growth Arrest and Macrophage Differentiation in the Human Myeloid Leukemia Cell Line THP-1.

The response of the human acute myeloid leukemia cell line THP-1 to phorbol esters has been widely studied to test candidate leukemia therapies and as a model of cell cycle arrest and monocyte-macrophage differentiation. Here we have employed Cap Analysis of Gene Expression (CAGE) to analyze a dense time course of transcriptional regulation in THP-1 cells treated with phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) over 96 h. PMA treatment greatly reduced the numbers of cells entering S phase and also blocked cells exiting G2/M. The PMA-treated cells became adherent and expression of mature macrophage-specific genes increased progressively over the duration of the time course. Within 1-2 h PMA induced known targets of tumor protein p53 (TP53), notably CDKN1A, followed by gradual down-regulation of cell-cycle associated genes. Also within the first 2 h, PMA induced immediate early genes including transcription factor genes encoding proteins implicated in macrophage differentiation (EGR2, JUN, MAFB) and down-regulated genes for transcription factors involved in immature myeloid cell proliferation (MYB, IRF8, GFI1). The dense time course revealed that the response to PMA was not linear and progressive. Rather, network-based clustering of the time course data highlighted a sequential cascade of transient up- and down-regulated expression of genes encoding feedback regulators, as well as transcription factors associated with macrophage differentiation and their inferred target genes. CAGE also identified known and candidate novel enhancers expressed in THP-1 cells and many novel inducible genes that currently lack functional annotation and/or had no previously known function in macrophages. The time course is available on the ZENBU platform allowing comparison to FANTOM4 and FANTOM5 data.

Global Analysis of Transcription Start Sites in the New Ovine Reference Genome (Oar rambouillet v1.0).

The overall aim of the Ovine FAANG project is to provide a comprehensive annotation of the new highly contiguous sheep reference genome sequence (Oar rambouillet v1.0). Mapping of transcription start sites (TSS) is a key first step in understanding transcript regulation and diversity. Using 56 tissue samples collected from the reference ewe Benz2616, we have performed a global analysis of TSS and TSS-Enhancer clusters using Cap Analysis Gene Expression (CAGE) sequencing. CAGE measures RNA expression by 5' cap-trapping and has been specifically designed to allow the characterization of TSS within promoters to single-nucleotide resolution. We have adapted an analysis pipeline that uses TagDust2 for clean-up and trimming, Bowtie2 for mapping, CAGEfightR for clustering, and the Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV) for visualization. Mapping of CAGE tags indicated that the expression levels of CAGE tag clusters varied across tissues. Expression profiles across tissues were validated using corresponding polyA+ mRNA-Seq data from the same samples. After removal of CAGE tags with <10 read counts, 39.3% of TSS overlapped with 5' ends of 31,113 transcripts that had been previously annotated by NCBI (out of a total of 56,308 from the NCBI annotation). For 25,195 of the transcripts, previously annotated by NCBI, no TSS meeting stringent criteria were identified. A further 14.7% of TSS mapped to within 50 bp of annotated promoter regions. Intersecting these predicted TSS regions with annotated promoter regions (±50 bp) revealed 46% of the predicted TSS were "novel" and previously un-annotated. Using whole-genome bisulfite sequencing data from the same tissues, we were able to determine that a proportion of these "novel" TSS were hypo-methylated (32.2%) indicating that they are likely to be reproducible rather than "noise". This global analysis of TSS in sheep will significantly enhance the annotation of gene models in the new ovine reference assembly. Our analyses provide one of the highest resolution annotations of transcript regulation and diversity in a livestock species to date.

Deletion of a Csf1r enhancer selectively impacts CSF1R expression and development of tissue macrophage populations.

The proliferation, differentiation and survival of mononuclear phagocytes depend on signals from the receptor for macrophage colony-stimulating factor, CSF1R. The mammalian Csf1r locus contains a highly conserved super-enhancer, the fms-intronic regulatory element (FIRE). Here we show that genomic deletion of FIRE in mice selectively impacts CSF1R expression and tissue macrophage development in specific tissues. Deletion of FIRE ablates macrophage development from murine embryonic stem cells. Csf1rΔFIRE/ΔFIRE mice lack macrophages in the embryo, brain microglia and resident macrophages in the skin, kidney, heart and peritoneum. The homeostasis of other macrophage populations and monocytes is unaffected, but monocytes and their progenitors in bone marrow lack surface CSF1R. Finally, Csf1rΔFIRE/ΔFIRE mice are healthy and fertile without the growth, neurological or developmental abnormalities reported in Csf1r-/- rodents. Csf1rΔFIRE/ΔFIRE mice thus provide a model to explore the homeostatic, physiological and immunological functions of tissue-specific macrophage populations in adult animals.