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Communication between individuals via molecules, termed chemosignaling, is widespread among animal and plant species. However, we lack knowledge on the specific functions of the substances involved for most systems. The femoral gland is an organ that secretes a waxy substance involved in chemical communication in lizards. Although the lipids and volatile substances secreted by the femoral glands have been investigated in several biochemical studies, the protein composition and functions of secretions remain completely unknown. Applying a proteomic approach, we provide the first attempt to comprehensively characterize the protein composition of femoral gland secretions from the Galápagos marine iguana. Using samples from several organs, the marine iguana proteome was assembled by next-generation sequencing and MS, resulting in 7513 proteins. Of these, 4305 proteins were present in the femoral gland, including keratins, small serum proteins, and fatty acid-binding proteins. Surprisingly, no proteins with discernible roles in partner recognition or inter-species communication could be identified. However, we did find several proteins with direct associations to the innate immune system, including lysozyme C, antileukoproteinase (ALP), pulmonary surfactant protein (SFTPD), and galectin (LGALS1) suggesting that the femoral glands function as an important barrier to infection. Furthermore, we report several novel anti-microbial peptides from the femoral glands that show similar action against Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis such as oncocin, a peptide known for its effectiveness against Gram-negative pathogens. This proteomics data set is a valuable resource for future functional protein analysis and demonstrates that femoral gland secretions also perform functions of the innate immune system., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest—Authors declare no competing interests., (© 2020 Tellkamp et al.)

Formation and segregation of cell lineages forming the heart have been studied extensively but the underlying gene regulatory networks and epigenetic changes driving cell fate transitions during early cardiogenesis are still only partially understood. Here, we comprehensively characterize mouse cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs) marked by Nkx2-5 and Isl1 expression from E7.5 to E9.5 using single-cell RNA sequencing and transposase-accessible chromatin profiling (ATAC-seq). By leveraging on cell-to-cell transcriptome and chromatin accessibility heterogeneity, we identify different previously unknown cardiac subpopulations. Reconstruction of developmental trajectories reveal that multipotent Isl1 + CPC pass through an attractor state before separating into different developmental branches, whereas extended expression of Nkx2-5 commits CPC to an unidirectional cardiomyocyte fate. Furthermore, we show that CPC fate transitions are associated with distinct open chromatin states critically depending on Isl1 and Nkx2-5. Our data provide a model of transcriptional and epigenetic regulations during cardiac progenitor cell fate decisions at single-cell resolution.

The cnidarian freshwater polyp Hydra sp. exhibits an unparalleled regeneration capacity in the animal kingdom. Using an integrative transcriptomic and stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture proteomic/phosphoproteomic approach, we studied stem cell-based regeneration in Hydra polyps. As major contributors to head regeneration, we identified diverse signaling pathways adopted for the regeneration response as well as enriched novel genes. Our global analysis reveals two distinct molecular cascades: an early injury response and a subsequent, signaling driven patterning of the regenerating tissue. A key factor of the initial injury response is a general stabilization of proteins and a net upregulation of transcripts, which is followed by a subsequent activation cascade of signaling molecules including Wnts and transforming growth factor (TGF) beta-related factors. We observed moderate overlap between the factors contributing to proteomic and transcriptomic responses suggesting a decoupled regulation between the transcriptional and translational levels. Our data also indicate that interstitial stem cells and their derivatives (e.g., neurons) have no major role in Hydra head regeneration. Remarkably, we found an enrichment of evolutionarily more recent genes in the early regeneration response, whereas conserved genes are more enriched in the late phase. In addition, genes specific to the early injury response were enriched in transposon insertions. Genetic dynamicity and taxon-specific factors might therefore play a hitherto underestimated role in Hydra regeneration., (© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.)

Regeneration of the lens in newts is quite a unique process. The lens is removed in its entirety and regeneration ensues from the pigment epithelial cells of the dorsal iris via transdifferentiation. The same type of cells from the ventral iris are not capable of regenerating a lens. It is, thus, expected that differences between dorsal and ventral iris during the process of regeneration might provide important clues pertaining to the mechanism of regeneration. In this paper, we employed next generation RNA-seq to determine gene expression patterns during lens regeneration in Notophthalmus viridescens. The expression of more than 38,000 transcripts was compared between dorsal and ventral iris. Although very few genes were found to be dorsal- or ventral-specific, certain groups of genes were up-regulated specifically in the dorsal iris. These genes are involved in cell cycle, gene regulation, cytoskeleton and immune response. In addition, the expression of six highly regulated genes, TBX5, FGF10, UNC5B, VAX2, NR2F5, and NTN1, was verified using qRT-PCR. These graded gene expression patterns provide insight into the mechanism of lens regeneration, the markers that are specific to dorsal or ventral iris, and layout a map for future studies in the field.

Background: Notophthalmus viridescens, an urodelian amphibian, represents an excellent model organism to study regenerative processes, but mechanistic insights into molecular processes driving regeneration have been hindered by a paucity and poor annotation of coding nucleotide sequences. The enormous genome size and the lack of a closely related reference genome have so far prevented assembly of the urodelian genome., Results: We describe the de novo assembly of the transcriptome of the newt Notophthalmus viridescens and its experimental validation. RNA pools covering embryonic and larval development, different stages of heart, appendage and lens regeneration, as well as a collection of different undamaged tissues were used to generate sequencing datasets on Sanger, Illumina and 454 platforms. Through a sequential de novo assembly strategy, hybrid datasets were converged into one comprehensive transcriptome comprising 120,922 non-redundant transcripts with a N50 of 975. From this, 38,384 putative transcripts were annotated and around 15,000 transcripts were experimentally validated as protein coding by mass spectrometry-based proteomics. Bioinformatical analysis of coding transcripts identified 826 proteins specific for urodeles. Several newly identified proteins establish novel protein families based on the presence of new sequence motifs without counterparts in public databases, while others containing known protein domains extend already existing families and also constitute new ones., Conclusions: We demonstrate that our multistep assembly approach allows de novo assembly of the newt transcriptome with an annotation grade comparable to well characterized organisms. Our data provide the groundwork for mechanistic experiments to answer the question whether urodeles utilize proprietary sets of genes for tissue regeneration.

Skeletal muscle tissue contains slow as well as fast twitch muscle fibers that possess different metabolic and contractile properties. Although the distribution of individual proteins in fast and slow fibers has been investigated extensively, a comprehensive proteomic analysis, which is key for any systems biology approach to muscle tissues, is missing. Here, we compared the global protein levels and gene expression profiles of the predominantly slow soleus and fast extensor digitorum longus muscles using the principle of in vivo stable isotope labeling with amino acids based on a fully lysine-6 labeled SILAC-mouse. We identified 551 proteins with significant quantitative differences between slow soleus and fast extensor digitorum longus fibers out of >2000 quantified proteins, which greatly extends the repertoire of proteins differentially regulated between both muscle types. Most of the differentially regulated proteins mediate cellular contraction, ion homeostasis, glycolysis, and oxidation, which reflect the major functional differences between both muscle types. Comparison of proteomics and transcriptomics data uncovered the existence of fiber-type specific posttranscriptional regulatory mechanisms resulting in differential accumulation of Myosin-8 and α-protein kinase 3 proteins and mRNAs among others. Phosphoproteome analysis of soleus and extensor digitorum longus muscles identified 2573 phosphosites on 973 proteins including 1040 novel phosphosites. The in vivo stable isotope labeling with amino acids-mouse approach used in our study provides a comprehensive view into the protein networks that direct fiber-type specific functions and allows a detailed dissection of the molecular composition of slow and fast muscle tissues with unprecedented resolution.

Notophthalmus viridescens, a member of the salamander family is an excellent model organism to study regenerative processes due to its unique ability to replace lost appendages and to repair internal organs. Molecular insights into regenerative events have been severely hampered by the lack of genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic data, as well as an appropriate database to store such novel information. Here, we describe 'Newt-omics' (http://newt-omics.mpi-bn.mpg.de), a database, which enables researchers to locate, retrieve and store data sets dedicated to the molecular characterization of newts. Newt-omics is a transcript-centred database, based on an Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) data set from the newt, covering ~50,000 Sanger sequenced transcripts and a set of high-density microarray data, generated from regenerating hearts. Newt-omics also contains a large set of peptides identified by mass spectrometry, which was used to validate 13,810 ESTs as true protein coding. Newt-omics is open to implement additional high-throughput data sets without changing the database structure. Via a user-friendly interface Newt-omics allows access to a huge set of molecular data without the need for prior bioinformatical expertise.