Degrees of freedom: temperature's influence on developmental rate.

Temperature exerts a fundamental influence across scales of biology, from the biophysical nature of molecules, to the sensitivity of cells, and the coordinated progression of development in embryos. Species-specific developmental rates and temperature-induced acceleration of development indicate that these sensing mechanisms are harnessed to influence developmental dynamics. Tracing how temperature sensitivity propagates through biological scales to influence the pace of development can therefore reveal how embryogenesis remains robust to environmental influences. Cellular protein homeostasis (proteostasis), and cellular metabolic rate are linked to both temperature-induced and species-specific developmental tempos in specific cell types, hinting toward generalized mechanisms of timing control. New methods to extract timing information from single-cell profiling experiments are driving further progress in understanding how mechanisms of temperature sensitivity can direct cell-autonomous responses, coordination across cell types, and evolutionary modifications of developmental timing.

Proteostasis governs differential temperature sensitivity across embryonic cell types.

Embryonic development is remarkably robust, but temperature stress can degrade its ability to generate animals with invariant anatomy. Phenotypes associated with environmental stress suggest that some cell types are more sensitive to stress than others, but the basis of this sensitivity is unknown. Here, we characterize hundreds of individual zebrafish embryos under temperature stress using whole-animal single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to identify cell types and molecular programs driving phenotypic variability. We find that temperature perturbs the normal proportions and gene expression programs of numerous cell types and also introduces asynchrony in developmental timing. The notochord is particularly sensitive to temperature, which we map to a specialized cell type: sheath cells. These cells accumulate misfolded protein at elevated temperature, leading to a cascading structural failure of the notochord and anatomic defects. Our study demonstrates that whole-animal single-cell RNA-seq can identify mechanisms for developmental robustness and pinpoint cell types that constitute key failure points.

Embryo-scale reverse genetics at single-cell resolution.

The maturation of single-cell transcriptomic technologies has facilitated the generation of comprehensive cellular atlases from whole embryos1-4. A majority of these data, however, has been collected from wild-type embryos without an appreciation for the latent variation that is present in development. Here we present the 'zebrafish single-cell atlas of perturbed embryos': single-cell transcriptomic data from 1,812 individually resolved developing zebrafish embryos, encompassing 19 timepoints, 23 genetic perturbations and a total of 3.2 million cells. The high degree of replication in our study (eight or more embryos per condition) enables us to estimate the variance in cell type abundance organism-wide and to detect perturbation-dependent deviance in cell type composition relative to wild-type embryos. Our approach is sensitive to rare cell types, resolving developmental trajectories and genetic dependencies in the cranial ganglia neurons, a cell population that comprises less than 1% of the embryo. Additionally, time-series profiling of individual mutants identified a group of brachyury-independent cells with strikingly similar transcriptomes to notochord sheath cells, leading to new hypotheses about early origins of the skull. We anticipate that standardized collection of high-resolution, organism-scale single-cell data from large numbers of individual embryos will enable mapping of the genetic dependencies of zebrafish cell types, while also addressing longstanding challenges in developmental genetics, including the cellular and transcriptional plasticity underlying phenotypic diversity across individuals.

Dynamic chromatin accessibility deploys heterotypic cis/trans-acting factors driving stomatal cell-fate commitment.

Chromatin architecture and transcription factor (TF) binding underpin cell-fate specification during development, but their mutual regulatory relationships remain unclear. Here we report an atlas of dynamic chromatin landscapes during stomatal cell-lineage progression, in which sequential cell-state transitions are governed by lineage-specific bHLH TFs. Major reprogramming of chromatin accessibility occurs at the proliferation-to-differentiation transition. We discover novel co-cis regulatory elements (CREs) signifying the early precursor stage, BBR/BPC (GAGA) and bHLH (E-box) motifs, where master-regulatory bHLH TFs, SPEECHLESS and MUTE, consecutively bind to initiate and terminate the proliferative state, respectively. BPC TFs complex with MUTE to repress SPEECHLESS expression through a local deposition of repressive histone marks. We elucidate the mechanism by which cell-state-specific heterotypic TF complexes facilitate cell-fate commitment by recruiting chromatin modifiers via key co-CREs.

The regulatory landscape of Arabidopsis thaliana roots at single-cell resolution.

The scarcity of accessible sites that are dynamic or cell type-specific in plants may be due in part to tissue heterogeneity in bulk studies. To assess the effects of tissue heterogeneity, we apply single-cell ATAC-seq to Arabidopsis thaliana roots and identify thousands of differentially accessible sites, sufficient to resolve all major cell types of the root. We find that the entirety of a cell's regulatory landscape and its transcriptome independently capture cell type identity. We leverage this shared information on cell identity to integrate accessibility and transcriptome data to characterize developmental progression, endoreduplication and cell division. We further use the combined data to characterize cell type-specific motif enrichments of transcription factor families and link the expression of family members to changing accessibility at specific loci, resolving direct and indirect effects that shape expression. Our approach provides an analytical framework to infer the gene regulatory networks that execute plant development.

Identification of Plant Enhancers and Their Constituent Elements by STARR-seq in Tobacco Leaves.

Genetic engineering of cis-regulatory elements in crop plants is a promising strategy to ensure food security. However, such engineering is currently hindered by our limited knowledge of plant cis-regulatory elements. Here, we adapted self-transcribing active regulatory region sequencing (STARR-seq)-a technology for the high-throughput identification of enhancers-for its use in transiently transformed tobacco (Nicotiana benthamiana) leaves. We demonstrate that the optimal placement in the reporter construct of enhancer sequences from a plant virus, pea (Pisum sativum) and wheat (Triticum aestivum), was just upstream of a minimal promoter and that none of these four known enhancers was active in the 3' untranslated region of the reporter gene. The optimized assay sensitively identified small DNA regions containing each of the four enhancers, including two whose activity was stimulated by light. Furthermore, we coupled the assay to saturation mutagenesis to pinpoint functional regions within an enhancer, which we recombined to create synthetic enhancers. Our results describe an approach to define enhancer properties that can be performed in potentially any plant species or tissue transformable by Agrobacterium and that can use regulatory DNA derived from any plant genome.

Dimensionality reduction by UMAP to visualize physical and genetic interactions.

Dimensionality reduction is often used to visualize complex expression profiling data. Here, we use the Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) method on published transcript profiles of 1484 single gene deletions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Proximity in low-dimensional UMAP space identifies groups of genes that correspond to protein complexes and pathways, and finds novel protein interactions, even within well-characterized complexes. This approach is more sensitive than previous methods and should be broadly useful as additional transcriptome datasets become available for other organisms.

Binding and Regulation of Transcription by Yeast Ste12 Variants To Drive Mating and Invasion Phenotypes.

Amino acid substitutions are commonly found in human transcription factors, yet the functional consequences of much of this variation remain unknown, even in well-characterized DNA-binding domains. Here, we examine how six single-amino acid variants in the DNA-binding domain of Ste12-a yeast transcription factor regulating mating and invasion-alter Ste12 genome binding, motif recognition, and gene expression to yield markedly different phenotypes. Using a combination of the "calling-card" method, RNA sequencing, and HT-SELEX (high throughput systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment), we find that variants with dissimilar binding and expression profiles can converge onto similar cellular behaviors. Mating-defective variants led to decreased expression of distinct subsets of genes necessary for mating. Hyper-invasive variants also decreased expression of subsets of genes involved in mating, but increased the expression of other subsets of genes associated with the cellular response to osmotic stress. While single-amino acid changes in the coding region of this transcription factor result in complex regulatory reconfiguration, the major phenotypic consequences for the cell appear to depend on changes in the expression of a small number of genes with related functions.

High-throughput identification of dominant negative polypeptides in yeast.

Dominant negative polypeptides can inhibit protein function by binding to a wild-type subunit or by titrating a ligand. Here we use high-throughput sequencing of libraries composed of fragments of yeast genes to identify polypeptides that act in a dominant negative manner, in that they are depleted during cell growth. The method can uncover numerous inhibitory polypeptides for a protein and thereby define small inhibitory regions, even pinpointing individual residues with critical functional roles.

Dynamics of Gene Expression in Single Root Cells of Arabidopsis thaliana.

Single cell RNA sequencing can yield high-resolution cell-type-specific expression signatures that reveal new cell types and the developmental trajectories of cell lineages. Here, we apply this approach to Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) root cells to capture gene expression in 3,121 root cells. We analyze these data with Monocle 3, which orders single cell transcriptomes in an unsupervised manner and uses machine learning to reconstruct single cell developmental trajectories along pseudotime. We identify hundreds of genes with cell-type-specific expression, with pseudotime analysis of several cell lineages revealing both known and novel genes that are expressed along a developmental trajectory. We identify transcription factor motifs that are enriched in early and late cells, together with the corresponding candidate transcription factors that likely drive the observed expression patterns. We assess and interpret changes in total RNA expression along developmental trajectories and show that trajectory branch points mark developmental decisions. Finally, by applying heat stress to whole seedlings, we address the longstanding question of possible heterogeneity among cell types in the response to an abiotic stress. Although the response of canonical heat-shock genes dominates expression across cell types, subtle but significant differences in other genes can be detected among cell types. Taken together, our results demonstrate that single cell transcriptomics holds promise for studying plant development and plant physiology with unprecedented resolution.

Preferences in a trait decision determined by transcription factor variants.

Few mechanisms are known that explain how transcription factors can adjust phenotypic outputs to accommodate differing environments. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the decision to mate or invade relies on environmental cues that converge on a shared transcription factor, Ste12. Specificity toward invasion occurs via Ste12 binding cooperatively with the cofactor Tec1. Here, we determine the range of phenotypic outputs (mating vs. invasion) of thousands of DNA-binding domain variants in Ste12 to understand how preference for invasion may arise. We find that single amino acid changes in the DNA-binding domain can shift the preference of yeast toward either mating or invasion. These mutations define two distinct regions of this domain, suggesting alternative modes of DNA binding for each trait. We characterize the DNA-binding specificity of wild-type Ste12 to identify a strong preference for spacing and orientation of both homodimeric and heterodimeric sites. Ste12 mutants that promote hyperinvasion in a Tec1-independent manner fail to bind cooperative sites with Tec1 and bind to unusual dimeric Ste12 sites composed of one near-perfect and one highly degenerate site. We propose a model in which Ste12 alone may have evolved to activate invasion genes, which could explain how preference for invasion arose in the many fungal pathogens that lack Tec1.

Complex Relationships between Chromatin Accessibility, Sequence Divergence, and Gene Expression in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Variation in regulatory DNA is thought to drive phenotypic variation, evolution, and disease. Prior studies of regulatory DNA and transcription factors across animal species highlighted a fundamental conundrum: Transcription factor binding domains and cognate binding sites are conserved, while regulatory DNA sequences are not. It remains unclear how conserved transcription factors and dynamic regulatory sites produce conserved expression patterns across species. Here, we explore regulatory DNA variation and its functional consequences within Arabidopsis thaliana, using chromatin accessibility to delineate regulatory DNA genome-wide. Unlike in previous cross-species comparisons, the positional homology of regulatory DNA is maintained among A. thaliana ecotypes and less nucleotide divergence has occurred. Of the ∼50,000 regulatory sites in A. thaliana, we found that 15% varied in accessibility among ecotypes. Some of these accessibility differences were associated with extensive, previously unannotated sequence variation, encompassing many deletions and ancient hypervariable alleles. Unexpectedly, for the majority of such regulatory sites, nearby gene expression was unaffected. Nevertheless, regulatory sites with high levels of sequence variation and differential chromatin accessibility were the most likely to be associated with differential gene expression. Finally, and most surprising, we found that the vast majority of differentially accessible sites show no underlying sequence variation. We argue that these surprising results highlight the necessity to consider higher-order regulatory context in evaluating regulatory variation and predicting its phenotypic consequences.

Profiling of Accessible Chromatin Regions across Multiple Plant Species and Cell Types Reveals Common Gene Regulatory Principles and New Control Modules.

The transcriptional regulatory structure of plant genomes remains poorly defined relative to animals. It is unclear how many cis-regulatory elements exist, where these elements lie relative to promoters, and how these features are conserved across plant species. We employed the assay for transposase-accessible chromatin (ATAC-seq) in four plant species (Arabidopsis thaliana, Medicago truncatula, Solanum lycopersicum, and Oryza sativa) to delineate open chromatin regions and transcription factor (TF) binding sites across each genome. Despite 10-fold variation in intergenic space among species, the majority of open chromatin regions lie within 3 kb upstream of a transcription start site in all species. We find a common set of four TFs that appear to regulate conserved gene sets in the root tips of all four species, suggesting that TF-gene networks are generally conserved. Comparative ATAC-seq profiling of Arabidopsis root hair and non-hair cell types revealed extensive similarity as well as many cell-type-specific differences. Analyzing TF binding sites in differentially accessible regions identified a MYB-driven regulatory module unique to the hair cell, which appears to control both cell fate regulators and abiotic stress responses. Our analyses revealed common regulatory principles among species and shed light on the mechanisms producing cell-type-specific transcriptomes during development.

Identification of novel loci regulating interspecific variation in root morphology and cellular development in tomato.

While the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) root has been elegantly characterized with respect to specification of cell identity, its development is missing a number of cellular features present in other species. We have characterized the root development of a wild and a domesticated tomato species, Solanum pennellii and Solanum lycopersicum 'M82.' We found extensive differences between these species for root morphology and cellular development including root length, a novel gravity set point angle, differences in cortical cell layer patterning, stem cell niche structure, and radial cell division. Using an introgression line population between these two species, we identified numerous loci that regulate these distinct aspects of development. Specifically we comprehensively identified loci that regulate (1) root length by distinct mechanisms including regulation of cell production within the meristem and the balance between cell division and expansion, (2) the gravity set point angle, and (3) radial cell division or expansion either in specific cell types or generally across multiple cell types. Our findings provide a novel perspective on the regulation of root growth and development between species. These loci have exciting implications with respect to regulation of drought resistance or salinity tolerance and regulation of root development in a family that has undergone domestication.