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Biomedical subjects

Hideya Kawaji

Publications and source records attributed to Hideya Kawaji.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

Genome-wide analysis of mammalian promoter architecture and evolution.

Mammalian promoters can be separated into two classes, conserved TATA box-enriched promoters, which initiate at a well-defined site, and more plastic, broad and evolvable CpG-rich promoters. We have sequenced tags corresponding to several hundred thousand transcription start sites (TSSs) in the mouse and human genomes, allowing precise analysis of the sequence architecture and evolution of distinct promoter classes. Different tissues and families of genes differentially use distinct types of promoters. Our tagging methods allow quantitative analysis of promoter usage in different tissues and show that differentially regulated alternative TSSs are a common feature in protein-coding genes and commonly generate alternative N termini. Among the TSSs, we identified new start sites associated with the majority of exons and with 3' UTRs. These data permit genome-scale identification of tissue-specific promoters and analysis of the cis-acting elements associated with them.

3' Untranslated Regions↗

Pseudo-messenger RNA: phantoms of the transcriptome.

The mammalian transcriptome harbours shadowy entities that resist classification and analysis. In analogy with pseudogenes, we define pseudo-messenger RNA to be RNA molecules that resemble protein-coding mRNA, but cannot encode full-length proteins owing to disruptions of the reading frame. Using a rigorous computational pipeline, which rules out sequencing errors, we identify 10,679 pseudo-messenger RNAs (approximately half of which are transposon-associated) among the 102,801 FANTOM3 mouse cDNAs: just over 10% of the FANTOM3 transcriptome. These comprise not only transcribed pseudogenes, but also disrupted splice variants of otherwise protein-coding genes. Some may encode truncated proteins, only a minority of which appear subject to nonsense-mediated decay. The presence of an excess of transcripts whose only disruptions are opal stop codons suggests that there are more selenoproteins than currently estimated. We also describe compensatory frameshifts, where a segment of the gene has changed frame but remains translatable. In summary, we survey a large class of non-standard but potentially functional transcripts that are likely to encode genetic information and effect biological processes in novel ways. Many of these transcripts do not correspond cleanly to any identifiable object in the genome, implying fundamental limits to the goal of annotating all functional elements at the genome sequence level.

Animals↗

Alternate transcription of the Toll-like receptor signaling cascade.

BACKGROUND: Alternate splicing of key signaling molecules in the Toll-like receptor (Tlr) cascade has been shown to dramatically alter the signaling capacity of inflammatory cells, but it is not known how common this mechanism is. We provide transcriptional evidence of widespread alternate splicing in the Toll-like receptor signaling pathway, derived from a systematic analysis of the FANTOM3 mouse data set. Functional annotation of variant proteins was assessed in light of inflammatory signaling in mouse primary macrophages, and the expression of each variant transcript was assessed by splicing arrays. RESULTS: A total of 256 variant transcripts were identified, including novel variants of Tlr4, Ticam1, Tollip, Rac1, Irak1, 2 and 4, Mapk14/p38, Atf2 and Stat1. The expression of variant transcripts was assessed using custom-designed splicing arrays. We functionally tested the expression of Tlr4 transcripts under a range of cytokine conditions via northern and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. The effects of variant Mapk14/p38 protein expression on macrophage survival were demonstrated. CONCLUSION: Members of the Toll-like receptor signaling pathway are highly alternatively spliced, producing a large number of novel proteins with the potential to functionally alter inflammatory outcomes. These variants are expressed in primary mouse macrophages in response to inflammatory mediators such as interferon-gamma and lipopolysaccharide. Our data suggest a surprisingly common role for variant proteins in diversification/repression of inflammatory signaling.

Alternative Splicing↗

CAGE Basic/Analysis Databases: the CAGE resource for comprehensive promoter analysis.

Cap-analysis gene expression (CAGE) Basic and Analysis Databases store an original resource produced by CAGE, which measures expression levels of transcription starting sites by sequencing large amounts of transcript 5' ends, termed CAGE tags. Millions of human and mouse high-quality CAGE tags derived from different conditions in >20 tissues consisting of >250 RNA samples are essential for identification of novel promoters and promoter characterization in the aspect of expression profile. CAGE Basic Database is a primary database of the CAGE resource, RNA samples, CAGE libraries, CAGE clone and tag sequences and so on. CAGE Analysis Database stores promoter related information, such as counts of related transcripts, CpG islands and conserved genome region. It also provides expression profiles at base pair and promoter levels. Both databases are based on the same framework, CAGE tag starting sites, tag clusters for defining promoters and transcriptional units (TUs). Their associations and TU attributes are available to find promoters of interest. These databases were provided for Functional Annotation Of Mouse 3 (FANTOM3), an international collaboration research project focusing on expanding the transcriptome and subsequent analyses. Now access is free for all users through the World Wide Web at http://fantom3.gsc.riken.jp/.

Animals↗

Dynamic usage of transcription start sites within core promoters.

BACKGROUND: Mammalian promoters do not initiate transcription at single, well defined base pairs, but rather at multiple, alternative start sites spread across a region. We previously characterized the static structures of transcription start site usage within promoters at the base pair level, based on large-scale sequencing of transcript 5' ends. RESULTS: In the present study we begin to explore the internal dynamics of mammalian promoters, and demonstrate that start site selection within many mouse core promoters varies among tissues. We also show that this dynamic usage of start sites is associated with CpG islands, broad and multimodal promoter structures, and imprinting. CONCLUSION: Our results reveal a new level of biologic complexity within promoters--fine-scale regulation of transcription starting events at the base pair level. These events are likely to be related to epigenetic transcriptional regulation.

Animals↗

Graph-based clustering for finding distant relationships in a large set of protein sequences.

MOTIVATION: Clustering of protein sequences is widely used for the functional characterization of proteins. However, it is still not easy to cluster distantly-related proteins, which have only regional similarity among their sequences. It is therefore necessary to develop an algorithm for clustering such distantly-related proteins. RESULTS: We have developed a time and space efficient clustering algorithm. It uses a graph representation where its vertices and edges denote proteins and their sequence similarities above a certain cutoff score, respectively. It repeatedly partitions the graph by removing edges that have small weights, which correspond to low sequence similarities. To find the appropriate partitions, we introduce a score combining the normalized cut and a locally minimal cut capacities. Our method is applied to the entire 40,703 human proteins in SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL. The resulting clusters shows a 76% recall (20,529 proteins) of the 26,917 classified by InterPro. It also finds relationships not found by other clustering methods. AVAILABILITY: The complete result of our algorithm for all the human proteins in SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL, and other supplementary information are available at http://motif.ics.es.osaka-u.ac.jp/Ncut-KL/

Algorithms↗

Construction of representative transcript and protein sets of human, mouse, and rat as a platform for their transcriptome and proteome analysis.

The number of mammalian transcripts identified by full-length cDNA projects and genome sequencing projects is increasing remarkably. Clustering them into a strictly nonredundant and comprehensive set provides a platform for functional analysis of the transcriptome and proteome, but the quality of the clustering and predictive usefulness have previously required manual curation to identify truncated transcripts and inappropriate clustering of closely related sequences. A Representative Transcript and Protein Sets (RTPS) pipeline was previously designed to identify the nonredundant and comprehensive set of mouse transcripts based on clustering of a large mouse full-length cDNA set (FANTOM2). Here we propose an alternative method that is more robust, requires less manual curation, and is applicable to other organisms in addition to mouse. RTPSs of human, mouse, and rat have been produced by this method and used for validation. Their comprehensiveness and quality are discussed by comparison with other clustering approaches. The RTPSs are available at .

Animals↗

Cap analysis gene expression for high-throughput analysis of transcriptional starting point and identification of promoter usage.

We introduce cap analysis gene expression (CAGE), which is based on preparation and sequencing of concatamers of DNA tags deriving from the initial 20 nucleotides from 5' end mRNAs. CAGE allows high-throughout gene expression analysis and the profiling of transcriptional start points (TSP), including promoter usage analysis. By analyzing four libraries (brain, cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum), we redefined more accurately the TSPs of 11-27% of the analyzed transcriptional units that were hit. The frequency of CAGE tags correlates well with results from other analyses, such as serial analysis of gene expression, and furthermore maps the TSPs more accurately, including in tissue-specific cases. The high-throughput nature of this technology paves the way for understanding gene networks via correlation of promoter usage and gene transcriptional factor expression.

Animals↗

Mouse proteome analysis.

A general overview of the protein sequence set for the mouse transcriptome produced during the FANTOM2 sequencing project is presented here. We applied different algorithms to characterize protein sequences derived from a nonredundant representative protein set (RPS) and a variant protein set (VPS) of the mouse transcriptome. The functional characterization and assignment of Gene Ontology terms was done by analysis of the proteome using InterPro. The Superfamily database analyses gave a detailed structural classification according to SCOP and provide additional evidence for the functional characterization of the proteome data. The MDS database analysis revealed new domains which are not presented in existing protein domain databases. Thus the transcriptome gives us a unique source of data for the detection of new functional groups. The data obtained for the RPS and VPS sets facilitated the comparison of different patterns of protein expression. A comparison of other existing mouse and human protein sequence sets (e.g., the International Protein Index) demonstrates the common patterns in mammalian proteomes. The analysis of the membrane organization within the transcriptome of multiple eukaryotes provides valuable statistics about the distribution of secretory and transmembrane proteins

Animals↗

Exploration of novel motifs derived from mouse cDNA sequences.

We performed a systematic maximum density subgraph (MDS) detection of conserved sequence regions to discover new, biologically relevant motifs from a set of 21,050 conceptually translated mouse cDNA (FANTOM1) sequences. A total of 3202 candidate sequences, which shared similar regions over >20 amino acid residues, were screened against known conserved regions listed in Pfam, ProDom, and InterPro. The filtering procedure resulted in 139 FANTOM1 sequences belonging to 49 new motif candidates. Using annotations and multiple sequence alignment information, we removed by visual inspection 42 candidates whose members were found to be false positives because of sequence redundancy, alternative splicing, low complexity, transcribed retroviral repeat elements contained in the region of the predicted open reading frame, and reports in the literature. The remaining seven motifs have been expanded by hidden Markov model (HMM) profile searches of SWISS-PROT/TrEMBL from 28 FANTOM1 sequences to 164 members and analyzed in detail on sequence and structure level to elucidate the possible functions of motifs and members. The novel and conserved motif MDS00105 is specific for the mammalian inhibitor of growth (ING) family. Three submotifs MDS00105.1-3 are specific for ING1/ING1L, ING1-homolog, and ING3 subfamilies. The motif MDS00105 together with a PHD finger domain constitutes a module for ING proteins. Structural motif MDS00113 represents a leucine zipper-like motif. Conserved motif MDS00145 is a novel 1-acyl-SN-glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (AGPAT) submotif containing a transmembrane domain that distinguishes AGPAT3 and AGPAT4 from all other acyltransferase domain-containing proteins. Functional motif MDS00148 overlaps with the kazal-type serine protease inhibitor domain but has been detected only in an extracellular loop region of solute carrier 21 (SLC21) (organic anion transporters) family members, which may regulate the specificity of anion uptake. Our motif discovery not only aided in the functional characterization of new mouse orthologs for potential drug targets but also allowed us to predict that at least 16 other new motifs are waiting to be discovered from the current SWISS-PROT/TrEMBL database.

1-Acylglycerol-3-Phosphate O-Acyltransferase↗