Browsing by discipline "Biotechnology"

Lymphangiogenesis is the process that leads to the formation of lymphatic vessels from pre-existing vessels. Vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGF-C), the ma- jor lymphangiogenic growth factor, is produced as an inactive precursor and needs to be proteolytically processed into a mature form in order to activate its receptors VEGFR-3 and VEGFR-2. A deficiency of VEGF-C during embryonic lymphangiogenesis results in embryonic lethality due to the lack of lymphatic vasculature. Hennekam lymphangiectasia-lymphedema syndrome (OMIM 235510) is in a subset of patients associated with mutations in the collagen- and calcium-binding EGF domains 1 (CCBE1 ) gene. CCBE1 and VEGF-C act at the same stage during embryonic lymphangiogenesis and their deficiency results in similar lymphatic defects. The mechanism behind the lymphatic phenotype caused by CCBE1 mutations is un- known. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential link between VEGF-C and CCBE1 that could contribute to the lymphatic phenotype. In this study, 293T cells were used to observe the effect of CCBE1 on VEGF-C pro- cessing. The co-transfection of constructs coding for CCBE1 and VEGF-C showed processing of the inactive pro-VEGF-C into the active, mature form. However, this processing was efficient only in 293T cells. When CCBE1 from 293T supernatant was purified, A disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin type 1 motif 3 (ADAMTS3) co-purified with CCBE1. The levels of pro-VEGF-C and active VEGF-C were monitored by immunoblotting or immunoprecipitating metabolically labeled supernatant with specific antibodies or receptors followed by autoradiography. The activity of the processed VEGF-C was verified by proliferation of Ba/F3 cells stably expressing VEGFR-3/EpoR or VEGFR-2/EpoR chimeras. Furthermore, a VEGFR-3 phosphorylation assay was performed in PAE (Porcine Aortic Endotheial) cells to study details of the CCBE1-mediated regulation of VEGF-C. We found that CCBE1 increases the proteolytic processing of pro-VEGF-C, thereby resulting in increased activity of VEGF-C. CCBE1 itself has no effect on VEGF-C activity but regulates VEGF-C by modulating the activity of the ADAMTS3 protease. We also found that both pro- and mature- VEGF-C can bind to VEGFR-3 but only mature form is able to induce VEGFR-3-mediated signaling. In addition to cleaving VEGF-C, ADAMTS3 was found to directly or indirectly mediate CCBE1 cleavage. The N-terminal amino acid sequence of the ADAMTS3-processed VEGF-C confirmed that ADAMTS3 is the protease responsible for the activation of VEGF-C by 293 cells. Hence, we have identified a mechanism that regulates VEGF-C activity. This mechanism suggests the possible use of CCBE1 as a therapeutic means to treat diseases that involve the lymphatic system.

After birth, stem cells act as the source of reparative and regenerative potential in various tissues. Among different tissues and organs in human body, tooth is one of the organs which does not undergo continuous regeneration. Therefore, tooth regeneration must be studied in a different animal, which possesses continuously growing teeth. In mouse, the incisor undergoes continuous growth which is fueled by the interaction between epithelial and mesenchymal stem cell compartments located at its apical end. The inferior alveolar nerve, which supports mandibular dentition, and its surrounding blood vessels (combinedly known as neurovascular bundle or NVB) were previously shown to act as a source of the mesenchymal stem cells during incisor growth and regeneration. However, the regulation of the cells in the NVB is not well understood. The primary aim of my master’s thesis was to characterize the effect of the Hh pathway modification on cellular properties of the NVB and the MSCs within it. The Ptch2 KO mouse model used in this study demonstrated increase in the number of blood vessel in the NVB. Additionally, analysis of the structure of skin in the mouse model was the second aim of my project, which showed significant increase in the thickness of the dermis at the postnatal day 1. Collectively, the change in structure of skin and NVB showed that Ptch2 might regulates the cellular properties of tooth mesenchyme and dermis by modulating the structural components of the NVB of continuously growing mice incisor and skin, respectively.

Genome wide linkage and association methods are used to map genes affecting traits with genetic predisposition. In this thesis, I compare the methods suitable for quantitative trait mapping in complex, extended pedigrees. As a case study, gene-mapping study of musical aptitude is performed with these methods. Linkage analysis methods are developed for family studies. However, only a few methods are suitable for extended families with a quantitative trait. Three linkage programs were successfully applied for such data in this study. These programs are the SOLAR, JPSGCS and KELVIN. All of these three programs are based on different methods and thus, the same calculations are not repeated. SOLAR is based on the variance components method, JPSGCS on a graphical method and KELVIN on the Bayesian method. Association analysis is also difficult to implement for large pedigrees, because it is best suited for case-control data. Fortunately, methods are extended also for family-based studies. Here, a genomic control method was used to correct for the familial relationships. The method evaluates the relatedness from the whole genome data and the association tests are corrected for the relatedness rates. This method was implemented from the GenAbel program. As a case study, these methods were applied to a musical aptitude study. The musical aptitude is here understood as an ability to perceive the melody, harmony and rhythm of music, and to recognize structures in set of sounds. These abilities were tested with Carl Seashore s tests for pitch and time and Kai Karma's test for auditory structuring. The data consists of 107 pedigrees and 93 sporadic subjects, comprising in total of 915 individuals. Each family includes 2 - 50 individuals. These individuals were genotyped with a SNP chip for over 700,00 SNPs. The linkage analyses revealed several promising loci for the musical aptitude. The best result was located in 4q12 and it was found with all of the three linkage programs. Most of the other results could also be identified with multiple programs, but some differences also occurred. However, none of the findings could be discovered with association analysis, probably due to a too small sample size.

Trichoderma reesei, an anamorph of Hypocrea jecorina, is a filamentous fungus widely used for producing industrial enzymes. T. reesei is used for both endogenous and heterogenous protein production. The optimization of the production conditions and the effects of extracellular agents to T. reesei s production and secretion capacity are crucial for economically sustainable biotechnical production. The available carbon sources, most commonly different types of sugars, have a significant effect on the production and secretion of enzymes by T. reesei. Genetic modification of the pathways through which the fungi recognizes extracellular signals could bring advancements to industrial enzyme production. Because of T. reesei s potential and use as a production strain, the species is an interesting platform for genetic modifications that would enhance the production capacities. With the current methods the genome editing of T. reesei is however slow, and introducing multiple mutations to a single strain can take years. The aim of this study is to optimize the fairly new CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system for use in T. reesei. In the CRISPR/Cas9 method, a catalytically active Cas9 enzyme is bound to a specific locus of the genome, guided by a guide RNA and the Watson-Crick base pairing principle. Once in the RNA-guided locus, Cas9 introduces a double stranded break in the DNA, which can be repaired by the cells endogenous non-homologous end joining pathways. This repair is error prone and produces mutations to site of the double stranded break. A donor DNA is often introduced together with the Cas9 and guide RNA. This donor DNA includes sequence homology to the site of interest and allows for the use of the cells homologous repair pathways. In this case, the mutation can be better controlled, and for example the risk of chromosomal mutations is reduced. Currently the CRISPR/Cas9 system is widely used in mammalian cell studies and up to 100% mutation frequencies have been reported in yeast cells. In this study the method is optimized for use in T. reesei. To our best knowledge, the research community has not found an organism in which CRISPR/Cas9 would not function. The question mainly lies on what type of set up and component introduction is suitable for each cell type and research purpose. In this thesis, three putative and one already published genes believed to be involved in hexose sugar sensing will be deleted from a T. reesei production strain with the help of CRISPR/Cas9. The effect of these deletions will be assessed through studying the secretion and activity of endogenous cellulases with enzymatic assays. One sugar transporter that may play a part in glucose sensing was identified in this study. The deletion of this transporter caused a decrease in cellulase production and/or secretion. The three other transporters or sensors did not have a significant effect on cellulase production in spent grain extract and lactose or glucose media. It s possible that these genes are involved in the uptake and use of other carbon sources. The continuous expression of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in T. reesei proved difficult. In the continuous expression method at least one of the CRISPR/Cas9 components, the Cas9 protein or the guide RNA, is produced in the cells in vivo. Neither was achieved in this study. Instead, a fully synthetic method in which the Cas9 is transformed into the cells as a protein along with an in vitro produced guide RNA was set up and produced up to 1000 × higher mutation frequencies when compared to the traditional transformation method used for T. reesei. This study also demonstrates a simultaneous deletion of two genes in T. reesei. To the best of our knowledge, multiple simultaneous gene modifications have never been achieved in T. reesei.

Synthetic biology is an emerging interdisciplinary field of biology that aims to system-atically design artificial biological systems. As synthetic biologists seek increasingly complex control over cellular processes to achieve robust and predictable systems. A new frontier in synthetic biology is engineering synthetic microbial consortia. This ap-proach employs the concept of division of labor, instead of introducing large genetic cir-cuitry to homogenous cell populations. In this approach, different cell types are assigned to execute a portion of the overall circuit. Each cell type communicates with their co-worker subpopulations to complete the circuit. The main advantage of this strategy is the reduced metabolic burden on each cell type. Thus, leading to more reliable and stable overall performance. In this work, to simplify cellular communication between the mem-bers of the consortium, we used the simple architecture of quorum sensing machinery. We constructed a toolbox that contains promoter, receptor and quorum sensing signal synthase genes along with fluorescent reporters. Using this toolbox, we constructed dif-ferent cell types that can be used in synthetic consortia forming various communication topologies. We characterized the constructed cell types individually and in co-cultures.

According to the latest estimations, cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide. Despite the significant advances in the range of drugs and treatment modalities to treat cancer, the number of deaths is estimated to continue rising, posing serious challenges for the patients, their families, and the healthcare systems. Conventional treatments tend to be associated with severe adverse side effects and treatment resistance. Consequently, safer and more efficient therapy options are urgently needed, especially for the treatment of metastatic tumors refractory to conventional treatments. A new and revolutionizing field in oncology is immunotherapy, in which oncolytic viruses are included. Oncolytic viruses have an inherent or acquired selectivity to replicate exclusively in tumor cells, ultimately destroying them. Simultaneously, they also activate the dormant host’s immune system to fight against the tumor. Adenoviruses, particularly, have shown to be safe, inducing only mild adverse side effects in clinical trials, making them a great candidate for further clinical development. Adenoviruses can be genetically modified to increase their infectivity or improve the anti-cancer immune responses induced by the virus, e.g., through the expression of immunostimulatory molecules. The focus of this thesis was to develop and characterize several genetically modified oncolytic adenoviruses expressing either OX40L alone or OX40L and CD40L, two co-stimulatory molecules capable of engaging both the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system to fight the tumor. The insertion of the transgenes into the E3B-14.7k region of the Ad5/3-∆24 adenovector plasmid was performed using Gibson Assembly® cloning approach. After successful cloning, the recombinant viral genomes were transfected into A549 cells for viral amplification, followed by CsCl purification to produce a high titer viral preparation. The expression of the transgenes was studied in vitro by ELISA and functional assays, showing promising expression levels of functional OX40L and CD40L. However, when the infectivity and virus killing potency were analyzed, in vitro by immunocytochemistry and MTS assay; and in vivo using an immunodeficient mouse model, the data showed that the cloned viruses performed sub-optimally when compared to the control unarmed virus (Ad5/3-∆24). These findings suggest that the insertion of the two transgenes in place of the E3-14.7k gene was detrimental to the fitness of the virus.

The next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms create a large amount of sequence in short amount of time, when compared to first generation sequencers. An overview of the NGS platforms is provided with more in-depth look into Illumina Genome Analyzer II as that is used to create the data for the thesis. There were two main aims in this thesis. First, to create a pipeline which can be used to analyse genomic sequencing. Second, to use the pipeline to compare whole human exome capture methods from two manufacturers, Roche Nimblegen and Agilent. The pipeline is describe in detail in material and methods. All the inputs for the pipeline are described and examples shown. In the pipeline the given sequences are first aligned against the reference genome. Then various separate analysis is performed to retrieve variants and coverage of the sequencing. Supplementary results include paired-end anomalies, larger insertion and deletion polymorphisms and assembly of non-aligned sequences. The two capture methods are also described and changes to the manufacturers' recommended protocols are listed. Finally, the section has the options and various inputs used in the pipeline runs of the exome data. The results of the pipeline is a basic level of analysis of the sequencing as well as various graphs showing the quality of the run. All the output files intended for user are described. By using the results of the pipeline, the user can do more in-depth analysis as required by the project. When comparing the two exome capture methods, the Nimblegen capture was shown to be more efficient in capturing the CCDS exome. While the Agilent capture kit provided better one fold coverage over the exome, higher fold coverage (over 10 fold), which is required for reliable variant calling in nextgeneration sequencing, was better reached using the Nimblegen capture kit. Also, significantly fewer false positive paired-end anomalies were observed in the library created by using the Nimblegen capture.

In this Master’s project, I have studied a mammalian serine-threonine kinase NUAK2 implicated in human disease but whose molecular functions and interacting proteins are as of yet poorly characterized. The goal was to identify new interacting proteins to increase understanding of the molecular functions and potentially link to human physiology and disease. Recent work from the host lab shows NUAK2 loss in cultured primary cells mimics loss of the tumor suppressor LKB1 which also acts upstream of NUAK2, together suggesting NUAK2 could be involved in tumor suppression. Currently, only two protein-protein interacting proteins with NUAK2 have been identified: NUAK2 is targeted to actin stress fibers by the myosin phosphatase Rho-interacting protein (MRIP), and it is involved in regulating cell contractility by affecting indirectly the phosphorylation cycle of the myosin light chain through inactivation of the myosin phosphatase target subunit 1 (MYPT1). In this project, I utilized a novel protein-protein interaction screening method that utilizes proximity-dependent biotin labeling to identify new interacting proteins with NUAK2 in human embryonic kidney cells (HEK 293). This method is based on fusing an E.Coli promiscuous biotin ligase, BirA*(R118G), to the investigated protein. The BirA*(R118G) ligase biotinylates all the proteins in close proximity of the fusion protein creating a history of protein-protein associations over time. Afterwards, the biotinylated proteins can be isolated by affinity purification methods and identified by mass-spectrometry. The screening identified the previously known interaction partners of NUAK2 indicating it was technically successful. In addition, I also identified in total 108 novel potential protein interaction partners for NUAK2. One of the top hits was Cytospin-A, a cross-linking protein between microtubules and actin cytoskeleton, supporting a role of NUAK2 as regulator of cytoskeleton. Supporting the validity of our finding, Cytospin-A depletion in mammalian cells causes defective actin-cytoskeleton reorganization, a very similar phenotype seen with NUAK2 depletion. In future studies, I will continue to investigate the specific role of NUAK2 and Cytospin-A aiming for detailed information on the function of NUAK2 in regulation of microtubules and actin cytoskeleton. Validation of some of the other identified interactions is expected to provide novel insights to the biology and role of NUAK2 in LKB1 tumor suppressor functions.

Abstract Antibiotics are used to prevent microbial diseases in both animals and humans. Because of the overuse of antibiotics, the microorganism now gained the ability to resist the drugs through genetic changes. Integrons are widely known for their role in the dissemination of antibiotic resistance. The class1 integrons are mostly studied in Gram-negative bacteria of clinical strain as they are reported mostly in the human and animals. The integrons having antibiotic resistance genes are linked with mobile genetic elements which help them to disseminate by the lateral gene transfer method. Previous research has proved that the class 1 integrons have sulfonamide and tetracycline resistance gene by using Long-Range PCR, Inverse PCR, and metagenomics. However, it is not clear what other possible combination of antibiotic resistance genes the class1 Integrons may carry. My thesis focuses on the class 1 integron from wastewater (both inflow and outflow water) by Long-range PCR, which can amplify fragments more than 15kb and PacBio RS long-read sequencing. Its a novel method of combining Long-range PCR and may illuminate what other possible resistance genes the class 1 integrons carry. The antibiotics resistance genes such as CatB8, -aadA2, blaOxA-1 0, IMP-38 were amplified using our designed primers from IntI1 to QacEdelta1, thus the designed primers and the optimization of Long-Range were successful. The combination of inverse PCR and Pac-Bio sequencing was successful to amplify the antibiotic resistance genes from Class 1 integrons. The Long-Range PCR saves time and gives DNA amplified products longer than 1500kb. The purified samples from long range PCR can be studied by direct sequencing using the Pac-Bio sequencer. Thus, the future implementations of the above combination of two techniques can be very useful to study the antibiotic resistance genes in the soil and polluted water. More in-depth information about antibiotic resistance genes in class 1 integrons will help to understand their dissemination.

The growing interest for sequencing with higher throughput in the last decade has led to the development of new sequencing applications. This thesis concentrates on optimizing DNA library preparation for Illumina Genome Analyzer II sequencer. The library preparation steps that were optimized include fragmentation, PCR purification and quantification. DNA fragmentation was performed with focused sonication in different concentrations and durations. Two column based PCR purification method, gel matrix method and magnetic bead based method were compared. Quantitative PCR and gel electrophoresis in a chip were compared for DNA quantification. The magnetic bead purification was found to be the most efficient and flexible purification method. The fragmentation protocol was changed to produce longer fragments to be compatible with longer sequencing reads. Quantitative PCR correlates better with the cluster number and should thus be considered to be the default quantification method for sequencing. As a result of this study more data have been acquired from sequencing with lower costs and troubleshooting has become easier as qualification steps have been added to the protocol. New sequencing instruments and applications will create a demand for further optimizations in future.