Yingjin Yuan, Tianjin University, Redesign
of Yeast Chromosome and Potential Application (15 minutes)
Scientists have stitched together a version
of a yeast chromosome.
A synthetic version
of yeast chromosome III with every gene tagged can substitute for the original.
Not exact matches
There have been a few major achievements, most notably last month's creation
of a computer - designed
yeast chromosome.
Working in Berkeley, Lundblad discovered that even without telomerase,
yeast cells can sustain their
chromosome tips — the first example
of an alternative telomere - lengthening pathway.
They found that an enzyme in
yeast cells degrades the ends
of certain
chromosomes, leaving them prone to further abnormalities.
Rather than supporting a genome duplication event at the time when
yeast evolved to have twice the number
of chromosomes, their data indicated that the duplicated genes had begun to diverge long before.
Yeast grow on an agar plate in the form
of the microbe's
chromosomes, with colors representing whether a
chromosome exists in a synthetic form (yellow) or just wild - type (orange).
Boeke's team has since edited the
yeast's entire genome — streamlining it and adding molecular labels to ease future work — before farming out the synthesis
of the 16 rewritten
chromosomes to an international consortium
of geneticists and
yeast biologists.
They then replaced one
of a living
yeast cell's natural
chromosomes with it — the first time this had been done in more complex cells with a nucleus.
The team that built the first synthetic
yeast chromosome has added five more
chromosomes to their repertoire, totalling roughly a third
of the organism's genome.
As a result
of this careful debugging,
yeast cells with the synthetic
chromosomes grow just as quickly in the lab as normal, wild
yeast, despite the wholesale alterations (Science, DOI: 10.1126 / science.aaf4557).
To those who tremble at the thought
of manipulating the
chromosomes of living creatures, Oliver says, «We're only applying our techniques to
yeast at the moment, not monsters.»
The current work is just 3 percent
of the way toward creating an entirely synthetic
yeast genome (there are 16
chromosomes in total) and will take many more years to finish.
Yeasts, like humans, are eukaryotes: They have complex DNA packaged in
chromosomes and riddled with introns (pieces
of DNA that don't contribute to the final protein) and «junk DNA» with no known purpose.
Several other technical advances helped, including the development
of huge
yeast artificial
chromosomes, so - called «megaYACs», which can store up to 1.4 million pairs
of DNA in one big chunk — 35 times more than can be stored in bacteria, the conventional way to clone DNA.
But Judith Berman, a
yeast geneticist at the University
of Minnesota, Twin Cities, has shown that in another species, Candida albicans, some cells with extra
chromosomes are more resistant to drugs.
The studies on autophagy by Yoshinori Ohsumi, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016, and the discovery
of cell cycle regulatory genes for which Leland Hartwell, Timothy Hunt and Paul Nurse received the same award in 2001, including the research
of Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak on telomeres, telomerase and its protective effect on the
chromosomes, were all made possible thanks to
yeast.
The stressed
yeast cells lost or duplicated random
chromosomes when they divided, producing colonies with a vast array
of freak cells.
A team led by Rong Li
of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, exposed baker's
yeast cells (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) to stressful stimuli like heat and chemicals, and looked for changes in
chromosome replication.
Unique
chromosome shuffling patterns evolved in the different
yeast cells, helping some
of them survive the various drugs.
Using a novel method they developed to map
chromosome breaks in a model organism, the budding
yeast, Wenyi Feng, Ph.D.,
of Upstate Medical University and her colleagues have discovered new information as to how and where
chromosome fragile sites can occur in human DNA.
For instance, in four
of the five colonies that survived a dose
of fluconazole, each
yeast had an extra copy
of chromosome 8.
Li points out that, unlike
yeast cells, human and mammalian cells have a protein called p53 that kills cells with abnormal numbers
of chromosomes.
Researchers have already constructed functioning viral and bacterial genomes, and the
yeast genome project, known as Sc2.0, aims to have all 16
chromosomes — roughly 10 million base pairs — assembled by the end
of next year.
«The duplication
of a single
chromosome is enough to change the
yeast from a relatively smooth colony to one with what we describe as a «fluffy» morphology.»
Detailed genetic analyses have now shown that the
yeast cells individually multiply as many as six
of their 16 total
chromosomes during cell division, and can reverse this multiplication again.
An international effort to build a carefully edited version
of the
yeast genome from scratch has reached a milestone by completing five more
of 16
chromosomes
Chromosome - refolding model
of mating - type switching in
yeast.
Kinetochore targeting
of fission
yeast Mad and Bub proteins is essential for spindle checkpoint function but not for all
chromosome segregation roles
of Bub1p.
In fission
yeast, telomeres are one
of the locations where heterochromatin is found, another being the centromere — the dense knob - like structure at the center
of a
chromosome.
They noted also that the number
of chromosome sets (ploidy) in the
yeast cells had an impact on fitness across all
of those species tested.
A global research team has built five new synthetic
yeast chromosomes, meaning that 30 percent
of a key organism's genetic material has now been swapped out for engineered replacements.
In addition to having connected research communities, Hieter and his lab have made many significant contributions to our understanding
of chromosome biology, including the dissection
of yeast centromeres and the identification
of genes involved in genome stability.
Methods will be developed for rapidly following de novo centromere assembly in mammalian cells after introduction
of large arrays
of centromeric alphoid DNA carried on bacterial or
yeast artificial
chromosomes.
The new round
of papers consists
of an overview and five papers describing the first assembly
of synthetic
yeast chromosomes synII, synV, synVI, synX, and synXII.
Mitchell was the lead author
of one
of seven papers published in March announcing the project's latest milestone: the completion
of another five
of yeast's 16
chromosomes.
Jef Boeke on the process
of analyzing
yeast colonies used to assemble
chromosomes in the GenomeFoundry at NYU Langone Center.