Main Menu (Mobile)- Block

Main Menu - Block

janelia7_blocks-janelia7_fake_breadcrumb | block
Koyama Lab / Publications
general_search_page-panel_pane_1 | views_panes

7 Publications

Showing 1-7 of 7 results
Your Criteria:
    11/10/16 | Evolved repression overcomes enhancer robustness.
    Preger-Ben Noon E, Davis FP, Stern DL
    Developmental Cell. 2016 Nov 10;39(5):572-84. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2016.10.010

    Biological systems display extraordinary robustness. Robustness of transcriptional enhancers results mainly from clusters of binding sites for the same transcription factor, and it is not clear how robust enhancers can evolve loss of expression through point mutations. Here, we report the high-resolution functional dissection of a robust enhancer of the shavenbaby gene that has contributed to morphological evolution. We found that robustness is encoded by many binding sites for the transcriptional activator Arrowhead and that, during evolution, some of these activator sites were lost, weakening enhancer activity. Complete silencing of enhancer function, however, required evolution of a binding site for the spatially restricted potent repressor Abrupt. These findings illustrate that recruitment of repressor binding sites can overcome enhancer robustness and may minimize pleiotropic consequences of enhancer evolution. Recruitment of repression may be a general mode of evolution to break robust regulatory linkages.

    View Publication Page
    08/10/16 | Natural courtship song variation caused by an intronic retroelement in an ion channel gene.
    Ding Y, Berrocal A, Morita T, Longden KD, Stern DL
    Nature. 2016 Aug 10:. doi: 10.1038/nature19093

    Animal species display enormous variation for innate behaviours, but little is known about how this diversity arose. Here, using an unbiased genetic approach, we map a courtship song difference between wild isolates of Drosophila simulans and Drosophila mauritiana to a 966 base pair region within the slowpoke (slo) locus, which encodes a calcium-activated potassium channel. Using the reciprocal hemizygosity test, we confirm that slo is the causal locus and resolve the causal mutation to the evolutionarily recent insertion of a retroelement in a slo intron within D. simulans. Targeted deletion of this retroelement reverts the song phenotype and alters slo splicing. Like many ion channel genes, slo is expressed widely in the nervous system and influences a variety of behaviours; slo-null males sing little song with severely disrupted features. By contrast, the natural variant of slo alters a specific component of courtship song, illustrating that regulatory evolution of a highly pleiotropic ion channel gene can cause modular changes in behaviour.

    View Publication Page
    Truman LabStern LabFly Functional Connectome
    06/20/16 | Doublesex regulates the connectivity of a neural circuit controlling Drosophila male courtship song.
    Shirangi TR, Wong AM, Truman JW, Stern DL
    Developmental Cell. 2016 Jun 20;37(6):533-44. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2016.05.012

    It is unclear how regulatory genes establish neural circuits that compose sex-specific behaviors. The Drosophila melanogaster male courtship song provides a powerful model to study this problem. Courting males vibrate a wing to sing bouts of pulses and hums, called pulse and sine song, respectively. We report the discovery of male-specific thoracic interneurons—the TN1A neurons—that are required specifically for sine song. The TN1A neurons can drive the activity of a sex-non-specific wing motoneuron, hg1, which is also required for sine song. The male-specific connection between the TN1A neurons and the hg1 motoneuron is regulated by the sexual differentiation gene doublesex. We find that doublesex is required in the TN1A neurons during development to increase the density of the TN1A arbors that interact with dendrites of the hg1motoneuron. Our findings demonstrate how a sexual differentiation gene can build a sex-specific circuit motif by modulating neuronal arborization.

    Doublesex-expressing TN1 neurons are necessary and sufficient for the male sine song•A subclass of TN1 neurons, TN1A, contributes to the sine song•TN1A neurons are functionally coupled to a sine song motoneuron, hg1Doublesex regulates the connectivity between the TN1A and hg1 neurons

    It is unclear how developmental regulatory genes specify sex-specific behaviors. Shirangi et al. demonstrate that the Drosophila sexual differentiation gene doublesex encodes a sex-specific behavior—male song—by promoting the connectivity between the male-specific TN1A neurons and the sex-non-specific hg1 neurons, which are required for production of the song.

    View Publication Page
    05/25/16 | Genetic and environmental control of neurodevelopmental robustness in Drosophila.
    Mellert DJ, Williamson WR, Shirangi TR, Card GM, Truman JW
    PLoS One. 2016 May 25;11(5):e0155957. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0155957

    Interindividual differences in neuronal wiring may contribute to behavioral individuality and affect susceptibility to neurological disorders. To investigate the causes and potential consequences of wiring variation in Drosophila melanogaster, we focused on a hemilineage of ventral nerve cord interneurons that exhibits morphological variability. We find that late-born subclasses of the 12A hemilineage are highly sensitive to genetic and environmental variation. Neurons in the second thoracic segment are particularly variable with regard to two developmental decisions, whereas its segmental homologs are more robust. This variability "hotspot" depends on Ultrabithorax expression in the 12A neurons, indicating variability is cell-intrinsic and under genetic control. 12A development is more variable and sensitive to temperature in long-established laboratory strains than in strains recently derived from the wild. Strains with a high frequency of one of the 12A variants also showed a high frequency of animals with delayed spontaneous flight initiation, whereas other wing-related behaviors did not show such a correlation and were thus not overtly affected by 12A variation. These results show that neurodevelopmental robustness is variable and under genetic control in Drosophila and suggest that the fly may serve as a model for identifying conserved gene pathways that stabilize wiring in stressful developmental environments. Moreover, some neuronal lineages are variation hotspots and thus may be more amenable to evolutionary change.

    View Publication Page
    02/08/16 | Quantitatively predictable control of Drosophila transcriptional enhancers in vivo with engineered transcription factors.
    Crocker J, Ilsley GR, Stern DL
    Nature Genetics. 2016 Feb 8:. doi: 10.1038/ng.3509

    Genes are regulated by transcription factors that bind to regions of genomic DNA called enhancers. Considerable effort is focused on identifying transcription factor binding sites, with the goal of predicting gene expression from DNA sequence. Despite this effort, general, predictive models of enhancer function are currently lacking. Here we combine quantitative models of enhancer function with manipulations using engineered transcription factors to examine the extent to which enhancer function can be controlled in a quantitatively predictable manner. Our models, which incorporate few free parameters, can accurately predict the contributions of ectopic transcription factor inputs. These models allow the predictable 'tuning' of enhancers, providing a framework for the quantitative control of enhancers with engineered transcription factors.

    View Publication Page
    02/02/16 | Tagmentation-based mapping (tagmap) of mobile DNA genomic insertion sites.
    bioRxiv. 2016 Feb 2:. doi: 10.1101/037762

    Multiple methods have been introduced over the past 30 years to identify the genomic insertion sites of transposable elements and other DNA elements that integrate into genomes. However, each of these methods suffer from limitations that can frustrate attempts to map multiple insertions in a single genome and to map insertions in genomes of high complexity that contain extensive repetitive DNA. I introduce a new method for transposon mapping that is simple to perform, can accurately map multiple insertions per genome, and generates long sequence reads that facilitate mapping to complex genomes. The method, called TagMap, for Tagmentation-based Mapping, relies on a modified Tn5 tagmentation protocol with a single tagmentation adaptor followed by PCR using primers specific to the tranposable element and the adaptor sequence. Several minor modifications to normal tagmentation reagents and protocols allow easy and rapid preparation of TagMap libraries. Short read sequencing starting from the adaptor sequence generates oriented reads that flank and are oriented toward the transposable element insertion site. The convergent orientation of adjacent reads at the insertion site allows straightforward prediction of the precise insertion site(s). A Linux shell script is provided to identify insertion sites from fastq files.

    View Publication Page
    01/07/16 | The soft touch: low-affinity transcription factor binding sites in development and evolution.
    Crocker J, Preger-Ben Noon E, Stern DL
    Current Topics in Developmental Biology. 2016 Jan 07:. doi: 10.1016/bs.ctdb.2015.11.018

    Transcription factor proteins regulate gene expression by binding to specific DNA regions. Most studies of transcription factor binding sites have focused on the highest affinity sites for each factor. There is abundant evidence, however, that binding sites with a range of affinities, including very low affinities, are critical to gene regulation. Here, we present the theoretical and experimental evidence for the importance of low-affinity sites in gene regulation and development. We also discuss the implications of the widespread use of low-affinity sites in eukaryotic genomes for robustness, precision, specificity, and evolution of gene regulation.

    View Publication Page