Wiechecki, K. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2024

Cell cycle-driven transcriptome maturation confers multilineage competence to cardiopharyngeal progenitors

During development, stem and progenitor cells divide and transition through germ layer- and lineage-specific multipotent states to generate the diverse cell types that compose an animal. Defined changes in biomolecular composition underlie the progressive loss of potency and acquisition of lineage-specific characteristics. For example, multipotent cardiopharyngeal progenitors display multilineage transcriptional priming, whereby both the cardiac and pharyngeal muscle programs are partially active and coexist in the same progenitor cells, while their daughter cells engage in a cardiac or pharyngeal muscle differentiation path only after cell division. Here, using the tunicate Ciona, we studied the acquisition of multilineage competence and the coupling between fate decisions and cell cycle progression. We showed that multipotent cardiopharyngeal progenitors acquire the competence to produce distinct Tbx1/10 (+) and (-) daughter cells shortly before mitosis, which is necessary for Tbx1/10 activation. By combining transgene-based sample barcoding with single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq), we uncovered transcriptome-wide dynamics in migrating cardiopharyngeal progenitors as cells progress through G1, S and G2 phases. We termed this process "transcriptome maturation", and identified candidate "mature genes", including the Rho GAP-coding gene Depdc1, which peak in late G2. Functional assays indicated that transcriptome maturation fosters cardiopharyngeal competence, in part through multilineage priming and proper oriented and asymmetric division that influences subsequent fate decisions, illustrating the concept of "behavioral competence". Both classic feedforward circuits and coupling with cell cycle progression drive transcriptome maturation, uncovering distinct levels of coupling between cell cycle progression and fateful molecular transitions. We propose that coupling competence and fate decision with the G2 and G1 phases, respectively, ensures the timely deployment of lineage-specific programs.

developmental biology↗

bioRxiv2017

Integrative meta-analysis reveals that most yeast proteins are very stable

Measurements for protein half-lives in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae reported large discrepancies, with median values between minutes to several hours. We present a unifying analysis that provides a consistent half-life estimate, based on our re-analysis of three published and one new dataset of cells grown under similar conditions. We found that degradation of many proteins can be approximated by exponential decay. Protein disappearance was primarily driven by dilution due to cell division, with cell doubling times ranging from [~]2 to 3.5 hours across the four experiments. After adjusting for doubling time, protein half-lives increased to median values between [~]7.5 to [~]40 hours. Half-lives correlated with cell doubling time even after adjustment, implying that slow growth also slows protein degradation. All estimates were validated by multiple means and were robust to different analysis methods. Overall, protein stability correlated with abundance and showed weak enrichment for degradation signals such as degrons and disordered regions. Long-lived proteins often functioned in oxidation-reduction and amino acid synthesis. Short-lived proteins often functioned in ribosome biogenesis. Despite some overall differences in behavior, all methods were able to resolve subtle difference in half-lives of ribosomal proteins, e.g. the short lifespan of RPL10. Finally, our results help the design of future experiments: time series measurements need to cover at least two to three cell doubling times for accurate estimates, exponential decay provides a reasonable proxy for protein stability, and it can be sufficiently estimated with four measurement points.

systems biology↗