Biology subjects

Lee, J.-W.

Publications and source records attributed to Lee, J.-W..

17 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Computational and causal dissociation in primate striatum during value-guided decision-making

How neural representations carrying similar information across brain regions are translated into behavioral control remains a fundamental question in neuroscience. In the primate striatum, whether subregions make overlapping or dissociable computational and causal contributions to value-guided decisions is unresolved. Here, we show that macaque striatal subregions make dissociable, modality-specific contributions: the putamen is required for tactile-value decisions, the caudate for visual-value decisions, and the ventral striatum for both. Despite broadly shared value encoding, causal necessity is predicted not by the strength of single-neuron value discrimination or population-level decoding, but by neural geometry-behavior coupling. These findings reveal a functional organization of the primate striatum and identify neural geometry-behavior coupling as a key determinant of behavioral control.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Systematic Growth Factor Profiling Platform for 3D Tumor Models Reveals Estradiol-Responsive Cellular Mechanisms of Immunotherapy Resistance

Current organoid culture systems face critical limitations: standardized growth factor formulations fail to capture patient-specific signaling requirements, and single-cell-type approaches overlook tumor-stromal interactions essential for understanding immunotherapy resistance. To address these challenges, we developed an innovative biofabrication platform that systematically integrates patient-derived three-dimensional (3D) cultures with comprehensive growth factor profiling across 128 combinations. Through systematic screening of 23 ovarian cancer patient samples and single-cell RNA sequencing, we identified two estradiol-responsive cellular populations that coordinate immunosuppression: a malignant cell fraction (MAL.PDCD5) and a cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF) fraction (FB.TNFSF10). MAL.PDCD5 cells suppress immune infiltration by downregulating antigen presentation, while FB.TNFSF10 cells promote immunosuppression through enhanced TGF-{beta} signaling. Spatial transcriptomic analysis revealed striking mutual exclusivity between FB.TNFSF10 cells and T/NK cells, providing evidence of active immune cell exclusion. Most significantly, FB.TNFSF10 abundance emerged as a robust predictor of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy resistance across multiple cancer cohorts, independent of conventional biomarkers. This biofabrication platform provides a scalable framework for drug screening and biomarker discovery, with immediate applications in precision medicine for patient stratification and combination therapy development.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2025

Neuropilin 2 functions as a co-inhibitory receptor to regulate antigen-induced inflammation and allograft rejection

Co-inhibitory receptors function as central modulators of the immune response to resolve T effector activation and/or to sustain immune homeostasis. Here, using humanized SCID mice, we found that NRP2 is inducible on late effector and exhausted subsets of human CD4+ T cells and that it is co-expressed with established co-inhibitory molecules including PD-1, CTLA4, TIGIT, LAG3 and TIM3. In murine models, we also found that NRP2 is expressed on effector memory CD4+ T cells with an exhausted phenotype and that it functions as a key co-inhibitory molecule. Knockout of NRP2 resulted in hyperactive CD4+ T cell responses, and enhanced inflammation in delayed type hypersensitivity and transplantation models. Following cardiac transplantation, allograft rejection and graft failure was accelerated in global as well as CD4+ T cell-specific knockout recipients, and enhanced alloimmunity was dependent on NRP2 expression on CD4+ T effectors, and not on CD4+Foxp3+ T regulatory cells. Also, knockout T regulatory cells were found to be as efficient as wild type cells in the suppression of effector responses in vitro and in vivo. These collective findings identify NRP2 as a novel coinhibitory receptor and demonstrate that its expression on CD4+ T effector cells is of great functional importance in immunity.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2024

Metformin inhibits nuclear egress of chromatin fragments in senescence and aging

Chronic inflammation is a hallmark of aging and contributes to many age-associated diseases. Metabolic intervention is a strategy to modulate inflammation. However, the connection between inflammation and metabolism during aging remains poorly understood. A mechanism driving chronic inflammation involves cytoplasmic chromatin fragments (CCFs), which appear in senescent cells and aged tissues, activating the cGAS-STING pathway. The size of the CCFs exceeds the capacity of the nuclear pore complex, raising the question of how chromatin fragments enter the cytoplasm. Here, we report that chromatin fragments exit the nucleus via nuclear egress, a membrane trafficking process at the nuclear envelope that shuttles large complexes from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Inactivating critical nuclear egress ESCRT-III or Torsin proteins results in accumulation of chromatin fragments at the nuclear membrane, thereby impairing the activation of cGAS-STING and senescence-associated inflammation. Notably, nuclear egress of CCFs is inhibited by glucose limitation or metformin treatment. This is due to AMPK phosphorylation and autophagic degradation of the ESCRT-III component, ALIX. Metformin treatment in naturally aged mice downregulates ALIX protein and blocks cGAS activation and chronic inflammation in the small intestine. Together, our study defines a central mechanism linking nutrient sensing and chronic inflammation, two distinct hallmarks of aging, and suggests a new approach to suppress age-associated inflammation by targeting the nuclear egress of chromatin fragments.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2024

Neural geometry efficiently representing abstract form of value and modality in the primate basal ganglia

Basal ganglia process diverse values from various modalities using limited resources, necessitating efficient processing. This involves converging tactile and visual information within bimodal value-coding neurons, ensuring efficient processing with limited number of neurons. However, convergence at the single neuron level may compromise modality-specific information, raising the question: Does efficient processing inevitably degrade information quality? We investigated the representational geometry in the putamen of macaque monkeys trained to learn values from tactile and visual inputs. Here, we demonstrated that the population representation of bimodal value-coding neurons in the putamen preserved both value and modality information, and these representations were shared to efficiently maintain quality. Notably, these representations were generalized across identical modalities and values, resulting in an efficient low-dimensional representation. Furthermore, a faster transformation to a generalized value representation within neural geometry reflected greater confidence in value-guided choice behavior--this correlation not observed in conventional decoding. Our results suggest that bimodal value-coding neurons play a key role in balancing efficiency and information fidelity, facilitating cognitive states required for confident decision-making.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Efficient value encoding through convergence of tactile and visual value information in the primate putamen

The processing of diverse sensory values by a limited number of basal ganglia neurons raises the question of whether each value is processed independently or combined as the number of neurons decreases from the cortex to downstream structures. Here, we discovered that tactile and visual values were partially converged in the primate putamen, enhancing its efficiency in encoding values while preserving modality information. Humans and monkeys performed tactile and visual value discrimination tasks. Notably, the human putamen selectively represented both tactile and visual values in fMRI scans. Single-unit electrophysiology further revealed that half of the individual neurons in the macaque putamen encoded both tactile and visual values, and the other half encoded each value separately. The bimodal value neurons enable more efficient value encoding using fewer neurons than the modality-selective value neurons. Our data suggest that the basal ganglia system uses modality convergence to efficiently encode values with limited resources.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Pan-cancer analysis reveals multifaceted roles of retrotransposon-fusion RNAs

Transposon-derived transcripts are abundant in RNA sequences, yet their landscape and function, especially for fusion transcripts derived from unannotated or somatically acquired transposons, remains underexplored. Here, we developed a new bioinformatic tool to detect transposon-fusion transcripts in RNA-sequencing data and performed a pan-cancer analysis of 10,257 cancer samples across 34 cancer types as well as 3,088 normal tissue samples. We identified 52,277 cancer-specific fusions with [~]30 events per cancer and hotspot loci within transposons vulnerable to fusion formation. Exonization of intronic transposons was the most prevalent genic fusions, while somatic L1 insertions constituted a small fraction of cancer-specific fusions. Source L1s and HERVs, but not Alus showed decreased DNA methylation in cancer upon fusion formation. Overall cancer-specific L1 fusions were enriched in tumor suppressors while Alu fusions were enriched in oncogenes, including recurrent Alu fusions in EZH2 predictive of patient survival. We also demonstrated that transposon-derived peptides triggered CD8+ T-cell activation to the extent comparable to EBV viruses. Our findings reveal distinct epigenetic and tumorigenic mechanisms underlying transposon fusions across different families and highlight transposons as novel therapeutic targets and the source of potent neoantigens.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2023

The ENCODE Uniform Analysis Pipelines

The Encyclopedia of DNA elements (ENCODE) project is a collaborative effort to create a comprehensive catalog of functional elements in the human genome. The current database comprises more than 19000 functional genomics experiments across more than 1000 cell lines and tissues using a wide array of experimental techniques to study the chromatin structure, regulatory and transcriptional landscape of the Homo sapiens and Mus musculus genomes. All experimental data, metadata, and associated computational analyses created by the ENCODE consortium are submitted to the Data Coordination Center (DCC) for validation, tracking, storage, and distribution to community resources and the scientific community. The ENCODE project has engineered and distributed uniform processing pipelines in order to promote data provenance and reproducibility as well as allow interoperability between genomic resources and other consortia. All data files, reference genome versions, software versions, and parameters used by the pipelines are captured and available via the ENCODE Portal. The pipeline code, developed using Docker and Workflow Description Language (WDL; https://openwdl.org/) is publicly available in GitHub, with images available on Dockerhub (https://hub.docker.com), enabling access to a diverse range of biomedical researchers. ENCODE pipelines maintained and used by the DCC can be installed to run on personal computers, local HPC clusters, or in cloud computing environments via Cromwell. Access to the pipelines and data via the cloud allows small labs the ability to use the data or software without access to institutional compute clusters. Standardization of the computational methodologies for analysis and quality control leads to comparable results from different ENCODE collections - a prerequisite for successful integrative analyses. Database URL: https://www.encodeproject.org/

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2022

Integrative mapping of the dog epigenome: reference annotation for comparative inter-tissue and cross-species studies

The domestic dog has become a valuable model in exploring multifaceted diseases and biology important for human health. Large-scale dog genome projects produced high-quality draft references but still lack comprehensive annotation of encoded functional elements. Through the integrative next generation sequencing of transcriptomes paired with histone marks and DNA methylome profiling of 11 adult tissue types, implemented in a cross-species approach, we generated a reference epigenome of a domesticated dog. Using genome orthologues and synthenies, we deciphered the dogs epigenetic code by defining distinct chromatin states, allowing for genome-wide, integratable data production. We then characterized somatic super-enhancer landscapes and showed that genes mapped on these regions are associated with a broad range of biological and disease traits and are traceable to their tissue-of-origin. Ultimately, we delineated conserved epigenomic changes at the tissue- and species-specific resolutions. Our study provides an epigenomic blueprint of the dog for comparative biology and medical research.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2022

Divergent LD-transpeptidase-independent effects of peptidoglycan carboxypeptidases on intrinsic ss-lactam and vancomycin resistance

Vancomycin and {beta}-lactams are clinically important antibiotics that inhibit the formation of peptidoglycan cross-links, but their binding targets are different. The binding target of vancomycin is D-alanine-D-alanine (D-Ala-D-Ala), whereas that of {beta}-lactam is penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs). In this study, we revealed the divergent effects of peptidoglycan (PG) carboxypeptidases on vancomycin and {beta}-lactam resistance in Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis. The deletion of PG carboxypeptidases induced sensitivity to most {beta}-lactams, whereas it induced strong resistance toward vancomycin. Notably, both of two phenotypes did not have strong association with LD-transpeptidases, which are necessary for the formation of PG 3-3 cross-links and covalent bonds between PG and an Lpp outer membrane (OM) lipoprotein. Vancomycin resistance was induced by increased amount of decoy D-Ala-D-Ala residues within PG, whereas {beta}-lactam sensitivity was associated with physical interactions between PG carboxypeptidase and PBPs. The presence of OM permeability barrier strongly strengthened vancomycin resistance, but it significantly weakened {beta}-lactam sensitivity. Collectively, our results revealed two distinct LD-transpeptidase-independent functions of PG carboxypeptidases, which involved inverse modulation of bacterial resistance to clinically important antibiotics, {beta}-lactams and vancomycin, and presented evidence for a link between PG carboxypeptidase and PBPs. IMPORTANCEBacterial peptidoglycan (PG) hydrolases play important roles in various aspects of bacterial physiology, including cytokinesis, PG synthesis, quality control of PG, PG recycling, and stress adaptation. Of all the PG hydrolases, the role of PG carboxypeptidases is poorly understood, especially regarding their impacts on antibiotic resistance. To date, most studies on PG carboxypeptidases are focused on LD-transpeptidase-related roles. We have revealed two distinct LD-transpeptidase-independent functions of PG carboxypeptidases with respect to antibiotic resistance. The deletion of PG carboxypeptidases led to sensitivity to most {beta}-lactams, while it caused strong resistance to vancomycin. The underlying molecular mechanisms of two phenotypes were not associated with LD-transpeptidases. Therefore, our study provides novel insights into the roles of PG carboxypeptidases in the regulation of antibiotic resistance and a potential clue for the development of a drug to improve the clinical efficacy of {beta}-lactam antibiotics. One sentence summaryEffect of peptidoglycan carboxypeptidase on antibiotic

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2022

Central role of Prominin-1 in lipid rafts during liver regeneration

Prominin-1 (PROM1), a lipid raft protein, is required for maintaining cancer stem cell properties in hepatocarcinoma cell lines, but its physiological roles in the liver have not been well studied. Here, we investigated the role of PROM1 in lipid rafts with a precise molecular mechanism during liver regeneration. We found that the expression of PROM1 increased during liver regeneration after 2/3 partial hepatectomy (PHx) or CCl4 injection. Interestingly, hepatocyte proliferation and liver regeneration were attenuated in liver-specific Prom1 knockout (Prom1LKO) mice compared to wild-type (Prom1f/f) mice. Detailed mechanistic studies revealed that PROM1 interacted with the interleukin-6 signal transducer glycoprotein 130 (GP130) and confined GP130 to lipid rafts so that STAT3 signaling by IL-6 was effectively activated. Moreover, the overexpression of the glycosylphosphatidylinsositol (GPI)-anchored first extracellular domain of PROM1 (PROM1GPI-EX1), which is a domain that binds to GP130, rescued the proliferation of hepatocytes and liver regeneration in Prom1LKO mice. PROM1 is upregulated in hepatocytes during liver regeneration, and upregulated PROM1 recruits GP130 into lipid rafts and activates the IL6-GP130-STAT3 axis. Thus, we conclude that PROM1 plays an important role in lipid rafts during liver regeneration and might be a promising target for therapeutic applications of liver transplantation.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2021

Controlling Selectivity of Modular Microbial Biosynthesis of Butyryl-CoA-Derived Designer Esters

Short-chain esters have broad utility as flavors, fragrances, solvents, and biofuels. Controlling selectivity of ester microbial biosynthesis has been an outstanding metabolic engineering problem. Here, we present a generalizable framework to enable the de novo fermentative microbial biosynthesis of butyryl-CoA-derived designer esters (e.g., butyl acetate, ethyl butyrate, butyl butyrate) with controllable selectivity. Using the modular design principles, we generated the butyryl-CoA-derived ester pathways as exchangeable production modules compatible with an engineered chassis cell for anaerobic production of designer esters. We designed these modules derived from an acyl-CoA submodule (e.g., acetyl-CoA, butyryl-CoA), an alcohol submodule (e.g., ethanol, butanol), a cofactor regeneration submodule (e.g., NADH), and an alcohol acetyltransferase (AAT) submodule (e.g., ATF1, SAAT) for rapid module construction and optimization by manipulating replication (e.g., plasmid copy number), transcription (e.g., promoters), translation (e.g., codon optimization), pathway enzymes, and pathway induction conditions. To further enhance production of designer esters with high selectivity, we systematically screened various strategies of protein solubilization using protein fusion tags and chaperones to improve the soluble expression of multiple pathway enzymes. Finally, our engineered ester-producing strains could achieve 19-fold increase in butyl acetate production (0.64 g/L, 96% selectivity), 6-fold increase in ethyl butyrate production (0.41 g/L, 86% selectivity), and 13-fold increase in butyl butyrate production (0.45 g/L, 54% selectivity) as compared to the initial strains. Overall, this study presented a generalizable framework to engineer modular microbial platforms for anaerobic production of butyryl-CoA-derived designer esters from renewable feedstocks.

synthetic biology↗

bioRxiv2021

Probing Specificities of Alcohol Acyltransferases for Designer Ester Biosynthesis with a High-Throughput Microbial Screening Platform

Alcohol acyltransferases (AATs) enables microbial biosynthesis of a large space of esters by condensing an alcohol and an acyl CoA. However, substrate promiscuity of AATs prevents microbial biosynthesis of designer esters with high selectivity. Here, we developed a high-throughput microbial screening platform that facilitates rapid identification of AATs for designer ester biosynthesis. First, we established a microplate-based culturing technique with in situ fermentation and extraction of esters. We validated its capability in rapid profiling of the alcohol substrate specificity of 20 chloramphenicol acetyltransferase variants derived from Staphylococcus aureus (CATSa) for microbial biosynthesis of acetate esters with various exogeneous alcohol supply. By coupling the microplate-based culturing technique with a previously established colorimetric assay, we developed a high-throughput microbial screening platform for AATs. We demonstrated that this platform could not only confirm CATSa F97W with enhanced isobutyl acetate synthesis but also identify three ATF1Sc (P348M, P348A, and P348S) variants, derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiaes AAT and engineered by model-guided protein design, for enhanced butyl acetate production. We anticipate the high-throughput microbial screening platform is a useful tool to identify novel AATs that have important roles in nature and industrial biocatalysis for designer bioester production.

bioengineering↗

bioRxiv2021

Heme auxotrophy in abundant aquatic microbial lineages

Heme, a porphyrin ring complexed with iron, is a metalloprosthetic group of numerous proteins involved in diverse metabolic and respiratory processes across all domains of life, and is thus considered essential for respiring organisms1,2. Several microbial groups are known to lack the de novo heme biosynthetic pathway and therefore require exogenous heme from the environment3. These heme auxotroph groups are largely limited to pathogens4,5, symbionts6,7, or microorganisms living in nutrient-replete conditions8, whereas the complete absence of heme biosynthesis is extremely rare in free-living organisms9. Here, we show that the acI lineage, a predominant and ubiquitous free-living bacterial group in freshwater habitats, is auxotrophic for heme. We found that two recently cultivated acI isolates10 require exogenous heme for their growth. According to whole-genome analyses, all (n=20) isolated acI strains lacked essential enzymes necessary for heme biosynthesis, indicating that heme auxotrophy is a conserved trait in this lineage. Analyses of >24,000 representative genomes for species clusters of the Genome Taxonomy Database (GTDB) revealed that heme auxotrophy is widespread across abundant but not-yet-cultivated microbial groups, including Patescibacteria, Marinisomatota (SAR406), Actinomarinales (OM1), and marine group III Euryarchaeota. Our findings indicate that heme auxotrophy is a more common phenomenon than previously thought, and may lead to use of heme as a growth factor to increase the cultured microbial diversity.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2020

Repurposing chloramphenicol acetyltransferase for a robust and efficient designer ester biosynthesis platform

Robust and efficient enzymes are essential modules for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology strategies across biological systems to engineer whole-cell biocatalysts. By condensing an acyl-CoA and an alcohol, alcohol acyltransferases (AATs) can serve as an interchangeable metabolic module for microbial biosynthesis of a diverse class of ester molecules with broad applications as flavors, fragrances, solvents, and drop-in biofuels. However, the current lack of robust and efficient AATs significantly limits their compatibility with heterologous precursor pathways and microbial hosts. Through bioprospecting and rational protein engineering, we identified and repurposed chloramphenicol acetyltransferases (CATs) from mesophilic prokaryotes to function as robust and efficient AATs compatible with at least 21 alcohol and 8 acyl-CoA substrates for microbial biosynthesis of linear, branched, saturated, unsaturated and/or aromatic esters. By plugging the best engineered CAT (CATec3 Y20F) into the gram-negative mesophilic bacterium Escherichia coli, we demonstrated that the recombinant strain could effectively convert various alcohols into desirable esters, for instance, achieving a titer of 13.9 g/L isoamyl acetate with 95% conversion by fed-batch fermentation. The recombinant E. coli was also capable of simulating the ester profile of roses with high conversion (> 97%) and titer (> 1 g/L) from fermentable sugars at 37{degrees}C. Likewise, a recombinant gram-positive, cellulolytic, thermophilic bacterium Clostridium thermocellum harboring CATec3 Y20F could produce many of these esters from recalcitrant cellulosic biomass at elevated temperatures (>50{degrees}C) due to the engineered enzymes remarkable thermostability. Overall, the engineered CATs can serve as a robust and efficient platform for designer ester biosynthesis from renewable and sustainable feedstocks.

synthetic biology↗

bioRxiv2020

Activation of JUN in fibroblasts promotes pro-fibrotic programme and modulates protective immunity

In pulmonary fibrosis, the transcription factor JUN is highly expressed in the fibrotic foci. Its induction in adult mice drives lung fibrosis, which is abrogated by administration of anti-CD47. Here, we use high-dimensional mass cytometry to profile protein expression and the secretome of individual fibroblasts and leukocytes from pulmonary fibrosis patients. We show that JUN is activated in fibroblasts derived from fibrotic lungs which also demonstrated increased CD47 and PD-L1 expression. Using ATAC-seq and ChIP-seq, we found that activation of JUN in fibroblasts rendered enhancers of CD47 and PD-L1 accessible, an observation that reporter assays corroborated. Meanwhile we detected increased IL-6 signaling which amplified both JUN-mediated CD47-enhancer activity and protein expression in fibrotic lung fibroblasts. Using an in vivo mouse model of fibrosis, we found two distinct mechanisms by which blocking IL-6, CD47, and PD-L1 reversed fibrosis--increased phagocytosis of profibrotic fibroblasts and elimination of suppressive effects on adaptive immunity. Our results identify specific immune mechanisms that promote the fibrotic process and suggest a complementary therapeutic approach that could be used alongside conventional anti-fibrotics for pulmonary fibrosis diseases.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2019

Single mutation at a highly conserved region of chloramphenicol acetyltransferase enables thermophilic isobutyl acetate production directly from cellulose by Clostridium thermocellum

BackgroundEsters are versatile chemicals and potential drop-in biofuels. To develop a sustainable production platform, microbial ester biosynthesis using alcohol acetyltransferases (AATs) has been studied for decades. Volatility of esters endows thermophilic production with advantageous downstream product separation. However, due to the limited thermal stability of AATs known, the ester biosynthesis has largely relied on use of mesophilic microbes. Therefore, developing thermostable AATs is important for thermophilic ester production directly from lignocellulosic biomass by the thermophilic consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) microbes, e.g., Clostridium thermocellum.\n\nResultsIn this study, we engineered a thermostable chloramphenicol acetyltransferase from Staphylococcus aureus (CATSa) for enhanced isobutyl acetate production at elevated temperature. We first analyzed the broad alcohol substrate range of CATSa. Then, we targeted a highly conserved region in the binding pocket of CATSa for mutagenesis. The mutagenesis revealed that F97W significantly increased conversion of isobutanol to isobutyl acetate. Using CATSa F97W, we demonstrated the engineered C. thermocellum could produce isobutyl acetate directly from cellulose.\n\nConclusionsThis study highlights that CAT is a potential thermostable AAT that can be harnessed to develop the thermophilic CBP microbial platform for biosynthesis of designer bioesters directly from lignocellulosic biomass.

synthetic biology↗