Biology subjects

Liang, Q.

Publications and source records attributed to Liang, Q..

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

The Ubiquitin Ligase RBX2/SAG Regulates Mitochondrial Ubiquitination and Mitophagy

Clearance of damaged mitochondria via mitophagy is crucial for cellular homeostasis. While the role of ubiquitin (Ub) ligase PARKIN in mitophagy has been extensively studied, increasing evidence suggests the existence of PARKIN-independent mitophagy in highly metabolically active organs such as the heart. Here, we identify a crucial role for Cullin-RING Ub ligase 5 (CRL5) in basal mitochondrial turnover in cardiomyocytes. CRL5 is a multi-subunit Ub ligase comprised by the catalytic RING box protein RBX2 (also known as SAG), scaffold protein Cullin 5 (CUL5), and a substrate-recognizing receptor. Analysis of the mitochondrial outer membrane-interacting proteome uncovered a robust association of CRLs with mitochondria. Subcellular fractionation, immunostaining, and immunogold electron microscopy established that RBX2 and Cul5, two core components of CRL5, localizes to mitochondria. Depletion of RBX2 inhibited mitochondrial ubiquitination and turnover, impaired mitochondrial membrane potential and respiration, and increased cell death in cardiomyocytes. In vivo, deletion of the Rbx2 gene in adult mouse hearts suppressed mitophagic activity, provoked accumulation of damaged mitochondria in the myocardium, and disrupted myocardial metabolism, leading to rapid development of dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure. Similarly, ablation of RBX2 in the developing heart resulted in dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure. Notably, the action of RBX2 in mitochondria is not dependent on PARKIN, and PARKIN gene deletion had no impact on the onset and progression of cardiomyopathy in RBX2-deficient hearts. Furthermore, RBX2 controls the stability of PINK1 in mitochondria. Proteomics and biochemical analyses further revealed a global impact of RBX2 deficiency on the mitochondrial proteome and identified several mitochondrial proteins as its putative substrates. These findings identify RBX2-CRL5 as a mitochondrial Ub ligase that controls mitophagy under physiological conditions in a PARKIN-independent, PINK1-dependent manner, thereby regulating cardiac homeostasis.

pathology↗

bioRxiv2024

An Engineered IGF2 Mutant for Lysosomal Targeting Chimeras Development and Membrane Proteins Degradation

Lysosome-targeting chimeras (LYTACs) have emerged as a promising strategy for targeted degradation of membrane proteins, offering potential applications in drug development. Currently, two main methods for developing LYTACs exist: chemically modified antibodies [1-2] and wild-type insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) fusion proteins (iLYTACs) [3]. However, the fusion of the IGF2 arm within iLYTACs carries the risk of activating IGF1R tyrosine kinase activity and promoting tumor development. To address this concern, we introduce eiLYTACs, a technology that employs engineered IGF2 fusion antibodies to induce degradation of endogenous membrane proteins. Compared to the wild-type IGF2, the engineered IGF2 mutant exhibited minimal binding affinity for IGF1R but demonstrated a significant 100-fold increase in its binding affinity for IGF2R. In contrast to wild-type IGF2, which promotes tumor growth, the cells incubated with the engineered IGF2 showed no stimulation of tumor growth. The eiLYTACs strategy effectively inhibits tumor cell proliferation by degrading specific targets, resulting in a significant reduction in xenograft tumor size in experimental nude mice. More interestingly, our research revealed that eiLYTACs simultaneously degrade both homo- and heterodimers of disease-relevant proteins,which offer a promising strategy to address the activation of compensatory bypass signaling pathways, drug resistance, and tumor heterogeneity.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2024

Architecture and infection-sensing mechanism of the bacterial PARIS defense system

Bacteria and the viruses that infect them (bacteriophages or phages) are engaged in an evolutionary arms race that has resulted in the development of hundreds of bacterial defense systems and myriad phage-encoded counterdefenses1-5. While the mechanisms of many bacterial defense systems are known1, how these systems avoid toxicity outside infection yet activate quickly upon sensing phage infection is less well understood. Here, we show that the bacterial Phage Anti-Restriction-Induced System (PARIS) operates as a toxin-antitoxin system, in which the antitoxin AriA sequesters and inactivates the toxin AriB until triggered by the T7 phage counterdefense protein Ocr. Using cryoelectron microscopy (cryoEM), we show that AriA is structurally similar to dimeric SMC-family ATPases but assembles into a distinctive homohexameric complex through two distinct oligomerization interfaces. In the absence of infection, the AriA hexamer binds up to three monomers of AriB, maintaining them in an inactive state. Ocr binding to the AriA-AriB complex triggers rearrangement of the AriA hexamer, releasing AriB and allowing it to dimerize and activate. AriB is a toprim/OLD-family nuclease whose activation arrests cell growth and inhibits phage propagation by globally inhibiting protein translation. Collectively, our findings reveal the intricate molecular mechanisms of a bacterial defense system that evolved in response to a phage counterdefense protein, and highlight how an SMC-family ATPase has been adapted as a bacterial infection sensor.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2023

An automated archival single-nucleus total RNA sequencing platform mapping integrative and retrospective cell atlas of gliomas

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has dramatically transformed biomedical research within laboratory settings. It has been extensively employed to investigate the heterogeneity and plasticity of glioma, the most prevalent brain tumor. However, the clinical diagnosis and treatment of glioma remain complex and challenging, highlighting the need for comprehensive cancer research. Currently available scRNA-seq platforms are insufficient to fulfill the demands posed by large-scale clinical applications. Here, we present an automated high-throughput single-nucleus total RNA sequencing platform, known as AAsnRandom-seq. This platform integrates automated single-nucleus isolation and droplet barcoding systems with the random primer-based scRNA-seq chemistry, designed to accommodate a diverse range of sample types. The performance and versatility of AAsnRandom-seq are validated using over one hundred clinical FFPE and frozen samples. AAsnRandom-seq was applied to archival FFPE samples of various glioma subtypes, including rare clinical samples, and matched primary-recurrent glioblastomas (GBMs), delving into the comprehensive molecular characteristic of glioma at single-cell level. Abundant non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) with distinct expression profiles within different glioma clusters are detected. Promising recurrence-related targets and pathways are identified from the matched primary-recurrent GBMs. AAsnRandom-seq holds significant application value on large-scale integrative and retrospective clinical research using archived specimens.

bioengineering↗

bioRxiv2023

Evolution of novel sensory organs in fish with legs

How do animals evolve new traits? Sea robins are unusual "walking" fishes that use leg-like appendages to navigate the seafloor. Here, we show that legs are bona fide sense organs that mediate the unique ability to localize and uncover buried prey. We then probe the developmental and physiological basis of these novel sense organs as a striking example of a major trait gain in evolution. We find certain sea robin species have legs with unique end-organs called papillae that mediate enhanced mechanical and chemical sensitivity to enable predatory digging behavior. Papillae exhibit dense innervation from touch-sensitive neurons, noncanonical epithelial taste receptors, and chemical sensitivity that drives predatory digging behavior. Using a combination of developmental analyses, crosses between species with and without papillae, and interspecies comparisons of sea robins from around the world, we demonstrate that papillae represent a key evolutionary innovation associated with behavioral niche expansion on the seafloor. These discoveries provide a conceptual framework for understanding how molecular, cellular, and tissue-scale adaptations integrate to produce novel organismic traits and behavior.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2023

The DeMixSC deconvolution framework uses single-cell sequencing plus a small benchmark dataset for improved analysis of cell-type ratios in complex tissue samples

Bulk deconvolution with single-cell/nucleus RNA-seq data is critical for understanding heterogeneity in complex biological samples, yet the technological discrepancy across sequencing platforms limits deconvolution accuracy. To address this, we introduce an experimental design to match inter-platform biological signals, hence revealing the technological discrepancy, and then develop a deconvolution framework called DeMixSC using the better-matched, i.e., benchmark, data. Built upon a novel weighted nonnegative least-squares framework, DeMixSC identifies and adjusts genes with high technological discrepancy and aligns the benchmark data with large patient cohorts of matched-tissue-type for large-scale deconvolution. Our results using a benchmark dataset of healthy retinas suggest much-improved deconvolution accuracy. Further analysis of a cohort of 453 patients with age-related macular degeneration supports the broad applicability of DeMixSC. Our findings reveal the impact of technological discrepancy on deconvolution performance and underscore the importance of a well-matched dataset to resolve this challenge. The developed DeMixSC framework is generally applicable for deconvolving large cohorts of disease tissues, and potentially cancer.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2023

A phage nucleus-associated RNA-binding protein is required for jumbo phage infection

Large-genome bacteriophages (jumbo phages) of the Chimalliviridae family assemble a nucleus-like compartment bounded by a protein shell that protects the replicating phage genome from host-encoded restriction enzymes and CRISPR/Cas nucleases. While the nuclear shell provides broad protection against host nucleases, it necessitates transport of mRNA out of the nucleus-like compartment for translation by host ribosomes, and transport of specific proteins into the nucleus-like compartment to support DNA replication and mRNA transcription. Here we identify a conserved phage nuclear shell-associated protein that we term Chimallin C (ChmC), which adopts a nucleic acid-binding fold, binds RNA with high affinity in vitro, and binds phage mRNAs in infected cells. ChmC also forms phase-separated condensates with RNA in vitro. Targeted knockdown of ChmC using mRNA-targeting dCas13d halts infections at an early stage. Taken together, our data suggest that the conserved ChmC protein acts as a chaperone for phage mRNAs, potentially stabilizing these mRNAs and driving their translocation through the nuclear shell to promote translation and infection progression.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2023

MolPhase: An Advanced Phase Separation Predictor and an Investigation of Phytobacterial Effector in Plant

We introduce MolPhase (http://molphase.sbs.ntu.edu.sg/), an advanced protein phase separation (PS) prediction algorithm that improves accuracy and reliability by utilizing diverse physicochemical features and extensive experimental datasets. MolPhase applies a user-friendly interface to compare distinct biophysical features side-by-side along protein sequences. By additional comparison with structural predictions, MolPhase enables efficient predictions of new phase-separating proteins and guides hypothesis generation and experimental design. Key contributing factors underlying MolPhase include pi-pi interaction, disorder, and prion-like domain. As an example, MolPhase finds that phytobacterial type III effectors (T3Es) are highly prone to homotypic PS, which was experimentally validated in vitro biochemically and in vivo in plants, mimicking their injection and accumulation in the host during microbial infection. In addition, the phase-separation of T3Es were evolved both in vivo and in vitro, suggesting their determinative scaffolding function, though there is a difference in material properties, implying a difference in homotypic and heterotypic macromolecular condensation. Robust integration of MolPhases effective prediction and experimental validation exhibit the potential to evaluate and explore how biomolecule PS functions in biological systems.

biophysics↗

bioRxiv2023

Pathway Centric Analysis for single-cell RNA-seq and Spatial Transcriptomics Data with GSDensity

Advances in single-cell technology have enabled molecular cellular dissection of heterogeneous biospecimens at unprecedented scales and resolutions. Although cluster-centric approaches followed by gene-set analysis can reveal distinct cell types and states, they have limited power in dissecting and interpretating highly heterogenous, dynamically evolving data. Here, we present GSDensity, a graph-modeling approach that allows users to obtain pathway-centric interpretation and dissection of single-cell and spatial transcriptomics (ST) data without performing clustering. We show that GSDensity can not only accurately detect biologically distinct gene sets but also reveal novel cell-pathway associations that are ignored by existing methods. This is particularly evident in characterizing cancer cell states that are transcriptomically distinct but are driven by shared tumor-immune interaction mechanisms. Moreover, we show that GSDensity, combined with trajectory analysis can identify pathways that are active at various stages of mouse brain development. Finally, we show that GSDensity can identify spatially relevant pathways in mouse brains including those following a high-order organizational patterns in the ST data. We also created a pan-cancer pathway activity ST map, which revealed pathways spatially relevant and recurrently active across six different tumor types. GSDensity is available as an open-source R package and can be widely applied to single-cell and ST data generated by various technologies.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2023

Co-occurrence of ST412 Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates with hypermucoviscous and no-mucoviscous phenotypes in a short-term hospitalized patient

Hypermucoviscosity(HMV) is a phenotype that is commonly associated with hypervirulence in Klebsiella pneumoniae. The factors that contribute to the emergence of HMV subpopulations remain unclear. In this study, eight K. pneumoniae strains were recovered from an inpatient who were hospitalized for 20 days. Three of the isolates exhibited a non-HMV phenotype, which was concomitant with increased biofilm formation and higher siderophore secretion than the other five HMV isolates. All eight isolates were highly susceptible to serum killing, albeit HMV strains were remarkably more infective than non-HMV counterparts in a mouse model of infection. Whole genome sequencing(WGS) showed that the eight isolates belonged to the K57-ST412 lineage. Average nucleotide identity(ANI) analysis indicated that eight isolates share 99.96% to 99.99% similarity and were confirmed to be the same clone. Through comparative genomics analysis, 12 non-synonymous mutations were found among these isolates, seven of which in the non-HMV variants, including rmpA(R96G) and wbap (S435R), which are assumed to be associated with the non-HMV phenotype. The mutations manB(G440L), dmsB(R193W) and tkt(A643N) occurred in HMV isolates only. RNA-Seq and RT-qPCR revealed transcripts of genes involved in transporter activity, carbohydrate metabolism and energy metabolism, including cysK, paaF, vasD, celC and fruA, to be significantly dysregulated in the non-HMV strain K201060 compared to the HMV strain K201059, suggesting a participation in HMV phenotype development. This study suggests that co-occurrence of HMV and non-HMV phenotypes in the same clonal population may be mediated by mutational mechanisms as well as by certain genes involved in transport and central metabolism. ImportanceK. pneumoniae with a hypermucoviscosity(HMV) phenotype is a community-acquired pathogen that associated with increased invasiveness and pathogenicity, and underlying diseases are the most common comorbid risk factors inducing metastatic complications. HMV was earlier attributed to the overproduction of capsular polysaccharide, and more data point to the possibility of several causes contribute to this bacterial phenotype. Here, we describe a unique event in which the same clonal population showed both HMV and non-HMV characteristics. Studies have demonstrated that this process is influenced by mutational processes and genes related to transport and central metabolism. These finding provide fresh insight into the mechanisms between behind co-occurrence of HMV and non-HMV phenotypes in monoclonal populations as well as potentially being critical in developing strategies to control the further spread of HMV K. pneumoniae.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2023

Zfp697 is an RNA-binding protein that regulates skeletal muscle inflammation and regeneration.

Muscular atrophy is a mortality risk factor that happens with disuse, chronic disease, and aging. Recovery from atrophy requires changes in several cell types including muscle fibers, and satellite and immune cells. Here we show that Zfp697/ZNF697 is a damage-induced regulator of muscle regeneration, during which its expression is transiently elevated. Conversely, sustained Zfp697 expression in mouse muscle leads to a gene expression signature of chemokine secretion, immune cell recruitment, and extracellular matrix remodeling. Myofiber-specific Zfp697 ablation hinders the inflammatory and regenerative response to muscle injury, compromising functional recovery. We uncover Zfp697 as an essential interferon gamma mediator in muscle cells, interacting primarily with ncRNAs such as the pro-regenerative miR-206. In sum, we identify Zfp697 as an integrator of cell-cell communication necessary for tissue regeneration. One Sentence SummaryZfp697 is necessary for interferon gamma signaling and muscle regeneration.

physiology↗

bioRxiv2023

Rescuing missing data in connectome-based predictive modeling

Recent evidence suggests brain-behavior predictions may require very large sample sizes. However, as the sample size increases, the amount of missing data also increases. Conventional methods, like complete-case analysis, discard useful information and shrink the sample size. To address the missing data problem, we investigated rescuing these missing data through imputation. Imputation is the substitution of estimated values for missing data to be used in downstream analyses. We integrated imputation methods into the Connectome-based Predictive Modeling (CPM) framework. Utilizing four open-source datasets--the Human Connectome Project, the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, the UCLA Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics, and the Healthy Brain Network (HBN)--we validated and compared our framework with different imputation methods against complete-case analysis for both missing connectomes and missing phenotypic measures scenarios. Imputing connectomes exhibited superior prediction performance on real and simulated missing data as compared to complete-case analysis. In addition, we found that imputation accuracy was a good indicator for choosing an imputation method for missing phenotypic measures but not informative for missing connectomes. In a real-world example predicting cognition using the HBN, we rescued 628 individuals through imputation, doubling the complete case sample size and increasing explained variance by 45%. Together, our results suggest that rescuing data with imputation, as opposed to discarding subjects with missing information, improves prediction performance.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Zfp318 controls the recallability of memory B cells

Expression of the transcriptional regulator ZFP318 is induced in germinal center (GC)- exiting memory B cell precursors and memory B cells (MBCs). Using a conditional ZFP318 fluorescence reporter that also enables ablation of ZFP318-expressing cells, we found that ZFP318-expressing MBCs were highly enriched with GC-derived cells. Although ZFP318-expressing MBCs constituted only a minority of the antigen-specific MBC compartment, their ablation severely impaired recall responses. Deletion of Zfp318 did not alter the magnitude of primary responses but markedly reduced MBC participation in recall. CD40 ligation promoted Zfp318 expression, whereas B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling was inhibitory. Enforced ZFP318 expression enhanced recall performance of MBCs that otherwise responded poorly. ZFP318-deficient MBCs expressed less mitochondrial genes, had structurally compromised mitochondria, and were susceptible to reactivation-induced cell death. The abundance of ZFP318-expressing MBCs, instead of the number of antigen-specific MBCs, correlated with the potency of prime-boost vaccination. Therefore, ZFP318 controls the MBC recallability and represents a quality checkpoint of humoral immune memory.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2023

The impact of common variants on gene expression in the human brain: from RNA to protein to schizophrenia risk

BackgroundThe impact of genetic variants on gene expression has been intensely studied at the transcription level, yielding invaluable insights into the association between genes and the risk of complex disorders, such as schizophrenia (SCZ). However, the downstream impact of these variants and the molecular mechanisms connecting transcription variation to disease risk are not well understood. ResultsWe quantitated ribosome occupancy in prefrontal cortex samples of the BrainGVEX cohort. Together with transcriptomics and proteomics data from the same cohort, we performed cis-Quantitative Trait Locus (QTL) mapping and identified, at 10% false discovery rate, 3,253 expression QTLs (eQTLs), 1,344 ribosome occupancy QTLs (rQTLs), and 657 protein QTLs (pQTLs) out of 7,458 genes from 185 samples. Of the eQTLs identified, only 34% have their effects propagated to the protein level. Further analysis on the effect size of prefrontal cortex eQTLs identified from an independent dataset clearly replicated the post-transcriptional attenuation of eQTL effects. We identified omics-specific QTLs and investigated their potential in driving disease risks. Using both a variant-based approach and a gene-based approach, we identified genes containing expression-specific QTLs (esQTLs), ribosome-occupancy-specific QTLs (rsQTLs), and protein-specific QTLs (psQTLs). Among the variant-based omics-specific QTL, 38 showed strong colocalization with brain associated disorder GWAS signals, 29 of them are esQTLs. From the gene-based approach, we found 11 brain associated disorder risk genes that are driven predominantly by omics-specific QTL, all of them are driven by variants impacting transcriptional regulation. To take a complementary approach to further investigate the functional relevance of genes driven predominantly by attenuated eQTL signals, we identified SCZ risk genes using each omics independently and then investigated the omics-specificity of the driver regulatory process for each risk gene. Using S-PrediXcan we identified 74 SCZ risk genes across the three omics, 30% of which were novel, and 67% of these risk genes were confirmed to be causal in a MR-Egger test. Notably, 52 out of the 74 risk genes were identified using eQTL data and 68% of these SCZ-risk-gene-driving eQTLs show little to no evidence of driving corresponding variations at the protein level. ConclusionThe effect of eQTLs on gene expression in the prefrontal cortex is commonly attenuated post-transcriptionally. Many of the attenuated eQTLs still correlate with GWAS signals of brain associated complex disorders, indicating the possibility that these eQTL variants drive disease risk through mechanisms other than regulating protein expression level. Further investigation is needed to elucidate the mechanistic link between attenuated eQTLs and brain associated complex disorders.

genetics↗

bioRxiv2023

aenmd: Annotating escape from nonsense-mediated decay for transcripts with protein-truncating variants

DNA changes that cause premature termination codons (PTCs) represent a large fraction of clinically relevant pathogenic genomic variation. Typically, PTCs induce a transcripts degradation by nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) and render such changes loss-of-function alleles. However, certain PTC-containing transcripts escape NMD and can exert dominant-negative or gain-of-function (DN/GOF) effects. Therefore, systematic identification of human PTC-causing variants and their susceptibility to NMD contributes to the investigation of the role of DN/GOF alleles in human disease. Here we present aenmd, a software for annotating PTC-containing transcript-variant pairs for predicted escape from NMD. aenmd is user-friendly and self-contained. It offers functionality not currently available in other methods and is based on established and experimentally validated rules for NMD escape; the software is designed to work at scale, and to integrate seamlessly with existing analysis workflows. We applied aenmd to variants in the gnomAD, Clinvar, and GWAS catalog databases and report the prevalence of human PTC-causing variants in these databases, and the subset of these that could exert DN/GOF effects via NMD escape. Availability and implementationaenmd is implemented in the R programming language. Code is available on GitHub as an R package (github.com/kostkalab/aenmd.git), and as a containerized command-line interface (github.com/kostkalab/aenmd_cli.git).

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2023

A burns and COVID-19 shared stress responding gene network deciphers CD1C-CD141- DCs as the key cellular components in septic prognosis

Differential body responses to various stresses, infectious or noninfectious, govern clinical outcomes ranging from asymptoma to death. However, the common molecular and cellular nature of the stress responsome across different stimuli is not described. In this study, we compared the expression behaviors between burns and COVID-19 infection by choosing the transcriptome of peripheral blood from related patients as the analytic target since the blood cells reflect the systemic landscape of immune homeostasis. We identified an immune co-stimulator (CD86)-centered network, named stress-response core (SRC), which coordinated multiple immune processes and was robust in membership and highly related to the clinical traits in both burns and COVID-19. An independent whole blood single-cell RNA sequencing of COVID-19 patients demonstrated that the monocyte-dendritic cell (Mono-DC) wing was the major cellular source of the SRC, among which the higher expression of the SRC in the monocyte was associated with the asymptomatic COVID-19 patients, while the quantity-restricted and function-defected CD1C-CD141-DCs were recognized as the key signature which linked to bad consequences in COVID-19. Specifically, the proportion of the CD1C-CD141-DCs and their SRC expression levels were step-wise reduced along with worse clinic conditions while the sub-cluster of CD1C-CD141-DCs of the critical COVID-19 patients was characterized of IFN signaling quiescence, high mitochondrial metabolism and immune-communication inactivation. Thus, our study identified an expression-synchronized and function-focused gene network which was decreased under burns and COVID-19 stress and argued the CD1C-CD141-DC as the prognosis-related cell population which might serve as a new target of diagnosis and therapy.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2023

Profiling the impact of the promoters on CRISPR-Cas12a system in human cells

The plasmid vector platform is the most commonly used for the expression of the versatile CRISPR-Cas technique and the promoter is a crucial element for the expression vector, thus profiling the impact of the promoters on CRISPR editors provides the basic information for the gene-editing toolkits and can be a guideline for its design. Herein, we made a parallel comparison among four commonly used promoters (CAG,[~]1700bp; EF1a core, [~]210bp; CMV, [~]500bp; and PGK, [~]500bp) in CRISPR-Cas12a system in mammalian cells to explore the impact of promoters on this powerful tool. We found that without badly damaging targeting specificity, the CAG promoter-driving Cas12a editor exhibited the most active (efficiency takes as 100%, specificity index= [~]75%) in genomic cleavage, multiplex editing, transcriptional activation, and base editing, followed by promoter CMV (efficiency=70[~]90% (vs CAG), specificity index= [~]78%), and then EF1a core and PGK (both efficiency=40[~]60%, vs CAG) but with higher specificity (specificity index= [~]84% and [~]82%, respectively). Therefore, CAG is recommended in the CRISPR-Cas12a system for the applications that need a robust editing activity but without size limitation, CMV mostly can be an alternative for CAG when requiring a smaller space, EF1a is similar to PGK with relatively high specificity, but has a smaller size, thus is more suitable for in vivo therapeutic applications. The data outlined the properties of the widely used promoters in the CRISPR-Cas12a system, which can be a guide for its applications and can be a useful resource for the gene-editing field.

synthetic biology↗

bioRxiv2022

Metal-driven anaerobic oxidation of methane as an important methane sink in methanic cold seep sediments

Anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) coupled with reduction of metal oxides is supposed to be a globally important bioprocess in marine sediments. However, the responsible microorganisms and their contributions to methane budget are not clear in deep sea cold seep sediments. Here, we combined geochemistry, muti-omics and numerical modeling to study metal-dependent AOM in methanic cold seep sediments in the northern continental slope of the South China Sea. Geochemical data based on methane concentrations, carbon stable isotope, solid-phase sediment analysis and pore water measurements indicate the occurrence of anaerobic methane oxidation coupled to metal oxides reduction in the methanic zone. The 16S rRNA gene amplicons and transcripts, along with metagenomic and metatranscriptomic data suggest that diverse ANME groups actively mediated methane oxidation in the methanic zone either independently or in syntrophy with e.g. ETH-SRB1 as potential metal reducers. Modeling results suggest that the estimated rates of methane consumption via Fe-AOM and Mn-AOM were both 0.3 mol cm-2 yr-1, which account for [~]3% of total CH4 removal in sediments. Overall, our results highlight metal-driven anaerobic oxidation of methane as an important methane sink in methanic cold seep sediments.

microbiology↗