Dokument-ID Dokumenttyp Verfasser/Autoren Herausgeber Haupttitel Abstract Auflage Verlagsort Verlag Erscheinungsjahr Seitenzahl Schriftenreihe Titel Schriftenreihe Bandzahl ISBN Quelle der Hochschulschrift Konferenzname Quelle:Titel Quelle:Jahrgang Quelle:Heftnummer Quelle:Erste Seite Quelle:Letzte Seite URN DOI Abteilungen OPUS4-18038 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Blättner, Sebastian; Das, Sudip; Paprotka, Kerstin; Eilers, Ursula; Krischke, Markus; Kretschmer, Dorothee; Remmele, Christian W.; Dittrich, Marcus; Müller, Tobias; Schuelein-Voelk, Christina; Hertlein, Tobias; Mueller, Martin J.; Huettel, Bruno; Reinhardt, Richard; Ohlsen, Knut; Rudel, Thomas; Fraunholz, Martin J. Staphylococcus aureus Exploits a Non-ribosomal Cyclic Dipeptide to Modulate Survival within Epithelial Cells and Phagocytes Community-acquired (CA) Staphylococcus aureus cause various diseases even in healthy individuals. Enhanced virulence of CA-strains is partly attributed to increased production of toxins such as phenol-soluble modulins (PSM). The pathogen is internalized efficiently by mammalian host cells and intracellular S. aureus has recently been shown to contribute to disease. Upon internalization, cytotoxic S. aureus strains can disrupt phagosomal membranes and kill host cells in a PSM-dependent manner. However, PSM are not sufficient for these processes. Here we screened for factors required for intracellular S. aureus virulence. We infected escape reporter host cells with strains from an established transposon mutant library and detected phagosomal escape rates using automated microscopy. We thereby, among other factors, identified a non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) to be required for efficient phagosomal escape and intracellular survival of S. aureus as well as induction of host cell death. By genetic complementation as well as supplementation with the synthetic NRPS product, the cyclic dipeptide phevalin, wild-type phenotypes were restored. We further demonstrate that the NRPS is contributing to virulence in a mouse pneumonia model. Together, our data illustrate a hitherto unrecognized function of the S. aureus NRPS and its dipeptide product during S. aureus infection. 2016 PLoS Pathogens 12 9 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-180380 10.1371/journal.ppat.1005857 Institut für Humangenetik OPUS4-20273 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Maierhofer, Anna; Flunkert, Julia; Oshima, Junko; Martin, George M.; Poot, Martin; Nanda, Indrajit; Dittrich, Marcus; Müller, Tobias; Haaf, Thomas Epigenetic signatures of Werner syndrome occur early in life and are distinct from normal epigenetic aging processes Werner Syndrome (WS) is an adult-onset segmental progeroid syndrome. Bisulfite pyrosequencing of repetitive DNA families revealed comparable blood DNA methylation levels between classical (18 WRN-mutant) or atypical WS (3 LMNA-mutant and 3 POLD1-mutant) patients and age- and sex-matched controls. WS was not associated with either age-related accelerated global losses of ALU, LINE1, and α-satellite DNA methylations or gains of rDNA methylation. Single CpG methylation was analyzed with Infinium MethylationEPIC arrays. In a correspondence analysis, atypical WS samples clustered together with the controls and were clearly separated from classical WS, consistent with distinct epigenetic pathologies. In classical WS, we identified 659 differentially methylated regions (DMRs) comprising 3,656 CpG sites and 613 RefSeq genes. The top DMR was located in the HOXA4 promoter. Additional DMR genes included LMNA, POLD1, and 132 genes which have been reported to be differentially expressed in WRN-mutant/depleted cells. DMRs were enriched in genes with molecular functions linked to transcription factor activity and sequence-specific DNA binding to promoters transcribed by RNA polymerase II. We propose that transcriptional misregulation of downstream genes by the absence of WRN protein contributes to the variable premature aging phenotypes of WS. There were no CpG sites showing significant differences in DNA methylation changes with age between WS patients and controls. Genes with both WS- and age-related methylation changes exhibited a constant offset of methylation between WRN-mutant patients and controls across the entire analyzed age range. WS-specific epigenetic signatures occur early in life and do not simply reflect an acceleration of normal epigenetic aging processes. 2019 e12995 Aging Cell 18 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-202733 10.1111/acel.12995 Institut für Humangenetik OPUS4-19123 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel El Hajj, Nady; Dittrich, Marcus; Böck, Julia; Kraus, Theo F. J.; Nanda, Indrajit; Müller, Tobias; Seidmann, Larissa; Tralau, Tim; Galetzka, Danuta; Schneider, Eberhard; Haaf, Thomas Epigenetic dysregulation in the developing Down syndrome cortex Using Illumina 450K arrays, 1.85% of all analyzed CpG sites were significantly hypermethylated and 0.31% hypomethylated in fetal Down syndrome (DS) cortex throughout the genome. The methylation changes on chromosome 21 appeared to be balanced between hypo- and hyper-methylation, whereas, consistent with prior reports, all other chromosomes showed 3-11times more hyper- than hypo-methylated sites. Reduced NRSF/REST expression due to upregulation of DYRK1A (on chromosome 21q22.13) and methylation of REST binding sites during early developmental stages may contribute to this genome-wide excess of hypermethylated sites. Upregulation of DNMT3L (on chromosome 21q22.4) could lead to de novo methylation in neuroprogenitors, which then persists in the fetal DS brain where DNMT3A and DNMT3B become downregulated. The vast majority of differentially methylated promoters and genes was hypermethylated in DS and located outside chromosome 21, including the protocadherin gamma (PCDHG) cluster on chromosome 5q31, which is crucial for neural circuit formation in the developing brain. Bisulfite pyrosequencing and targeted RNA sequencing showed that several genes of PCDHG subfamilies A and B are hypermethylated and transcriptionally downregulated in fetal DS cortex. Decreased PCDHG expression is expected to reduce dendrite arborization and growth in cortical neurons. Since constitutive hypermethylation of PCDHG and other genes affects multiple tissues, including blood, it may provide useful biomarkers for DS brain development and pharmacologic targets for therapeutic interventions. 2016 563-578 Epigenetics 11 8 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-191239 10.1080/15592294.2016.1192736 Institut für Humangenetik OPUS4-18693 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Schneider, Eberhard; Dittrich, Marcus; Böck, Julia; Nanda, Indrajit; Müller, Tobias; Seidmann, Larissa; Tralau, Tim; Galetzka, Danuta; El Hajj, Nady; Haaf, Thomas CpG sites with continuously increasing or decreasing methylation from early to late human fetal brain development Normal human brain development is dependent on highly dynamic epigenetic processes for spatial and temporal gene regulation. Recent work identified wide-spread changes in DNA methylation during fetal brain development. We profiled CpG methylation in frontal cortex of 27 fetuses from gestational weeks 12-42, using Illumina 450K methylation arrays. Sites showing genome-wide significant correlation with gestational age were compared to a publicly available data set from gestational weeks 3-26. Altogether, we identified 2016 matching developmentally regulated differentially methylated positions (m-dDMPs): 1767 m-dDMPs were hypermethylated and 1149 hypomethylated during fetal development. M-dDMPs are underrepresented in CpG islands and gene promoters, and enriched in gene bodies. They appear to cluster in certain chromosome regions. M-dDMPs are significantly enriched in autism-associated genes and CpGs. Our results promote the idea that reduced methylation dynamics during fetal brain development may predispose to autism. In addition, m-dDMPs are enriched in genes with human-specific brain expression patterns and/or histone modifications. Collectively, we defined a subset of dDMPs exhibiting constant methylation changes from early to late pregnancy. The same epigenetic mechanisms involving methylation changes in cis-regulatory regions may have been adopted for human brain evolution and ontogeny. 2016 110-118 Gene 592 1 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-186936 10.1016/j.gene.2016.07.058 Institut für Humangenetik OPUS4-6482 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Beisser, Daniela; Grohme, Markus A.; Kopka, Joachim; Frohme, Marcus; Schill, Ralph O.; Hengherr, Steffen; Dandekar, Thomas; Klau, Gunnar W.; Dittrich, Marcus; Müller, Tobias Integrated pathway modules using time-course metabolic profiles and EST data from Milnesium tardigradum Background: Tardigrades are multicellular organisms, resistant to extreme environmental changes such as heat, drought, radiation and freezing. They outlast these conditions in an inactive form (tun) to escape damage to cellular structures and cell death. Tardigrades are apparently able to prevent or repair such damage and are therefore a crucial model organism for stress tolerance. Cultures of the tardigrade Milnesium tardigradum were dehydrated by removing the surrounding water to induce tun formation. During this process and the subsequent rehydration, metabolites were measured in a time series by GC-MS. Additionally expressed sequence tags are available, especially libraries generated from the active and inactive state. The aim of this integrated analysis is to trace changes in tardigrade metabolism and identify pathways responsible for their extreme resistance against physical stress. Results: In this study we propose a novel integrative approach for the analysis of metabolic networks to identify modules of joint shifts on the transcriptomic and metabolic levels. We derive a tardigrade-specific metabolic network represented as an undirected graph with 3,658 nodes (metabolites) and 4,378 edges (reactions). Time course metabolite profiles are used to score the network nodes showing a significant change over time. The edges are scored according to information on enzymes from the EST data. Using this combined information, we identify a key subnetwork (functional module) of concerted changes in metabolic pathways, specific for de- and rehydration. The module is enriched in reactions showing significant changes in metabolite levels and enzyme abundance during the transition. It resembles the cessation of a measurablemetabolism (e.g. glycolysis and amino acid anabolism) during the tun formation, the production of storage metabolites and bioprotectants, such as DNA stabilizers, and the generation of amino acids and cellular components from monosaccharides as carbon and energy source during rehydration. Conclusions: The functional module identifies relationships among changed metabolites (e.g. spermidine) and reactions and provides first insights into important altered metabolic pathways. With sparse and diverse data available, the presented integrated metabolite network approach is suitable to integrate all existing data and analyse it in a combined manner. 2012 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-75241 Theodor-Boveri-Institut für Biowissenschaften OPUS4-11141 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Floren, Andreas; Mupepele, Anne-Christine; Müller, Tobias; Dittrich, Marcus Are Temperate Canopy Spiders Tree-Species Specific? Arboreal spiders in deciduous and coniferous trees were investigated on their distribution and diversity. Insecticidal knock-down was used to comprehensively sample spiders from 175 trees from 2001 to 2003 in the Białowieża forest and three remote forests in Poland. We identified 140 species from 9273 adult spiders. Spider communities were distinguished between deciduous and coniferous trees. The richest fauna was collected from Quercus where beta diversity was also highest. A tree-species-specific pattern was clearly observed for Alnus, Carpinus, Picea and Pinus trees and also for those tree species that were fogged in only four or three replicates, namely Betula and Populus. This hitherto unrecognised association was mainly due to the community composition of common species identified in a Dufrene-Legendre indicator species analysis. It was not caused by spatial or temporal autocorrelation. Explaining tree-species specificity for generalist predators like spiders is difficult and has to involve physical and ecological tree parameters like linkage with the abundance of prey species. However, neither did we find a consistent correlation of prey group abundances with spiders nor could differences in spider guild composition explain the observed pattern. Our results hint towards the importance of deterministic mechanisms structuring communities of generalist canopy spiders although the casual relationship is not yet understood. 2014 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-111413 10.1371/journal.pone.0086571 Theodor-Boveri-Institut für Biowissenschaften OPUS4-13132 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Staiger, Christine; Cadot, Sidney; Kooter, Raul; Dittrich, Marcus; Müller, Tobias; Klau, Gunnar W.; Wessels, Lodewyk F. A. A Critical Evaluation of Network and Pathway-Based Classifiers for Outcome Prediction in Breast Cancer Recently, several classifiers that combine primary tumor data, like gene expression data, and secondary data sources, such as protein-protein interaction networks, have been proposed for predicting outcome in breast cancer. In these approaches, new composite features are typically constructed by aggregating the expression levels of several genes. The secondary data sources are employed to guide this aggregation. Although many studies claim that these approaches improve classification performance over single genes classifiers, the gain in performance is difficult to assess. This stems mainly from the fact that different breast cancer data sets and validation procedures are employed to assess the performance. Here we address these issues by employing a large cohort of six breast cancer data sets as benchmark set and by performing an unbiased evaluation of the classification accuracies of the different approaches. Contrary to previous claims, we find that composite feature classifiers do not outperform simple single genes classifiers. We investigate the effect of (1) the number of selected features; (2) the specific gene set from which features are selected; (3) the size of the training set and (4) the heterogeneity of the data set on the performance of composite feature and single genes classifiers. Strikingly, we find that randomization of secondary data sources, which destroys all biological information in these sources, does not result in a deterioration in performance of composite feature classifiers. Finally, we show that when a proper correction for gene set size is performed, the stability of single genes sets is similar to the stability of composite feature sets. Based on these results there is currently no reason to prefer prognostic classifiers based on composite features over single genes classifiers for predicting outcome in breast cancer. 2012 e34796 PLoS One 7 4 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-131323 10.1371/journal.pone.0034796 Theodor-Boveri-Institut für Biowissenschaften OPUS4-11289 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Morton, Charles Oliver; Fliesser, Mirjam; Dittrich, Marcus; Müller, Tobias; Bauer, Ruth; Kneitz, Susanne; Hope, William; Rogers, Thomas Richard; Einsele, Hermann; Löffler, Jürgen Gene Expression Profiles of Human Dendritic Cells Interacting with Aspergillus fumigatus in a Bilayer Model of the Alveolar Epithelium/Endothelium Interface The initial stages of the interaction between the host and Aspergillus fumigatus at the alveolar surface of the human lung are critical in the establishment of aspergillosis. Using an in vitro bilayer model of the alveolus, including both the epithelium (human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line, A549) and endothelium (human pulmonary artery epithelial cells, HPAEC) on transwell membranes, it was possible to closely replicate the in vivo conditions. Two distinct sub-groups of dendritic cells (DC), monocyte-derived DC (moDC) and myeloid DC (mDC), were included in the model to examine immune responses to fungal infection at the alveolar surface. RNA in high quantity and quality was extracted from the cell layers on the transwell membrane to allow gene expression analysis using tailored custom-made microarrays, containing probes for 117 immune-relevant genes. This microarray data indicated minimal induction of immune gene expression in A549 alveolar epithelial cells in response to germ tubes of A. fumigatus. In contrast, the addition of DC to the system greatly increased the number of differentially expressed immune genes. moDC exhibited increased expression of genes including CLEC7A, CD209 and CCL18 in the absence of A. fumigatus compared to mDC. In the presence of A. fumigatus, both DC subgroups exhibited up-regulation of genes identified in previous studies as being associated with the exposure of DC to A. fumigatus and exhibiting chemotactic properties for neutrophils, including CXCL2, CXCL5, CCL20, and IL1B. This model closely approximated the human alveolus allowing for an analysis of the host pathogen interface that complements existing animal models of IA. 2014 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-112893 10.1371/journal.pone.0098279 Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik II OPUS4-25963 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Karimi, Sohail M.; Freund, Matthias; Wager, Brittney M.; Knoblauch, Michael; Fromm, Jörg; M. Mueller, Heike; Ache, Peter; Krischke, Markus; Mueller, Martin J.; Müller, Tobias; Dittrich, Marcus; Geilfus, Christoph-Martin; Alfaran, Ahmed H.; Hedrich, Rainer; Deeken, Rosalia Under salt stress guard cells rewire ion transport and abscisic acid signaling Soil salinity is an increasingly global problem which hampers plant growth and crop yield. Plant productivity depends on optimal water-use efficiency and photosynthetic capacity balanced by stomatal conductance. Whether and how stomatal behavior contributes to salt sensitivity or tolerance is currently unknown. This work identifies guard cell-specific signaling networks exerted by a salt-sensitive and salt-tolerant plant under ionic and osmotic stress conditions accompanied by increasing NaCl loads. We challenged soil-grown Arabidopsis thaliana and Thellungiella salsuginea plants with short- and long-term salinity stress and monitored genome-wide gene expression and signals of guard cells that determine their function. Arabidopsis plants suffered from both salt regimes and showed reduced stomatal conductance while Thellungiella displayed no obvious stress symptoms. The salt-dependent gene expression changes of guard cells supported the ability of the halophyte to maintain high potassium to sodium ratios and to attenuate the abscisic acid (ABA) signaling pathway which the glycophyte kept activated despite fading ABA concentrations. Our study shows that salinity stress and even the different tolerances are manifested on a single cell level. Halophytic guard cells are less sensitive than glycophytic guard cells, providing opportunities to manipulate stomatal behavior and improve plant productivity. 2021 1040–1055 New Phytologist 231 3 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-259635 10.1111/nph.17376 Julius-von-Sachs-Institut für Biowissenschaften OPUS4-28514 Wissenschaftlicher Artikel Doll, Julia; Kolb, Susanne; Schnapp, Linda; Rad, Aboulfazl; Rüschendorf, Franz; Khan, Imran; Adli, Abolfazl; Hasanzadeh, Atefeh; Liedtke, Daniel; Knaup, Sabine; Hofrichter, Michaela AH; Müller, Tobias; Dittrich, Marcus; Kong, Il-Keun; Kim, Hyung-Goo; Haaf, Thomas; Vona, Barbara Novel loss-of-function variants in CDC14A are associated with recessive sensorineural hearing loss in Iranian and Pakistani patients CDC14A encodes the Cell Division Cycle 14A protein and has been associated with autosomal recessive non-syndromic hearing loss (DFNB32), as well as hearing impairment and infertile male syndrome (HIIMS) since 2016. To date, only nine variants have been associated in patients whose initial symptoms included moderate-to-profound hearing impairment. Exome analysis of Iranian and Pakistani probands who both showed bilateral, sensorineural hearing loss revealed a novel splice site variant (c.1421+2T>C, p.?) that disrupts the splice donor site and a novel frameshift variant (c.1041dup, p.Ser348Glnfs*2) in the gene CDC14A, respectively. To evaluate the pathogenicity of both loss-of-function variants, we analyzed the effects of both variants on the RNA-level. The splice variant was characterized using a minigene assay. Altered expression levels due to the c.1041dup variant were assessed using RT-qPCR. In summary, cDNA analysis confirmed that the c.1421+2T>C variant activates a cryptic splice site, resulting in a truncated transcript (c.1414_1421del, p.Val472Leufs*20) and the c.1041dup variant results in a defective transcript that is likely degraded by nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. The present study functionally characterizes two variants and provides further confirmatory evidence that CDC14A is associated with a rare form of hereditary hearing loss. 2020 International Journal of Molecular Sciences 21 1 urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-285142 10.3390/ijms21010311 Institut für Humangenetik