A network of genes regulated by light in cyanobacteria

Synergy: a web resource for exploring gene regulation in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803

Despite being a highly studied model organism, most genes of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 encode proteins with completely unknown function. To facilitate studies of gene regulation in Synechocystis, we have developed Synergy (http://synergy.plantgenie.org), a web application integrating co-expression networks and regulatory motif analysis. Co-expression networks were inferred from publicly available microarray experiments, while regulatory motifs were identified using a phylogenetic footprinting approach. Automatically discovered motifs were shown to be enriched in the network neighborhoods of regulatory proteins much more often than in the neighborhoods of non-regulatory genes, showing that the data provide a sound starting point for studying gene regulation in Synechocystis. Concordantly, we provide several case studies demonstrating that Synergy can be used to find biologically relevant regulatory mechanisms in Synechocystis. Synergy can be used to interactively perform analyses such as gene/motif search, network visualization and motif/function enrichment. Considering the importance of Synechocystis for photosynthesis and biofuel research, we believe that Synergy will become a valuable resource to the research community.

How cyanobacteria pose new problems to old methods: challenges in microarray time series analysis

Background

The transcriptomes of several cyanobacterial strains have been shown to exhibit diurnal oscillation patterns, reflecting the diurnal phototrophic lifestyle of the organisms. The analysis of such genome-wide transcriptional oscillations is often facilitated by the use of clustering algorithms in conjunction with a number of pre-processing steps. Biological interpretation is usually focussed on the time and phase of expression of the resulting groups of genes. However, the use of microarray technology in such studies requires the normalization of pre-processing data, with unclear impact on the qualitative and quantitative features of the derived information on the number of oscillating transcripts and their respective phases.

Results

A microarray based evaluation of diurnal expression in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 is presented. As expected, the temporal expression patterns reveal strong oscillations in transcript abundance. We compare the Fourier transformation-based expression phase before and after the application of quantile normalization, median polishing, cyclical LOESS, and least oscillating set (LOS) normalization. Whereas LOS normalization mostly preserves the phases of the raw data, the remaining methods introduce systematic biases. In particular, quantile-normalization is found to introduce a phase-shift of 180°, effectively changing night-expressed genes into day-expressed ones. Comparison of a large number of clustering results of differently normalized data shows that the normalization method determines the result. Subsequent steps, such as the choice of data transformation, similarity measure, and clustering algorithm, only play minor roles. We find that the standardization and the DTF transformation are favorable for the clustering of time series in contrast to the 12 m transformation. We use the cluster-wise functional enrichment of a clustering derived by LOS normalization, clustering using flowClust, and DFT transformation to derive the diurnal biological program of Synechocystis sp..

Conclusion

Application of quantile normalization, median polishing, and also cyclic LOESS normalization of the presented cyanobacterial dataset lead to increased numbers of oscillating genes and the systematic shift of the expression phase. The LOS normalization minimizes the observed detrimental effects. As previous analyses employed a variety of different normalization methods, a direct comparison of results must be treated with caution.

Expression of fur and its antisense α-fur from Microcystis aeruginosa PCC7806 as response to light and oxidative stress

Ferric uptake regulation (Fur) proteins are prokaryotic transcriptional regulators that integrate signaling of iron metabolism and oxidative stress responses with several environmental stresses. In photosynthetic organisms, Fur proteins regulate many genes involved in photosynthesis, nitrogen metabolism and other key processes. Also, Fur triggers the expression of virulence factors in many bacterial pathogens, and Fur from Microcystis aeruginosa has been shown to bind promoter regions of the microcystin synthesis gene cluster. In this work, we studied transcriptional responses of fur genes under different light intensities and oxidative stress. An antisense of fur, the α-fur RNA, plays an important role in regulating fur expression under oxidative stress, affecting levels of Fur protein in cells. Importantly, an active photosynthetic electron chain is required for the expression of the fur gene.

A model of cyclic transcriptomic behavior in the cyanobacterium Cyanothece sp. ATCC 51142

Systems biology attempts to reconcile large amounts of disparate data with existing knowledge to provide models of functioning biological systems. The cyanobacterium Cyanothece sp. ATCC 51142 is an excellent candidate for such systems biology studies because: (i) it displays tight functional regulation between photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation; (ii) it has robust cyclic patterns at the genetic, protein and metabolomic levels; and (iii) it has potential applications for bioenergy production and carbon sequestration. We have represented the transcriptomic data from Cyanothece 51142 under diurnal light/dark cycles as a high-level functional abstraction and describe development of a predictive in silico model of diurnal and circadian behavior in terms of regulatory and metabolic processes in this organism. We show that incorporating network topology into the model improves performance in terms of our ability to explain the behavior of the system under new conditions. The model presented robustly describes transcriptomic behavior of Cyanothece 51142 under different cyclic and non-cyclic growth conditions, and represents a significant advance in the understanding of gene regulation in this important organism.

Concerted changes in gene expression and cell physiology of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803 during transitions between nitrogen and light-limited growth

Physiological adaptation and genome-wide expression profiles of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803 in response to gradual transitions between nitrogen-limited and light-limited growth conditions were measured in continuous cultures. Transitions induced changes in pigment composition, light absorption coefficient, photosynthetic electron transport, and specific growth rate. Physiological changes were accompanied by reproducible changes in the expression of several hundred open reading frames, genes with functions in photosynthesis and respiration, carbon and nitrogen assimilation, protein synthesis, phosphorus metabolism, and overall regulation of cell function and proliferation. Cluster analysis of the nearly 1,600 regulated open reading frames identified eight clusters, each showing a different temporal response during the transitions. Two large clusters mirrored each other. One cluster included genes involved in photosynthesis, which were up-regulated during light-limited growth but down-regulated during nitrogen-limited growth. Conversely, genes in the other cluster were down-regulated during light-limited growth but up-regulated during nitrogen-limited growth; this cluster included several genes involved in nitrogen uptake and assimilation. These results demonstrate complementary regulation of gene expression for two major metabolic activities of cyanobacteria. Comparison with batch-culture experiments revealed interesting differences in gene expression between batch and continuous culture and illustrates that continuous-culture experiments can pick up subtle changes in cell physiology and gene expression.

Essential role of glutathione in acclimation to environmental and redox perturbations in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803

Glutathione, a nonribosomal thiol tripeptide, has been shown to be critical for many processes in plants. Much less is known about the roles of glutathione in cyanobacteria, oxygenic photosynthetic prokaryotes that are the evolutionary precursor of the chloroplast. An understanding of glutathione metabolism in cyanobacteria is expected to provide novel insight into the evolution of the elaborate and extensive pathways that utilize glutathione in photosynthetic organisms. To investigate the function of glutathione in cyanobacteria, we generated deletion mutants of glutamate-cysteine ligase (gshA) and glutathione synthetase (gshB) in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. Complete segregation of the ΔgshA mutation was not achieved, suggesting that GshA activity is essential for growth. In contrast, fully segregated ΔgshB mutants were isolated and characterized. The ΔgshB strain lacks reduced glutathione (GSH) but instead accumulates the precursor compound γ-glutamylcysteine (γ-EC). The ΔgshB strain grows slower than the wild-type strain under favorable conditions and exhibits extremely reduced growth or death when subjected to conditions promoting oxidative stress. Furthermore, we analyzed thiol contents in the wild type and the ΔgshB mutant after subjecting the strains to multiple environmental and redox perturbations. We found that conditions promoting growth stimulate glutathione biosynthesis. We also determined that cellular GSH and γ-EC content decline following exposure to dark and blue light and during photoheterotrophic growth. Moreover, a rapid depletion of GSH and γ-EC is observed in the wild type and the ΔgshB strain, respectively, when cells are starved for nitrate or sulfate.

A systems-level analysis of the effects of light quality on the metabolism of a cyanobacterium

Photosynthetic organisms experience changes in light quantity and light quality in their natural habitat. In response to changes in light quality, these organisms redistribute excitation energy and adjust photosystem stoichiometry to maximize the utilization of available light energy. However, the response of other cellular processes to changes in light quality is mostly unknown. Here, we report a systematic investigation into the adaptation of cellular processes in Synechocystis species PCC 6803 to light that preferentially excites either photosystem II or photosystem I. We find that preferential excitation of photosystem II and photosystem I induces massive reprogramming of the Synechocystis transcriptome. The rewiring of cellular processes begins as soon as Synechocystis senses the imbalance in the excitation of reaction centers. We find that Synechocystis utilizes the cyclic photosynthetic electron transport chain for ATP generation and a major part of the respiratory pathway to generate reducing equivalents and carbon skeletons during preferential excitation of photosystem I. In contrast, cytochrome c oxidase and photosystem I act as terminal components of the photosynthetic electron transport chain to produce sufficient ATP and limited amounts of NADPH and reduced ferredoxin during preferential excitation of photosystem II. To overcome the shortage of NADPH and reduced ferredoxin, Synechocystis preferentially activates transporters and acquisition pathways to assimilate ammonia, urea, and arginine over nitrate as a nitrogen source. This study provides a systematic analysis of cellular processes in cyanobacteria in response to preferential excitation and shows that the cyanobacterial cell undergoes significant adjustment of cellular processes, many of which were previously unknown.

Energy biotechnology with cyanobacteria

The world's future energy demand calls for a sustainable alternative for the use of fossil fuels, to restrict further global warming. Harvesting solar energy via photosynthesis is one of Nature's remarkable achievements. Existing technologies exploit this process for energy 'production' via processing of, for example, part of plant biomass into ethanol, and of algal biomass into biodiesel. Fortifying photosynthetic organisms with the ability to produce biofuels directly would bypass the need to synthesize all the complex chemicals of 'biomass'. A promising way to achieve this is to redirect cyanobacterial intermediary metabolism by channeling (Calvin cycle) intermediates into fermentative metabolic pathways. This review describes this approach via the biosynthesis of fermentation end products, like alcohols and hydrogen, driven by solar energy, from water (and CO2).

Integration of carbon and nitrogen metabolism with energy production is crucial to light acclimation in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis

Light drives the production of chemical energy and reducing equivalents in photosynthetic organisms required for the assimilation of essential nutrients. This process also generates strong oxidants and reductants that can be damaging to the cellular processes, especially during absorption of excess excitation energy. Cyanobacteria, like other oxygenic photosynthetic organisms, respond to increases in the excitation energy, such as during exposure of cells to high light (HL) by the reduction of antenna size and photosystem content. However, the mechanism of how Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, a cyanobacterium, maintains redox homeostasis and coordinates various metabolic processes under HL stress remains poorly understood. In this study, we have utilized time series transcriptome data to elucidate the global responses of Synechocystis to HL. Identification of differentially regulated genes involved in the regulation, protection, and maintenance of redox homeostasis has offered important insights into the optimized response of Synechocystis to HL. Our results indicate a comprehensive integrated homeostatic interaction between energy production (photosynthesis) and energy consumption (assimilation of carbon and nitrogen). In addition, measurements of physiological parameters under different growth conditions showed that integration between the two processes is not a consequence of limitations in the external carbon and nitrogen levels available to the cells. We have also discovered the existence of a novel glycosylation pathway, to date known as an important nutrient sensor only in eukaryotes. Up-regulation of a gene encoding the rate-limiting enzyme in the hexosamine pathway suggests a regulatory role for protein glycosylation in Synechocystis under HL.

Global transcriptomic analysis of Cyanothece 51142 reveals robust diurnal oscillation of central metabolic processes

Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic organisms and are the only prokaryotes known to have a circadian lifestyle. Unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria such as Cyanothece sp. ATCC 51142 produce oxygen and can also fix atmospheric nitrogen, a process exquisitely sensitive to oxygen. To accommodate such antagonistic processes, the intracellular environment of Cyanothece oscillates between aerobic and anaerobic conditions during a day-night cycle. This is accomplished by temporal separation of the two processes: photosynthesis during the day and nitrogen fixation at night. Although previous studies have examined periodic changes in transcript levels for a limited number of genes in Cyanothece and other unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria, a comprehensive study of transcriptional activity in a nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium is necessary to understand the impact of the temporal separation of photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation on global gene regulation and cellular metabolism. We have examined the expression patterns of nearly 5,000 genes in Cyanothece 51142 during two consecutive diurnal periods. Our analysis showed that approximately 30% of these genes exhibited robust oscillating expression profiles. Interestingly, this set included genes for almost all central metabolic processes in Cyanothece 51142. A transcriptional network of all genes with significantly oscillating transcript levels revealed that the majority of genes encoding enzymes in numerous individual biochemical pathways, such as glycolysis, oxidative pentose phosphate pathway, and glycogen metabolism, were coregulated and maximally expressed at distinct phases during the diurnal cycle. These studies provide a comprehensive picture of how a physiologically relevant diurnal light-dark cycle influences the metabolism in a photosynthetic bacterium.

Systems level analysis of osteoclastogenesis reveals intrinsic and extrinsic regulatory interactions

Osteoclasts are bone-resorbing cells derived from the myeloid lineage that play a central role in bone remodeling and inflammatory bone erosion diseases. The receptor activator of NF-kappaB ligand (RANKL) produced by osteoblasts and activated immune cells initiates the development of osteoclasts in the bone marrow. Using time series gene expression data, the intrinsic processes and the extrinsic factors that control osteoclastogenesis were identified. The gene expression profiles display distinct commitment and differentiation phases. Analysis of the time course revealed several mechanistic details, including the complex role of cholesterol in osteoclast development. Epistatic interactions and the coordination between cellular processes that regulate development were inferred from the coexpression network. The coexpression network indicated that osteoclasts induce angiogenesis and recruit T-cells to the site of osteoclastogenesis early in the commitment phase. The resulting model provides an essential framework for a better understanding of the epigenetic program of osteoclastogenesis.