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In order to help promote instructional change at French-speaking universities in Europe, we initiated a series of 1-day events centered on learning innovations. Since 2015, these events have been taking place every 6 months at the Université Paris Descartes, with the moral support of three learned scientific societies, the French Academy of Sciences, and sponsoring by leaders in textbook editing and classroom technologies. Each event gathers ~ 40 participants (faculty members, postdocs, and educational specialists) from four countries (Belgium, France, Luxemburg, Switzerland) and invitees, who share their active learning practices, flipped classroom variations representing the most popular strategy. Their experience revealed that faculty who invest themselves in revamping teaching are still isolated at their institutions, although institutional and national support have now been gaining momentum. In particular, the role of educational specialists (known as "ingénieurs pédagogiques" in France) is key to help faculty move away from lecturing. Overall, our event series illustrates that a hands-off approach is effective to foster a cross-border community of committed academics in a context where the process of changing the way we teach at universities is still in its infancy.

The influence of duplicated sequences on chromosomal stability is poorly understood. To characterize chromosomal rearrangements involving duplicated sequences, we compared the organization of tandem repeats of the DUP240 gene family in 15 Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains of various origins. The DUP240 gene family consists of 10 members of unknown function in the reference strain $288C. Five DUP240 paralogs on chromosome I and two on chromosome VII are arranged as tandem repeats that are highly polymorphic in copy number and sequence. We characterized DNA sequences that are likely involved in homologous or nonhomologous recombination events and are responsible for intra-and interchromosomal rearrangements that cause the creation and disappearance of DUP240 paralogs. The tandemly repeated DUP240 genes seem to be privileged sites of gene birth and death.

Author(s): Bernard Dujon (corresponding author) [1]; David Sherman [5, 6]; Gilles Fischer [1]; Pascal Durrens [6, 7]; Serge Casaregola [8]; Ingrid Lafontaine [1]; Jacky de Montigny [9]; Christian Marck [10]; [...]

Research has been conducted on the DUP240 gene family of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Results indicate that Dup240 proteins are membrane associated and are concentrated around the plasma membrane.

Abstract Background Gross chromosomal rearrangements (GCRs) such as aneuploidy are key factors in genome evolution as well as being common features of human cancer. Their role in tumour initiation and progression has not yet been completely elucidated and the effects of additional chromosomes in cancer cells are still unknown. Most previous studies in which Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been used as a model for cancer cells have been carried out in the haploid context. To obtain new insights on the role of ploidy, the cellular effects of GCRs were compared between the haploid and diploid contexts. Results A total number of 21 haploid and diploid S. cerevisiae strains carrying various types of GCRs (aneuploidies, nonreciprocal translocations, segmental duplications and deletions) were studied with a view to determining the effects of ploidy on the cellular responses. Differences in colony and cell morphology as well as in the growth rates were observed between mutant and parental strains. These results suggest that cells are impaired physiologically in both contexts. We also investigated the variation in genomic expression in all the mutants. We observed that gene expression was significantly altered. The data obtained here clearly show that genes involved in energy metabolism, especially in the tricarboxylic acid cycle, are up-regulated in all these mutants. However, the genes involved in the composition of the ribosome or in RNA processing are down-regulated in diploids but up-regulated in haploids. Over-expression of genes involved in the regulation of the proteasome was found to occur only in haploid mutants. Conclusion The present comparisons between the cellular responses of strains carrying GCRs in different ploidy contexts bring to light two main findings. First, GCRs induce a general stress response in all studied mutants, regardless of their ploidy. Secondly, the ploidy context plays a crucial role in maintaining the stoichiometric balance of the proteins: the translation rates decrease in diploid strains, whereas the excess protein synthesized is degraded in haploids by proteasome activity.

Abstract Background This paper describes an efficient in silico method for detecting tandem gene arrays (TGAs) in fully sequenced and compact genomes such as those of prokaryotes or unicellular eukaryotes. The originality of this method lies in the search of protein sequence similarities in the vicinity of each coding sequence, which allows the prediction of tandem duplicated gene copies independently of their functionality. Results Applied to nine hemiascomycete yeast genomes, this method predicts that 2% of the genes are involved in TGAs and gene relics are present in 11% of TGAs. The frequency of TGAs with degenerated gene copies means that a significant fraction of tandem duplicated genes follows the birth-and-death model of evolution. A comparison of sequence identity distributions between sets of homologous gene pairs shows that the different copies of tandem arrayed paralogs are less divergent than copies of dispersed paralogs in yeast genomes. It suggests that paralogs included in tandem structures are more recent or more subject to the gene conversion mechanism than other paralogs. Conclusion The method reported here is a useful computational tool to provide a database of TGAs composed of functional or nonfunctional gene copies. Such a database has obvious applications in the fields of structural and comparative genomics. Notably, a detailed study of the TGA catalog will make it possible to tackle the fundamental questions of the origin and evolution of tandem gene clusters.

Abstract Background Chromosomal rearrangements such as duplications and deletions are key factors in evolutionary processes because they promote genomic plasticity. Although the genetic variations in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae species have been well documented, there is little known to date about the impact of the genetic background on the appearance of rearrangements. Results Using the same genetic screening, the type of rearrangements and the mutation rates observed in the S288c S. cerevisiae strain were compared to previous findings obtained in the FL100 background. Transposon-associated rearrangements, a major chromosomal rearrangement event selected in FL100, were not detected in S288c. The mechanisms involved in the occurrence of deletions and duplications in the S288c strain were also tackled, using strains deleted for genes implicated in homologous recombination (HR) or non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). Our results indicate that an Yku80p-independent NHEJ pathway is involved in the occurrence of these rearrangements in the S288c background. Conclusion The comparison of two different S. cerevisiae strains, FL100 and S288c, allowed us to conclude that intra-species genomic variations have an important impact on the occurrence of chromosomal rearrangement and that this variability can partly be explained by differences in Ty1 retrotransposon activity.

Research describes designing a plasmid system for isolating purine-cytosine permease (PCP) affinity mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Results indicate that only 10% of the mutants exhibit plasmid-borne fcy2 gene, which encodes PCP.

Chromosomal rearrangements, such as deletions, duplications, or Ty transposition, are rare events. We devised a method to select for such events as [Ura.sup.+] revertants of a particular ura2 mutant. Among 133 [Ura.sup.+] revertants, 14 were identified as the result of a deletion in URA2. Of seven classes of deletions, six had very short regions of identity at their junctions (from 7 to 13 bp long). This strongly suggests a nonhomologous recombination mechanism for the formation of these deletions. The total [Ura.sup.+] reversion rate was increased 4.2-fold in a rad52 [Delta] strain compared to the wild type, and the deletion rate was significantly increased. All the deletions selected in the rad52 [Delta] context had microhomologies at their junctions. We propose two mechanisms to explain the occurrence of these deletions and discuss the role of microhomology stretches in the formation of fusion proteins.

Deletion of the NHA1 gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiae wild type strains, lead to higher sensitivity to both K+ and Na+ at acidic pH. High K+ and Na+ efflux seen on alkalinization of the cytoplasm suggests a role for Nha1p in the regulation of intracellular pH. The Nha1 alkalication antiporter is found to be responsible for growth on high concentrations of KC1 and NaC1.