Keywords: yeast
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How Selfish Genes Succeed: Critical Insights Uncovered About Dangerous DNASTOWERS INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH, SciTechDaily, 2022.
New findings from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research uncover critical insights about how a dangerous selfish gene—considered to be a parasitic portion of DNA—functions and survives. Understanding this dynamic is a valuable resource for the broader community studying ... |
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How selfish genes succeedStowers Institute for Medical Research, ScienceDaily, 2022.
A new study reveals how a selfish gene in yeast uses a poison-antidote strategy that enables its function and likely has facilitated its long-term evolutionary success. This strategy is an important addition for scientists studying similar systems including teams that are ... |
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S. pombe wtf drivers use dual transcriptional regulation and selective protein exclusion from spores to cause meiotic driveN. L. Nuckolls, A. Nidamangala Srinivasa, A. C. Mok, R. M. Helston, M. A. Bravo Núñez, J. J. Lange, T. J. Gallagher, C. W. Seidel and S. E. Zanders, PLOS Genetics, 18:e1009847. 2022.
Author summary Genomes are often considered a collection of ‘good’ genes that provide beneficial functions for the organism. From this perspective, disease is thought to arise due to disfunction of ‘good’ genes. For example, infertility can be caused by the failure of a ... |
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Engineering stringent genetic biocontainment of yeast with a protein stability switchS. A. Hoffmann and Y. Cai, bioRxiv, 2022.11.24.517818. 2022.
Synthetic biology holds immense promise to tackle key problems we are facing, for instance in resource use, environmental health, and human health care. However, comprehensive safety measures are needed to deploy genetically engineered microorganisms in open-environment ... |
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Discovery of 119-Million-Year-Old “Selfish” Genes Casts Doubt on Established Evolution BeliefsStowers Institute for Medical Research, SciTechDaily, 2022.
Meiotic drivers, a kind of selfish gene, are indeed selfish. They are found in virtually all species’ genomes, including humans, and unjustly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, resulting in infertility and impaired organism health. Their ... |
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Discovery of 119-Million year old Selfish Genes Casts Doubt on Established Evolution BeliefsStowers Institute for Medical Research, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, 2022.
Meiotic drivers, a kind of selfish gene, are indeed selfish. They are found in virtually all species’ genomes, including humans, and unjustly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, resulting in infertility and impaired organism health. Their ... |
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119-Million-Year-Old “Selfish” Genes Uncovered in YeastStowers Institute for Medical Research, Technology Networks, 2022.
Meiotic drivers, a type of selfish gene, are indeed selfish. Present in the genomes of nearly all species, including humans, they unfairly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, sometimes leading to infertility, and decreased organism health. ... |
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The wtf meiotic driver gene family has unexpectedly persisted for over 100 million yearsM. De Carvalho, G. S. Jia, A. Nidamangala Srinivasa, R. B. Billmyre, Y. H. Xu, J. J. Lange, I. M. Sabbarini, L. L. Du and S. E. Zanders, eLife, 11. 2022.
Meiotic drivers are selfish elements that bias their own transmission into more than half of the viable progeny produced by a driver+/driver- heterozygote. Meiotic drivers are thought to exist for relatively short evolutionary timespans because a driver gene or gene family is ... |
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Analysis of a Cas12a-based gene-drive system in budding yeastI. C. Lewis, Y. Yan and G. C. Finnigan, Access Microbiol, 3:000301. 2022.
The discovery and adaptation of CRISPR/Cas systems within molecular biology has provided advances across biological research, agriculture and human health. Genomic manipulation through use of a CRISPR nuclease and programmed guide RNAs has become a common and widely accessible ... |
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Chromosome drives via CRISPR-Cas9 in yeastH. Xu, M. Han, S. Zhou, B.-Z. Li, Y. Wu and Y.-J. Yuan, Nature Communications, 11:4344. 2020.
Our results show that the entire Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome can be eliminated efficiently through only one double-strand break around the centromere via CRISPR-Cas9. As a proof-of-concept experiment of this CRISPR-Cas9 chromosome drive system, the synthetic yeast ... |
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Survival of the fit-ishStowers Institute for Medical Research, Science Daily, 2020.
In a paper published online August 13, 2020, in eLife, members of the Zanders lab explain how it could be possible that meiotic drivers persist in the population, even as they kill off many would-be hosts. It turns out that S. pombe can employ variants of other genes to help ... |
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Atypical meiosis can be adaptive in outcrossed Schizosaccharomyces pombe due to wtf meiotic driversM. A. Bravo Núñez, I. M. Sabbarini, L. E. Eide, R. L. Unckless and S. E. Zanders, eLife, 9:e57936. 2020.
Here, we demonstrate that in scenarios analogous to outcrossing, wtf drivers generate a fitness landscape in which atypical spores, such as aneuploids and diploids, are advantageous. In this context, wtf drivers can decrease the fitness costs of mutations that disrupt meiotic ... |
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The yeast mating-type switching endonuclease HO is a domesticated member of an unorthodox homing genetic element familyA. Y. Coughlan, L. Lombardi, S. Braun-Galleani, A. A. R. Martos, V. Galeote, F. Bigey, S. Dequin, K. P. Byrne and K. H. Wolfe, eLife, 9:e55336. 2020.
The mating-type switching endonuclease HO plays a central role in the natural life cycle of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but its evolutionary origin is unknown. HO is a recent addition to yeast genomes, present in only a few genera close to Saccharomyces. Here we show that HO is ... |
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Dramatically diverse Schizosaccharomyces pombe wtf meiotic drivers all display high gamete-killing efficiencyM. A. Bravo Núñez, I. M. Sabbarini, M. T. Eickbush, Y. Liang, J. J. Lange, A. M. Kent and S. E. Zanders, PLOS Genetics, 16:e1008350. 2020.
During gametogenesis, the two gene copies at a given locus, known as alleles, are each transmitted to 50% of the gametes (e.g. sperm). However, some alleles cheat so that they are found in more than the expected 50% of gametes, often at the expense of fertility. This selfish ... |
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Modulating CRISPR gene drive activity through nucleocytoplasmic localization of Cas9 in S. cerevisiaeM. E. Goeckel, E. M. Basgall, I. C. Lewis, S. C. Goetting, Y. Yan, M. Halloran and G. C. Finnigan, Fungal Biology Biotechnology, 6:2. 2019.
In this study, we use artificial gene drives in budding yeast to explore mechanisms to modulate nuclease activity of Cas9 through its nucleocytoplasmic localization. We examine non-native nuclear localization sequences (both NLS and NES) on Cas9 fusion proteins in vivo through ... |
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A Multiple Gene Drive SystemFerdinand Nanfack Minkeu, IGTRCN, 2019.
Yan & Finnigan, (2018) recently published a paper in Scientific Reports describing an artificial multi-locus gene drive system by using a single Cas9 and three guide RNA (gRNA) in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Nuclease-based gene drives do not follow the typical ... |
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Gene drive inhibition by the anti-CRISPR proteins AcrIIA2 and AcrIIA4 in Saccharomyces cerevisiaeBasgall, EMG, S. C.; Goeckel, M. E.; Giersch, R. M.; Roggenkamp, E.; Schrock, M. N.; Halloran, M.; Finnigan, G. C., Microbiology-Sgm, 164:464-474. 2018.
Given the widespread use and application of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas gene editing system across many fields, a major focus has been the development, engineering and discovery of molecular means to precisely control and regulate ... |
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Development of a multi-locus CRISPR gene drive system in budding yeastYan, YF, Gregory C., Scientific reports, 8:17277-17277. 2018.
The discovery of CRISPR/Cas gene editing has allowed for major advances in many biomedical disciplines and basic research. One arrangement of this biotechnology, a nuclease-based gene drive, can rapidly deliver a genetic element through a given population and studies in fungi and ... |
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Genome rearrangements and pervasive meiotic drive cause hybrid infertility in fission yeastZanders, SEE, M. T.; Yu, J. S.; Kang, J. W.; Fowler, K. R.; Smith, G. R.; Malik, H. S., eLife, 3:e02630. 2014.
Hybrid sterility is one of the earliest postzygotic isolating mechanisms to evolve between two recently diverged species. Here we identify causes underlying hybrid infertility of two recently diverged fission yeast species Schizosaccharomyces pombe and S. kambucha, which mate to ... |
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Adaptation for horizontal transfer in a homing endonucleaseKoufopanou, VG, M. R.; Burt, A., Molecular Biology and Evolution, 19:239-246. 2002.
Selfish genes of no function other than self-propagation are susceptible to degeneration if they become fixed in a population. and regular transfer to new species may be the only means for their long-term persistence. To test this idea we surveyed 24 species of yeast for VDE, a ... |
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Outcrossed sex allows a selfish gene to invade yeast populationsGoddard, MRG, D.; Burt, A., Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 268:2537-2542. 2001.
Homing endonuclease genes (HEGs) in eukaryotes are optional genes that have no obvious effect on host phenotype except for causing chromosomes not containing a cop), of the gene to be cut, thus causing them to be inherited at a greater than Mendelian rate via gene conversion. ... |
