Biology subjects

Sharpe, T.

Publications and source records attributed to Sharpe, T..

7 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Identification of soil microbes associated with real-time plastic degradation using in situ conductivity sensors

Microbial-mediated plastic degradation has the potential to address the persistent global problems of plastic waste and pollution. Previous work has shown that soils can harbour microbes capable of plastic degradation, but we expect there is a broader diversity of soil microbes capable of metabolizing plastics than identified to date using more traditional cultivation-based screening methods. Here we demonstrate a novel approach to identify putative plastic degrading microbes in soil. We paired in situ, real-time measurements of microbial plastic degradation on conductive sensors with subsequent microbial community profiling of the sensor-associated biofilms exhibiting appreciable degradation. To illustrate the utility of our approach, we focus on microbial degradation of the bioplastic polymer PHBV, poly(3-hydroxybutuyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate). We screened a range of soils with the in situ sensors to identify a subset of five soils with high PHBV degradation rates, and confirmed that PHBV degradation was due to microbial activity. We then extracted DNA directly from sensors placed in soils with high measured rates of PHBV degradation and used marker gene sequencing to identify the bacterial and fungal taxa associated with the observed PHBV degradation. We confirmed via in vitro culturing that microbes isolated from the sensors have a demonstrated capacity for PHBV metabolism. Together, these results highlight the benefit and feasibility of using low-cost, in-soil sensors to simultaneously collect real-time data on plastic degradation rates in soil and identify previously unrecognized microbial taxa capable of degrading and metabolizing plastic polymers in situ.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2026

LonP1 chaperone-like activity is ATPase independent and is mediated by its N-domain

The mitochondrial Lon protease is essential for proteostasis through ATP-dependent proteolysis and suppression of protein aggregation through an unknown mechanism. Here we show in three independent aggregation systems that human Lon protease (LonP1) directly interacts with fibrillar aggregates to prevent further aggregation: LonP1 binds amyloid fibrils and inhibits their growth, independently of its protease and ATPase activities. This aggregation inhibition depends on hexamer stability, and even the N-domain hexamer of LonP1 lacking all catalytic domains inhibited aggregation, which localizes its fibril-binding interface. We propose that chaperone deficiencies in LonP1 mutants that are associated with genetic disease, are caused by reduced hexamer stability or increased turnover. Our results clarify the observed dual protease and chaperone function of LonP1 by localizing them to different domains and separating the catalytic activities, thereby facilitating targeting the specific functionalities. Further, we identify the structure of the chaperone substrate to be fibrillar aggregates, suggesting that LonP1 may protect against amyloid fibrils in healthy individuals. O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=176 SRC="FIGDIR/small/723147v3_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (17K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1715a1eorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@d382fborg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@3c3fa0org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1753f3e_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG SignificanceThe mitochondrial Lon protease has long been proposed to function both as a protease and as a chaperone, though the mechanism of its chaperone activity is debated. Here, we show that human Lon binds to fibrillar protein aggregates and inhibits their elongation, but do not find evidence for chaperoning unfolded chains. Further, our findings challenge the current view that ATPase activity is required for Lon chaperone function. Instead, our results suggest that chaperone deficiency of Lon variants can be explained by variant stability. Our results provide a mechanistic separation of the protease and chaperone-like function LonP1, thereby opening up for targeting one of the functions specifically, and provide new insight into how Lon dysfunction may contribute in multiple ways to age-related and proteostasis-related diseases.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2024

Tag with Caution - How protein tagging influences the formation of condensates

Fluorescent proteins and peptide tags are essential tools in cellular biology, but can alter the biochemical properties of target proteins. Biomolecular condensates, which have emerged as key principles of cellular organization, are suggested to provide robustness to cells, yet they can also respond sensitively to small changes in environmental conditions--or tagging of their components, as our findings suggest. Here, we investigated the effects of sixteen widely used tags on condensate formation in various model organisms, in vitro, in cells and by computational modelling. We find that tagging strongly influenced condensation for some proteins, while others remained unaffected. Effects varied, with some tags enhancing and others decreasing condensation, and depended on the protein being tagged. Coarse-grained simulations suggest that the charge of the fluorescent protein tags is a critical factor modulating condensation behavior. Together, our results underscore the importance of rigorous experimental design and interpretation in condensate experiments.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2024

Full-length structure of the host targeted bacterial effector Bep1 reveals a novel structural domain conserved in FIC effector proteins from Bartonella

Bacterial effector proteins translocated via a type-IV secretion system (T4SS) typically harbor a C-terminal segment required for recognition by the type-IV secretion coupling protein 1. In the -proteobacterial pathogen Bartonella, the signal is bipartite being composed of a BID (Bep intracellular delivery) domain and a positively charged C-terminal tail 2. Here, we show the crystal structure of full length Bartonella effector protein 1 (Bep1), which shows a novel FIC - OB - BAS(BID) domain arrangement conserved in the majority of Beps with the BID domain inserted into the newly discovered BAS parent domain. We propose that the BAS domain is necessary for the overall "boomerang"-like shape of Bep1 and that it plays a role during translocation through the T4SS.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2021

Define protein variant functions with high-complexity mutagenesis libraries and enhanced mutation detection software

Pooled variant expression libraries can test the phenotypes of thousands of variants of a gene in a single multiplexed experiment. In a library encoding all single-amino-acid substitutions of a protein, each variant differs from its reference only at a single codon-position located anywhere along the coding sequence. Consequently, accurately identifying these variants by sequencing is a major technical challenge. A popular but expensive brute-force approach is to divide the pool of variants into multiple smaller sub-libraries that each contains variants of a small region and that must each be constructed and screened individually, but that can then be PCR-amplified and fully sequenced with a single read to allow direct readout of variant abundance. Here we present an approach to screen very large variant libraries with mutations spanning a wide region in a single pool, including library design criteria and mutant-detection algorithms that permit reliable calling and counting of variants from large-scale sequencing data.

systems biology↗

bioRxiv2019

An open resource of structural variation for medical and population genetics

Structural variants (SVs) rearrange large segments of the genome and can have profound consequences for evolution and human diseases. As national biobanks, disease association studies, and clinical genetic testing grow increasingly reliant on genome sequencing, population references such as the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) have become integral for interpreting genetic variation. To date, no large-scale reference maps of SVs exist from high-coverage sequencing comparable to those available for point mutations in protein-coding genes. Here, we constructed a reference atlas of SVs across 14,891 genomes from diverse global populations (54% non-European) as a component of gnomAD. We discovered a rich landscape of 433,371 distinct SVs, including 5,295 multi-breakpoint complex SVs across 11 mutational subclasses, and examples of localized chromosome shattering, as in chromothripsis. The average individual harbored 7,439 SVs, which accounted for 25-29% of all rare protein-truncating events per genome. We found strong correlations between constraint against damaging point mutations and rare SVs that both disrupt and duplicate protein-coding sequence, suggesting intolerance to reciprocal dosage alterations for a subset of tightly regulated genes. We also uncovered modest selection against noncoding SVs in cis-regulatory elements, although selection against protein-truncating SVs was stronger than any effect on noncoding SVs. Finally, we benchmarked carrier rates for medically relevant SVs, finding very large ([≥]1Mb) rare SVs in 3.8% of genomes (~1:26 individuals) and clinically reportable incidental SVs in 0.18% of genomes (~1:556 individuals). These data have been integrated directly into the gnomAD browser (https://gnomad.broadinstitute.org) and will have broad utility for population genetics, disease association, and diagnostic screening.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2017

Genome-wide detection of structural variants and indels by local assembly

Structural variants (SVs), including small insertion and deletion variants (indels), are challenging to detect through standard alignment-based variant calling methods. Sequence assembly offers a powerful approach to identifying SVs, but is difficult to apply at-scale genome-wide for SV detection due to its computational complexity and the difficulty of extracting SVs from assembly contigs. We describe SvABA, an efficient and accurate method for detecting SVs from short-read sequencing data using genome-wide local assembly with low memory and computing requirements. We evaluated SvABAs performance on the NA12878 human genome and in simulated and real cancer genomes. SvABA demonstrates superior sensitivity and specificity across a large spectrum of SVs, and substantially improved detection performance for variants in the 20-300 bp range, compared with existing methods. SvABA also identifies complex somatic rearrangements with chains of short (< 1,000 bp) templated-sequence insertions copied from distant genomic regions. We applied SvABA to 344 cancer genomes from 11 cancer types, and found that templated-sequence insertions occur in ~4% of all somatic rearrangements. Finally, we demonstrate that SvABA can identify sites of viral integration and cancer driver alterations containing medium-sized SVs.

genomics↗