Cellular, ultrastructural and molecular analyses of epidermal cell development in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea.

The epidermis is essential for animal survival, providing both a protective barrier and cellular sensor to external environments. The generally conserved embryonic origin of the epidermis, but the broad morphological and functional diversity of this organ across animals is puzzling. We define the transcriptional regulators underlying epidermal lineage differentiation in the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, an invertebrate organism that, unlike fruitflies and nematodes, continuously replaces its epidermal cells. We find that Smed-p53, Sox and Pax transcription factors are essential regulators of epidermal homeostasis, and act cooperatively to regulate genes associated with early epidermal precursor cell differentiation, including a tandemly arrayed novel gene family (prog) of secreted proteins. Additionally, we report on the discovery of distinct and previously undescribed secreted organelles whose production is dependent on the transcriptional activity of soxP-3, and which we term Hyman vesicles.

Negative feedback loops involving small regulatory RNAs precisely control the Vibrio harveyi quorum-sensing response.

Quorum-sensing (QS) bacteria assess population density through secretion and detection of molecules called autoinducers (AIs). We identify and characterize two Vibrio harveyi negative feedback loops that facilitate precise transitions between low-cell-density (LCD) and high-cell-density (HCD) states. The QS central regulator LuxO autorepresses its own transcription, and the Qrr small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) posttranscriptionally repress luxO. Disrupting feedback increases the concentration of AIs required for cells to transit from LCD to HCD QS modes. Thus, the two cooperative negative feedback loops determine the point at which V. harveyi has reached a quorum and control the range of AIs over which the transition occurs. Negative feedback regulation also constrains the range of QS output by preventing sRNA levels from becoming too high and preventing luxO mRNA levels from reaching zero. We suggest that sRNA-mediated feedback regulation is a network design feature that permits fine-tuning of gene regulation and maintenance of homeostasis.

TORC1 is required to balance cell proliferation and cell death in planarians.

Multicellular organisms are equipped with cellular mechanisms that enable them to replace differentiated cells lost to normal physiological turnover, injury, and for some such as planarians, even amputation. This process of tissue homeostasis is generally mediated by adult stem cells (ASCs), tissue-specific stem cells responsible for maintaining anatomical form and function. To do so, ASCs must modulate the balance between cell proliferation, i.e. in response to nutrients, and that of cell death, i.e. in response to starvation or injury. But how these two antagonistic processes are coordinated remains unclear. Here, we explore the role of the core components of the TOR pathway during planarian tissue homeostasis and regeneration and identified an essential function for TORC1 in these two processes. RNAi-mediated silencing of TOR in intact animals resulted in a significant increase in cell death, whereas stem cell proliferation and stem cell maintenance were unaffected. Amputated animals failed to increase stem cell proliferation after wounding and displayed defects in tissue remodeling. Together, our findings suggest two distinct roles for TORC1 in planarians. TORC1 is required to modulate the balance between cell proliferation and cell death during normal cell turnover and in response to nutrients. In addition, it is required to initiate appropriate stem cell proliferation during regeneration and for proper tissue remodeling to occur to maintain scale and proportion.

Gene dosage compensation calibrates four regulatory RNAs to control Vibrio cholerae quorum sensing.

Quorum sensing is a mechanism of cell-to-cell communication that allows bacteria to coordinately regulate gene expression in response to changes in cell-population density. At the core of the Vibrio cholerae quorum-sensing signal transduction pathway reside four homologous small RNAs (sRNAs), named the quorum regulatory RNAs 1-4 (Qrr1-4). The four Qrr sRNAs are functionally redundant. That is, expression of any one of them is sufficient for wild-type quorum-sensing behaviour. Here, we show that the combined action of two feedback loops, one involving the sRNA-activator LuxO and one involving the sRNA-target HapR, promotes gene dosage compensation between the four qrr genes. Gene dosage compensation adjusts the total Qrr1-4 sRNA pool and provides the molecular mechanism underlying sRNA redundancy. The dosage compensation mechanism is exquisitely sensitive to small perturbations in Qrr levels. Precisely maintained Qrr levels are required to direct the proper timing and correct patterns of expression of quorum-sensing-regulated target genes.

Active regulation of receptor ratios controls integration of quorum-sensing signals in Vibrio harveyi.

Quorum sensing is a chemical signaling mechanism used by bacteria to communicate and orchestrate group behaviors. Multiple feedback loops exist in the quorum-sensing circuit of the model bacterium Vibrio harveyi. Using fluorescence microscopy of individual cells, we assayed the activity of the quorum-sensing circuit, with a focus on defining the functions of the feedback loops. We quantitatively investigated the signaling input-output relation both in cells with all feedback loops present as well as in mutants with specific feedback loops disrupted. We found that one of the feedback loops regulates receptor ratios to control the integration of multiple signals. Together, the feedback loops affect the input-output dynamic range of signal transmission and the noise in the output. We conclude that V. harveyi employs multiple feedback loops to simultaneously control quorum-sensing signal integration and to ensure signal transmission fidelity.

Quantifying the integration of quorum-sensing signals with single-cell resolution.

Cell-to-cell communication in bacteria is a process known as quorum sensing that relies on the production, detection, and response to the extracellular accumulation of signaling molecules called autoinducers. Often, bacteria use multiple autoinducers to obtain information about the vicinal cell density. However, how cells integrate and interpret the information contained within multiple autoinducers remains a mystery. Using single-cell fluorescence microscopy, we quantified the signaling responses to and analyzed the integration of multiple autoinducers by the model quorum-sensing bacterium Vibrio harveyi. Our results revealed that signals from two distinct autoinducers, AI-1 and AI-2, are combined strictly additively in a shared phosphorelay pathway, with each autoinducer contributing nearly equally to the total response. We found a coherent response across the population with little cell-to-cell variation, indicating that the entire population of cells can reliably distinguish several distinct conditions of external autoinducer concentration. We speculate that the use of multiple autoinducers allows a growing population of cells to synchronize gene expression during a series of distinct developmental stages.

Protein-level fluctuation correlation at the microcolony level and its application to the Vibrio harveyi quorum-sensing circuit.

Gene expression is stochastic, and noise that arises from the stochastic nature of biochemical reactions propagates through active regulatory links. Thus, correlations in gene-expression noise can provide information about regulatory links. We present what to our knowledge is a new approach to measure and interpret such correlated fluctuations at the level of single microcolonies, which derive from single cells. We demonstrated this approach mathematically using stochastic modeling, and applied it to experimental time-lapse fluorescence microscopy data. Specifically, we investigated the relationships among LuxO, LuxR, and the small regulatory RNA qrr4 in the model quorum-sensing bacterium Vibrio harveyi. Our results show that LuxR positively regulates the qrr4 promoter. Under our conditions, we find that qrr regulation weakly depends on total LuxO levels and that LuxO autorepression is saturated. We also find evidence that the fluctuations in LuxO levels are dominated by intrinsic noise. We furthermore propose LuxO and LuxR interact at all autoinducer levels via an unknown mechanism. Of importance, our new method of evaluating correlations at the microcolony level is unaffected by partition noise at cell division. Moreover, the method is first-order accurate and requires less effort for data analysis than single-cell-based approaches. This new correlation approach can be applied to other systems to aid analysis of gene regulatory circuits.

Measurement of the copy number of the master quorum-sensing regulator of a bacterial cell.

Quorum-sensing is the mechanism by which bacteria communicate and synchronize group behaviors. Quantitative information on parameters such as the copy number of particular quorum-sensing proteins should contribute strongly to understanding how the quorum-sensing network functions. Here, we show that the copy number of the master regulator protein LuxR in Vibrio harveyi can be determined in vivo by exploiting small-number fluctuations of the protein distribution when cells undergo division. When a cell divides, both its volume and LuxR protein copy number, N, are partitioned with slight asymmetries. We measured the distribution functions describing the partitioning of the protein fluorescence and the cell volume. The fluorescence distribution is found to narrow systematically as the LuxR population increases, whereas the volume partitioning is unchanged. Analyzing these changes statistically, we determined that N = 80-135 dimers at low cell density and 575 dimers at high cell density. In addition, we measured the static distribution of LuxR over a large (3000) clonal population. Combining the static and time-lapse experiments, we determine the magnitude of the Fano factor of the distribution. This technique has broad applicability as a general in vivo technique for measuring protein copy number and burst size.

A small-RNA-mediated negative feedback loop controls quorum-sensing dynamics in Vibrio harveyi.

The bioluminescent marine bacterium Vibrio harveyi uses a cell-to-cell communication process called quorum sensing (QS) to co-ordinate behaviours in response to changes in population density. QS is accomplished through the secretion and detection of extracellular signalling molecules called autoinducers. At the centre of the V. harveyi QS circuit are five small regulatory RNAs called Qrr1-5 which destabilize the mRNA of luxR, encoding LuxR, the master transcriptional regulator of QS target genes. Here we show that LuxR directly activates transcription of qrr2, qrr3 and qrr4, leading to the rapid downregulation of luxR. The LuxR-binding sites in the promoters of qrr2, qrr3 and qrr4 were identified and mutated to determine the consequences of this regulatory loop on QS dynamics. Disruption of the loop delays the transition from high to low cell density, and more significantly, decreases the cell density at which the population reaches a quorum. Our results suggest that feedback is essential for optimizing the dynamics of the transitions between individual and group behaviours.

Egr-5 is a post-mitotic regulator of planarian epidermal differentiation.

Neoblasts are an abundant, heterogeneous population of adult stem cells (ASCs) that facilitate the maintenance of planarian tissues and organs, providing a powerful system to study ASC self-renewal and differentiation dynamics. It is unknown how the collective output of neoblasts transit through differentiation pathways to produce specific cell types. The planarian epidermis is a simple tissue that undergoes rapid turnover. We found that as epidermal progeny differentiate, they progress through multiple spatiotemporal transition states with distinct gene expression profiles. We also identified a conserved early growth response family transcription factor, egr-5, that is essential for epidermal differentiation. Disruption of epidermal integrity by egr-5 RNAi triggers a global stress response that induces the proliferation of neoblasts and the concomitant expansion of not only epidermal, but also multiple progenitor cell populations. Our results further establish the planarian epidermis as a novel paradigm to uncover the molecular mechanisms regulating ASC specification in vivo.

Multiple small RNAs act additively to integrate sensory information and control quorum sensing in Vibrio harveyi.

Quorum sensing is a cell-cell communication mechanism that bacteria use to collectively regulate gene expression and, at a higher level, to coordinate group behavior. In the bioluminescent marine bacterium Vibrio harveyi, sensory information from three independent quorum-sensing systems converges on the shared response regulator LuxO. When LuxO is phosphorylated, it activates the expression of a putative repressor that destabilizes the mRNA encoding the master quorum-sensing transcriptional regulator LuxR. In the closely related species Vibrio cholerae, this repressor was revealed to be the RNA chaperone Hfq together with four small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) called Qrr1-4 (quorum regulatory RNA). Here, we identify five Qrr sRNAs that control quorum sensing in V. harveyi. Mutational analysis reveals that only four of the five Qrrs are required for destabilization of the luxR mRNA. Surprisingly, unlike in V. cholerae where the sRNAs act redundantly, in V. harveyi, the Qrr sRNAs function additively to control quorum sensing. This latter mechanism produces a gradient of LuxR that, in turn, enables differential regulation of quorum-sensing target genes. Other regulators appear to be involved in control of V. harveyi qrr expression, allowing the integration of additional sensory information into the regulation of quorum-sensing gene expression.