Multi-species, multi-transcription factor binding highlights conserved control of tissue-specific biological pathways.

As exome sequencing gives way to genome sequencing, the need to interpret the function of regulatory DNA becomes increasingly important. To test whether evolutionary conservation of cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) gives insight into human gene regulation, we determined transcription factor (TF) binding locations of four liver-essential TFs in liver tissue from human, macaque, mouse, rat, and dog. Approximately, two thirds of the TF-bound regions fell into CRMs. Less than half of the human CRMs were found as a CRM in the orthologous region of a second species. Shared CRMs were associated with liver pathways and disease loci identified by genome-wide association studies. Recurrent rare human disease causing mutations at the promoters of several blood coagulation and lipid metabolism genes were also identified within CRMs shared in multiple species. This suggests that multi-species analyses of experimentally determined combinatorial TF binding will help identify genomic regions critical for tissue-specific gene control.

Ensembl 2014.

Ensembl (http://www.ensembl.org) creates tools and data resources to facilitate genomic analysis in chordate species with an emphasis on human, major vertebrate model organisms and farm animals. Over the past year we have increased the number of species that we support to 77 and expanded our genome browser with a new scrollable overview and improved variation and phenotype views. We also report updates to our core datasets and improvements to our gene homology relationships from the addition of new species. Our REST service has been extended with additional support for comparative genomics and ontology information. Finally, we provide updated information about our methods for data access and resources for user training.

Ensembl 2013.

The Ensembl project (http://www.ensembl.org) provides genome information for sequenced chordate genomes with a particular focus on human, mouse, zebrafish and rat. Our resources include evidenced-based gene sets for all supported species; large-scale whole genome multiple species alignments across vertebrates and clade-specific alignments for eutherian mammals, primates, birds and fish; variation data resources for 17 species and regulation annotations based on ENCODE and other data sets. Ensembl data are accessible through the genome browser at http://www.ensembl.org and through other tools and programmatic interfaces.

Ensembl variation resources.

BACKGROUND: The maturing field of genomics is rapidly increasing the number of sequenced genomes and producing more information from those previously sequenced. Much of this additional information is variation data derived from sampling multiple individuals of a given species with the goal of discovering new variants and characterising the population frequencies of the variants that are already known. These data have immense value for many studies, including those designed to understand evolution and connect genotype to phenotype. Maximising the utility of the data requires that it be stored in an accessible manner that facilitates the integration of variation data with other genome resources such as gene annotation and comparative genomics. DESCRIPTION: The Ensembl project provides comprehensive and integrated variation resources for a wide variety of chordate genomes. This paper provides a detailed description of the sources of data and the methods for creating the Ensembl variation databases. It also explores the utility of the information by explaining the range of query options available, from using interactive web displays, to online data mining tools and connecting directly to the data servers programmatically. It gives a good overview of the variation resources and future plans for expanding the variation data within Ensembl. CONCLUSIONS: Variation data is an important key to understanding the functional and phenotypic differences between individuals. The development of new sequencing and genotyping technologies is greatly increasing the amount of variation data known for almost all genomes. The Ensembl variation resources are integrated into the Ensembl genome browser and provide a comprehensive way to access this data in the context of a widely used genome bioinformatics system. All Ensembl data is freely available at http://www.ensembl.org and from the public MySQL database server at ensembldb.ensembl.org.

A database and API for variation, dense genotyping and resequencing data.

BACKGROUND: Advances in sequencing and genotyping technologies are leading to the widespread availability of multi-species variation data, dense genotype data and large-scale resequencing projects. The 1000 Genomes Project and similar efforts in other species are challenging the methods previously used for storage and manipulation of such data necessitating the redesign of existing genome-wide bioinformatics resources. RESULTS: Ensembl has created a database and software library to support data storage, analysis and access to the existing and emerging variation data from large mammalian and vertebrate genomes. These tools scale to thousands of individual genome sequences and are integrated into the Ensembl infrastructure for genome annotation and visualisation. The database and software system is easily expanded to integrate both public and non-public data sources in the context of an Ensembl software installation and is already being used outside of the Ensembl project in a number of database and application environments. CONCLUSIONS: Ensembl's powerful, flexible and open source infrastructure for the management of variation, genotyping and resequencing data is freely available at http://www.ensembl.org.

The genome sequence of the spontaneously hypertensive rat: Analysis and functional significance.

The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is the most widely studied animal model of hypertension. Scores of SHR quantitative loci (QTLs) have been mapped for hypertension and other phenotypes. We have sequenced the SHR/OlaIpcv genome at 10.7-fold coverage by paired-end sequencing on the Illumina platform. We identified 3.6 million high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) between the SHR/OlaIpcv and Brown Norway (BN) reference genome, with a high rate of validation (sensitivity 96.3%-98.0% and specificity 99%-100%). We also identified 343,243 short indels between the SHR/OlaIpcv and reference genomes. These SNPs and indels resulted in 161 gain or loss of stop codons and 629 frameshifts compared with the BN reference sequence. We also identified 13,438 larger deletions that result in complete or partial absence of 107 genes in the SHR/OlaIpcv genome compared with the BN reference and 588 copy number variants (CNVs) that overlap with the gene regions of 688 genes. Genomic regions containing genes whose expression had been previously mapped as cis-regulated expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) were significantly enriched with SNPs, short indels, and larger deletions, suggesting that some of these variants have functional effects on gene expression. Genes that were affected by major alterations in their coding sequence were highly enriched for genes related to ion transport, transport, and plasma membrane localization, providing insights into the likely molecular and cellular basis of hypertension and other phenotypes specific to the SHR strain. This near complete catalog of genomic differences between two extensively studied rat strains provides the starting point for complete elucidation, at the molecular level, of the physiological and pathophysiological phenotypic differences between individuals from these strains.

Locus Reference Genomic sequences: an improved basis for describing human DNA variants.

As our knowledge of the complexity of gene architecture grows, and we increase our understanding of the subtleties of gene expression, the process of accurately describing disease-causing gene variants has become increasingly problematic. In part, this is due to current reference DNA sequence formats that do not fully meet present needs. Here we present the Locus Reference Genomic (LRG) sequence format, which has been designed for the specific purpose of gene variant reporting. The format builds on the successful National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) RefSeqGene project and provides a single-file record containing a uniquely stable reference DNA sequence along with all relevant transcript and protein sequences essential to the description of gene variants. In principle, LRGs can be created for any organism, not just human. In addition, we recognize the need to respect legacy numbering systems for exons and amino acids and the LRG format takes account of these. We hope that widespread adoption of LRGs - which will be created and maintained by the NCBI and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) - along with consistent use of the Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS)-approved variant nomenclature will reduce errors in the reporting of variants in the literature and improve communication about variants affecting human health. Further information can be found on the LRG web site: http://www.lrg-sequence.org.

The genome of a songbird.

The zebra finch is an important model organism in several fields with unique relevance to human neuroscience. Like other songbirds, the zebra finch communicates through learned vocalizations, an ability otherwise documented only in humans and a few other animals and lacking in the chicken-the only bird with a sequenced genome until now. Here we present a structural, functional and comparative analysis of the genome sequence of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), which is a songbird belonging to the large avian order Passeriformes. We find that the overall structures of the genomes are similar in zebra finch and chicken, but they differ in many intrachromosomal rearrangements, lineage-specific gene family expansions, the number of long-terminal-repeat-based retrotransposons, and mechanisms of sex chromosome dosage compensation. We show that song behaviour engages gene regulatory networks in the zebra finch brain, altering the expression of long non-coding RNAs, microRNAs, transcription factors and their targets. We also show evidence for rapid molecular evolution in the songbird lineage of genes that are regulated during song experience. These results indicate an active involvement of the genome in neural processes underlying vocal communication and identify potential genetic substrates for the evolution and regulation of this behaviour.

Visualizing chromosome mosaicism and detecting ethnic outliers by the method of "rare" heterozygotes and homozygotes (RHH).

We describe a novel approach for evaluating SNP genotypes of a genome-wide association scan to identify "ethnic outlier" subjects whose ethnicity is different or admixed compared to most other subjects in the genotyped sample set. Each ethnic outlier is detected by counting a genomic excess of "rare" heterozygotes and/or homozygotes whose frequencies are low (<1%) within genotypes of the sample set being evaluated. This method also enables simple and striking visualization of non-Caucasian chromosomal DNA segments interspersed within the chromosomes of ethnically admixed individuals. We show that this visualization of the mosaic structure of admixed human chromosomes gives results similar to another visualization method (SABER) but with much less computational time and burden. We also show that other methods for detecting ethnic outliers are enhanced by evaluating only genomic regions of visualized admixture rather than diluting outlier ancestry by evaluating the entire genome considered in aggregate. We have validated our method in the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) study of 17,000 subjects as well as in HapMap subjects and simulated outliers of known ethnicity and admixture. The method's ability to precisely delineate chromosomal segments of non-Caucasian ethnicity has enabled us to demonstrate previously unreported non-Caucasian admixture in two HapMap Caucasian parents and in a number of WTCCC subjects. Its sensitive detection of ethnic outliers and simple visual discrimination of discrete chromosomal segments of different ethnicity implies that this method of rare heterozygotes and homozygotes (RHH) is likely to have diverse and important applications in humans and other species.

Newly identified genetic risk variants for celiac disease related to the immune response.

Our genome-wide association study of celiac disease previously identified risk variants in the IL2-IL21 region. To identify additional risk variants, we genotyped 1,020 of the most strongly associated non-HLA markers in an additional 1,643 cases and 3,406 controls. Through joint analysis including the genome-wide association study data (767 cases, 1,422 controls), we identified seven previously unknown risk regions (P < 5 x 10(-7)). Six regions harbor genes controlling immune responses, including CCR3, IL12A, IL18RAP, RGS1, SH2B3 (nsSNP rs3184504) and TAGAP. Whole-blood IL18RAP mRNA expression correlated with IL18RAP genotype. Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease share HLA-DQ, IL2-IL21, CCR3 and SH2B3 risk regions. Thus, this extensive genome-wide association follow-up study has identified additional celiac disease risk variants in relevant biological pathways.

Gene (mRNA) expression in canine atopic dermatitis: microarray analysis.

Genes potentially involved in the pathology of canine atopic dermatitis (AD) were identified using gene expression microarrays. Total RNA extracted from skin biopsies was hybridized to an Agilent Technologies custom-designed 22K canine array. The arrays were analysed using Genedata Analyst software. Data were corrected for multiple hypothesis testing and tested for significance using the National Institute on Aging array analysis tool. For comparison, data were divided into separate groups: lesional atopic (n = 16), nonlesional atopic (n = 17) and healthy controls (n = 9). Fifty-four genes were differentially expressed at a significance level of 0.05 in canine AD compared to healthy controls. Sixteen genes were differentially expressed in both nonlesional and lesional atopic skin, 26 genes only in nonlesional skin and 12 only in lesional skin. These genes were associated with innate immune and inflammatory responses, cell cycle, apoptosis, barrier formation and transcriptional regulation. The most dysregulated gene in lesional skin was S100A8, which showed an almost 23-fold increase in expression. This is a pro-inflammatory cytokine located in the epidermal differentiation complex. Microarray analysis is a novel technique in canine AD. Significant changes in gene expression were identified in atopic skin. These were relevant to skin barrier formation and the immune response, suggesting that they both participate in AD. Gene expression restricted to lesional skin may be involved in inflammatory changes, whereas those shared or restricted to nonlesional skin may reflect the atopic phenotype. Investigating gene polymorphisms in the targets identified in this study will help improve our understanding of the genetic basis of this disease.

A genome-wide association study for celiac disease identifies risk variants in the region harboring IL2 and IL21.

We tested 310,605 SNPs for association in 778 individuals with celiac disease and 1,422 controls. Outside the HLA region, the most significant finding (rs13119723; P = 2.0 x 10(-7)) was in the KIAA1109-TENR-IL2-IL21 linkage disequilibrium block. We independently confirmed association in two further collections (strongest association at rs6822844, 24 kb 5' of IL21; meta-analysis P = 1.3 x 10(-14), odds ratio = 0.63), suggesting that genetic variation in this region predisposes to celiac disease.

The Hofmeister series and protein-salt interactions.

In order to understand the origin of the Hofmeister series, a statistical-mechanical analysis, based upon the Kirkwood-Buff (KB) theory, has been performed to extract information regarding protein hydration and water-mediated protein-salt interactions from published experimental data-preferential hydration and volumetric data for bovine serum albumin in the presence of a wide range of salts. The analysis showed a linear correlation between the preferential hydration parameter and the protein-cosolvent KB parameter. The same linear correlation holds even when nonelectrolyte cosolvents, such as polyethelene glycol, have been incorporated. These results suggest that the Hofmeister series is due to a wide variation of the water-mediated protein-cosolvent interaction (but not the change of protein hydration) and that this mechanism is a special case of a more general scenario common even to the macromolecular crowding.