Ruiz José L, Ranford-Cartwright Lisa C, Gómez-Díaz Elena
Instituto de Parasitología y Biomedicina López-Neyra (IPBLN), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 18016 Granada, Spain.
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
NAR Genom Bioinform. 2021 Jan 20;3(1):lqaa113. doi: 10.1093/nargab/lqaa113. eCollection 2021 Mar.
mosquitoes are primary human malaria vectors, but we know very little about their mechanisms of transcriptional regulation. We profiled chromatin accessibility by the assay for transposase-accessible chromatin by sequencing (ATAC-seq) in laboratory-reared mosquitoes experimentally infected with the human malaria parasite . By integrating ATAC-seq, RNA-seq and ChIP-seq data, we showed a positive correlation between accessibility at promoters and introns, gene expression and active histone marks. By comparing expression and chromatin structure patterns in different tissues, we were able to infer -regulatory elements controlling tissue-specific gene expression and to predict the binding sites of relevant transcription factors. The ATAC-seq assay also allowed the precise mapping of active regulatory regions, including novel transcription start sites and enhancers that were annotated to mosquito immune-related genes. Not only is this study important for advancing our understanding of mechanisms of transcriptional regulation in the mosquito vector of human malaria, but the information we produced also has great potential for developing new mosquito-control and anti-malaria strategies.
蚊子是人类疟疾的主要传播媒介，但我们对其转录调控机制知之甚少。我们通过转座酶可及染色质测序分析（ATAC-seq）对实验室饲养的、经人类疟原虫实验感染的蚊子的染色质可及性进行了分析。通过整合ATAC-seq、RNA-seq和ChIP-seq数据，我们发现启动子和内含子处的可及性、基因表达与活性组蛋白标记之间存在正相关。通过比较不同组织中的表达和染色质结构模式，我们能够推断出控制组织特异性基因表达的调控元件，并预测相关转录因子的结合位点。ATAC-seq分析还能精确绘制活性调控区域，包括注释到蚊子免疫相关基因的新转录起始位点和增强子。这项研究不仅对于增进我们对人类疟疾蚊子传播媒介转录调控机制的理解很重要，而且我们生成的信息在开发新的蚊虫控制和抗疟疾策略方面也具有巨大潜力。
