Jennifer Lachowiec | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2016

Redundancy, feedback, and robustness in the Arabidopsis thaliana BZR/BEH gene family

Organismal development is remarkably robust, tolerating stochastic errors to produce consistent, so-called canalized adult phenotypes. The mechanistic underpinnings of developmental robustness are poorly understood, but recent studies implicate certain features of genetic networks such as functional redundancy, connectivity, and feedback. Here, we examine the BRZ/BEH gene family, whose function is crucial for embryonic stem development in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, to test current assumptions on functional redundancy and trait robustness. Our analyses of BRZ/BEH gene mutants and mutant combinations revealed that functional redundancy among gene family members does not contribute to trait robustness. Connectivity is another commonly cited determinant of robustness; however, we found no correlation between connectivity among gene family members or their connectivity with other transcription factors and effects on robustness. Instead, we found that only BEH4, the most ancient family member, modulated developmental robustness. We present evidence that regulatory cross-talk among gene family members is integrated by BEH4 and promotes wild-type levels of developmental robustness. Further, the chaperone HSP90, a known determinant of developmental robustness, appears to act via BEH4 in maintaining robustness of embryonic stem length. In summary, we demonstrate that even among closely related transcription factors, trait robustness can arise through the activity of a single gene family member, challenging common assumptions about the molecular underpinnings of robustness.

Genetics↗

bioRxiv2014

A Genome-Wide Association Analysis Reveals Epistatic Cancellation of Additive Genetic Variance for Root Length in Arabidopsis thaliana

Efforts to identify loci underlying complex traits generally assume that most genetic variance is additive. Here, we examined the genetics of Arabidopsis thaliana root length and found that the narrow-sense heritability for this trait was statistically zero. This low additive genetic variance likely explains why no associations to root length could be found using standard additive-model-based genome-wide association (GWA) approaches. However, the broad-sense heritability for root length was significantly larger, and we therefore also performed an epistatic GWA analysis to map loci contributing to the epistatic genetic variance. This analysis revealed four interacting pairs involving seven chromosomal loci that passed a standard multiple-testing corrected significance threshold. Explorations of the genotype-phenotype maps for these pairs revealed that the detected epistasis cancelled out the additive genetic variance, explaining why these loci were not detected in the additive GWA analysis. Small population sizes, such as in our experiment, increase the risk of identifying false epistatic interactions due to testing for associations with very large numbers of multi-marker genotypes in few phenotyped individuals. Therefore, we estimated the false-positive risk using a new statistical approach that suggested half of the associated pairs to be true positive associations. Our experimental evaluation of candidate genes within the seven associated loci suggests that this estimate is conservative; we identified functional candidate genes that affected root development in four loci that were part of three of the pairs. In summary, statistical epistatic analyses were found to be indispensable for confirming known, and identifying several new, functional candidate genes for root length using a population of wild-collected A. thaliana accessions. We also illustrated how epistatic cancellation of the additive genetic variance resulted in an insignificant narrow-sense, but significant broad-sense heritability that could be dissected into the contributions of several individual loci using a combination of careful statistical epistatic analyses and functional genetic experiments.\n\nAuthor summaryComplex traits, such as many human diseases or climate adaptation and production traits in crops, arise through the action and interaction of many genes and environmental factors. Classic approaches to identify contributing genes generally assume that these factors contribute mainly additive genetic variance. Recent methods, such as genome-wide association studies, often adhere to this additive genetics paradigm. However, additive models of complex traits do not reflect that genes can also contribute with non-additive genetic variance. In this study, we use Arabidopsis thaliana to determine the additive and non-additive genetic contributions to the phenotypic variation in root length. Surprisingly, much of the observed phenotypic variation in root length across genetically divergent strains was explained by epistasis. We mapped seven loci contributing to the epistatic genetic variance and validated four genes in these loci with mutant analysis. For three of these genes, this is their first implication in root development. Together, our results emphasize the importance of considering both non-additive and additive genetic variance when dissecting complex trait variation, in order not to lose sensitivity in genetic analyses.

Genomics↗

bioRxiv2014

Hsp90 promotes kinase evolution

Heat-shock protein 90 (Hsp90) promotes the maturation and stability of its client proteins, including many kinases. In doing so, Hsp90 may allow its clients to accumulate mutations as previously proposed by the capacitor hypothesis. If true, Hsp90 clients should show increased evolutionary rate compared to non-clients; however, other factors, such as gene expression and protein connectivity, may confound or obscure the chaperones putative contribution. Here, we compared the evolutionary rates of many Hsp90 clients and non-clients in the human protein kinase superfamily. We show that Hsp90 client status promotes evolutionary rate independently of, but in a small magnitude similar to that of gene expression and protein connectivity. Hsp90s effect on kinase evolutionary rate was detected across mammals, specifically relaxing purifying selection. Hsp90 clients also showed increased nucleotide diversity and harbored more damaging variation than non-client kinases across humans. These results are consistent with the central argument of the capacitor hypothesis that interaction with the chaperone allows its clients to harbor genetic variation. Hsp90 client status is thought to be highly dynamic with as few as one amino acid change rendering a protein dependent on the chaperone. Contrary to this expectation, we found that across protein kinase phylogeny Hsp90 client status tends to be gained, maintained, and shared among closely related kinases. We also infer that the ancestral protein kinase was not an Hsp90 client. Taken together, our results suggest that Hsp90 played an important role in shaping the kinase superfamily.

Evolutionary Biology↗