| 1. |
- Horvath, Robert, et al.
(författare)
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Single-cell expression noise and gene-body methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana
- 2019
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Ingår i: Heredity. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0018-067X .- 1365-2540. ; 123:2, s. 81-91
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gene-body methylation (gbM) refers to an increased level of methylated cytosines specifically in a CG sequence context within genes. gbM is found in plant genes with intermediate expression level, which evolve slowly, and is often broadly conserved across millions of years of evolution. Intriguingly however, some plants lack gbM, and thus it remains unclear whether gbM has a function. In animals, there is support for a role of gbM in reducing erroneous transcription and transcription noise, but so far most studies in plants have tested for an effect of gbM on expression level, not noise. Here, we therefore tested whether gbM was associated with reduced expression noise in Arabidopsis thaliana, using single-cell transcriptome sequencing data from root quiescent centre cells. We find that gbM genes have lower expression noise levels than unmethylated genes. However, an analysis of covariance revealed that, if other genomic features are taken into account, this association disappears. Nonetheless, gbM genes were more consistently expressed across single-cell samples, supporting previous inference that gbM genes are constitutively expressed. Finally, we observed that fewer RNAseq reads map to introns of gbM genes than to introns of unmethylated genes, which indicates that gbM might be involved in reducing erroneous transcription by reducing intron retention.
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| 2. |
- Slotte, Tanja, et al.
(författare)
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The Capsella rubella genome and the genomic consequences of rapid mating system evolution
- 2013
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Ingår i: Nature Genetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1061-4036 .- 1546-1718. ; 45:7, s. 831-U165
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The shift from outcrossing to selfing is common in flowering plants(1,2), but the genomic consequences and the speed at which they emerge remain poorly understood. An excellent model for understanding the evolution of self fertilization is provided by Capsella rubella, which became self compatible <200,000 years ago. We report a C. rubella reference genome sequence and compare RNA expression and polymorphism patterns between C. rubella and its outcrossing progenitor Capsella grandiflora. We found a clear shift in the expression of genes associated with flowering phenotypes, similar to that seen in Arabidopsis, in which self fertilization evolved about 1 million years ago. Comparisons of the two Capsella species showed evidence of rapid genome-wide relaxation of purifying selection in C. rubella without a concomitant change in transposable element abundance. Overall we document that the transition to selfing may be typified by parallel shifts in gene expression, along with a measurable reduction of purifying selection.
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