Spatial gene expression patterns enable the detection of local covariability and are extremely useful for identifying local gene interactions during normal development. The abundance of spatial ...expression data in recent years has led to the modeling and analysis of regulatory networks. The inherent complexity of such data makes it a challenge to extract biological information. We developed staNMF, a method that combines a scalable implementation of nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) with a new stability-driven model selection criterion. When applied to a set of Drosophila early embryonic spatial gene expression images, one of the largest datasets of its kind, staNMF identified 21 principal patterns (PP). Providing a compact yet biologically interpretable representation of Drosophila expression patterns, PP are comparable to a fate map generated experimentally by laser ablation and show exceptional promise as a data-driven alternative to manual annotations. Our analysis mapped genes to cell-fate programs and assigned putative biological roles to uncharacterized genes. Finally, we used the PP to generate local transcription factor regulatory networks. Spatially local correlation networks were constructed for six PP that span along the embryonic anterior–posterior axis. Using a two-tail 5% cutoff on correlation, we reproduced 10 of the 11 links in the well-studied gap gene network. The performance of PP with the Drosophila data suggests that staNMF provides informative decompositions and constitutes a useful computational lens through which to extract biological insight from complex and often noisy gene expression data.
Animal transcriptomes are dynamic, with each cell type, tissue and organ system expressing an ensemble of transcript isoforms that give rise to substantial diversity. Here we have identified new ...genes, transcripts and proteins using poly(A)+ RNA sequencing from Drosophila melanogaster in cultured cell lines, dissected organ systems and under environmental perturbations. We found that a small set of mostly neural-specific genes has the potential to encode thousands of transcripts each through extensive alternative promoter usage and RNA splicing. The magnitudes of splicing changes are larger between tissues than between developmental stages, and most sex-specific splicing is gonad-specific. Gonads express hundreds of previously unknown coding and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), some of which are antisense to protein-coding genes and produce short regulatory RNAs. Furthermore, previously identified pervasive intergenic transcription occurs primarily within newly identified introns. The fly transcriptome is substantially more complex than previously recognized, with this complexity arising from combinatorial usage of promoters, splice sites and polyadenylation sites.
Clinical interpretation of genetic variants in the context of the patient's phenotype is becoming the largest component of cost and time expenditure for genome-based diagnosis of rare genetic ...diseases. Artificial intelligence (AI) holds promise to greatly simplify and speed genome interpretation by integrating predictive methods with the growing knowledge of genetic disease. Here we assess the diagnostic performance of Fabric GEM, a new, AI-based, clinical decision support tool for expediting genome interpretation.
We benchmarked GEM in a retrospective cohort of 119 probands, mostly NICU infants, diagnosed with rare genetic diseases, who received whole-genome or whole-exome sequencing (WGS, WES). We replicated our analyses in a separate cohort of 60 cases collected from five academic medical centers. For comparison, we also analyzed these cases with current state-of-the-art variant prioritization tools. Included in the comparisons were trio, duo, and singleton cases. Variants underpinning diagnoses spanned diverse modes of inheritance and types, including structural variants (SVs). Patient phenotypes were extracted from clinical notes by two means: manually and using an automated clinical natural language processing (CNLP) tool. Finally, 14 previously unsolved cases were reanalyzed.
GEM ranked over 90% of the causal genes among the top or second candidate and prioritized for review a median of 3 candidate genes per case, using either manually curated or CNLP-derived phenotype descriptions. Ranking of trios and duos was unchanged when analyzed as singletons. In 17 of 20 cases with diagnostic SVs, GEM identified the causal SVs as the top candidate and in 19/20 within the top five, irrespective of whether SV calls were provided or inferred ab initio by GEM using its own internal SV detection algorithm. GEM showed similar performance in absence of parental genotypes. Analysis of 14 previously unsolved cases resulted in a novel finding for one case, candidates ultimately not advanced upon manual review for 3 cases, and no new findings for 10 cases.
GEM enabled diagnostic interpretation inclusive of all variant types through automated nomination of a very short list of candidate genes and disorders for final review and reporting. In combination with deep phenotyping by CNLP, GEM enables substantial automation of genetic disease diagnosis, potentially decreasing cost and expediting case review.
Discovery of temporal and spatial patterns of gene expression is essential for understanding the regulatory networks and development in multicellular organisms. We analyzed the images from our ...large‐scale spatial expression data set of early Drosophila embryonic development and present a comprehensive computational image analysis of the expression landscape. For this study, we created an innovative virtual representation of embryonic expression patterns using an elliptically shaped mesh grid that allows us to make quantitative comparisons of gene expression using a common frame of reference. Demonstrating the power of our approach, we used gene co‐expression to identify distinct expression domains in the early embryo; the result is surprisingly similar to the fate map determined using laser ablation. We also used a clustering strategy to find genes with similar patterns and developed new analysis tools to detect variation within consensus patterns, adjacent non‐overlapping patterns, and anti‐correlated patterns. Of the 1800 genes investigated, only half had previously assigned functions. The known genes suggest developmental roles for the clusters, and identification of related patterns predicts requirements for co‐occurring biological functions.
Synopsis
Analyzing both temporal and spatial gene expression is essential for understanding development and regulatory networks of multicellular organisms. Interacting genes are commonly expressed in overlapping or adjacent domains. Thus, gene expression patterns can be used to assign putative gene functions and mined to infer candidates for networks.
We have generated a systematic two‐dimensional mRNA expression atlas profiling embryonic development of Drosophila melanogaster (Tomancak et al, 2002, 2007). To date, we have collected over 70 000 images for over 6000 genes. To explore spatial relationships between gene expression patterns, we used a novel computational image‐processing approach by converting expression patterns from the images into virtual representations (Figure 1). Using a custom‐designed automated pipeline, for each image, we segmented and aligned the outline of the embryo to an elliptically shaped mesh, comprised of 311 small triangular regions each defining a unique location within the embryo. By comparing corresponding triangles, we produced a distance score to identify similar patterns. We generated those triangulated images (TIs) for our entire data set at all developmental stages and demonstrated that this representation can be used as for objective computationally defined description for expression in in situ hybridization images from various sources, including images from the literature.
We used the TIs to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the expression landscape. To this end, we created a novel approach to temporally sort and compact TIs to a non‐redundant data set suitable for further computational processing. Although generally applicable for all developmental stages, for this study, we focused on developmental stages 4–6. For this stage range, we reduced the initial set of about 5800 TIs to 553 TIs containing 364 genes. Using this filtered data set, to discover how expression subdivides the embryo into regions, we clustered areas with similar expression and demonstrated that expression patterns divide the early embryo into distinct spatial regions resembling a fate map (Figure 3). To discover the range of unique expression patterns, we used affinity propagation clustering (Frey and Dueck, 2007) to group TIs with similar patterns and identified 39 clusters each representing a distinct pattern class. We integrated the remaining genes into the 39 clusters and studied the distribution of expression patterns and the relationships between the clusters.
The clustered expression patterns were used to identify putative positive and negative regulatory interactions. The similar TIs in each cluster not only grouped already known genes with related functions, but previously undescribed genes. A comparative analysis identified subtle differences between the genes within each expression cluster. To investigate these differences, we developed a novel Markov Random Field (MRF) segmentation algorithm to extract patterns. We then extended the MRF algorithm to detect shared expression boundaries, generate similarity measurements, and discriminate even faint/uncertain patterns between two TIs. This enabled us to identify more subtle partial expression pattern overlaps and adjacent non‐overlapping patterns. For example, by conducting this analysis on the cluster containing the gene snail, we identified the previously known huckebein, which restricts snail expression (Reuter and Leptin, 1994), and zfh1, which interacts with tinman (Broihier et al, 1998; Su et al, 1999).
By studying the functions of known genes, we assigned putative developmental roles to each of the 39 clusters. Of the 1800 genes investigated, only half of them had previously assigned functions.
Representing expression patterns with geometric meshes facilitates the analysis of a complex process involving thousands of genes. This approach is complementary to the cellular resolution 3D atlas for the Drosophila embryo (Fowlkes et al, 2008). Our method can be used as a rapid, fully automated, high‐throughput approach to obtain a map of co‐expression, which will serve to select specific genes for detailed multiplex in‐situ hybridization and confocal analysis for a fine‐grain atlas. Our data are similar to the data in the literature, and research groups studying reporter constructs, mutant animals, or orthologs can easily produce in situ hybridizations. TIs can be readily created and provide representations that are both comparable to each other and our data set. We have demonstrated that our approach can be used for predicting relationships in regulatory and developmental pathways.
We created innovative virtual representation for our large scale Drosophila insitu expression dataset. We aligned an elliptically shaped mesh comprised of small triangular regions to the outline of each embryo. Each triangle defines a unique location in the embryo and comparing corresponding triangles allows easy identification of similar expression patterns.
The virtual representation was used to organize the expression landscape at stage 4‐6. We identified regions with similar expression in the embryo and clustered genes with similar expression patterns.
We created algorithms to mine the dataset for adjacent non‐overlapping patterns and anti‐correlated patterns. We were able to mine the dataset to identify co‐expressed and putative interacting genes.
Using co‐expression we were able to assign putative functions to unknown genes.
Rapidly and efficiently identifying critically ill infants for whole genome sequencing (WGS) is a costly and challenging task currently performed by scarce, highly trained experts and is a major ...bottleneck for application of WGS in the NICU. There is a dire need for automated means to prioritize patients for WGS.
Institutional databases of electronic health records (EHRs) are logical starting points for identifying patients with undiagnosed Mendelian diseases. We have developed automated means to prioritize patients for rapid and whole genome sequencing (rWGS and WGS) directly from clinical notes. Our approach combines a clinical natural language processing (CNLP) workflow with a machine learning-based prioritization tool named Mendelian Phenotype Search Engine (MPSE).
MPSE accurately and robustly identified NICU patients selected for WGS by clinical experts from Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego (AUC 0.86) and the University of Utah (AUC 0.85). In addition to effectively identifying patients for WGS, MPSE scores also strongly prioritize diagnostic cases over non-diagnostic cases, with projected diagnostic yields exceeding 50% throughout the first and second quartiles of score-ranked patients.
Our results indicate that an automated pipeline for selecting acutely ill infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) for WGS can meet or exceed diagnostic yields obtained through current selection procedures, which require time-consuming manual review of clinical notes and histories by specialized personnel.
Transposable elements are found in the genomes of nearly all eukaryotes. The recent completion of the Release 3 euchromatic genomic sequence of Drosophila melanogaster by the Berkeley Drosophila ...Genome Project has provided precise sequence for the repetitive elements in the Drosophila euchromatin. We have used this genomic sequence to describe the euchromatic transposable elements in the sequenced strain of this species.
We identified 85 known and eight novel families of transposable element varying in copy number from one to 146. A total of 1,572 full and partial transposable elements were identified, comprising 3.86% of the sequence. More than two-thirds of the transposable elements are partial. The density of transposable elements increases an average of 4.7 times in the centromere-proximal regions of each of the major chromosome arms. We found that transposable elements are preferentially found outside genes; only 436 of 1,572 transposable elements are contained within the 61.4 Mb of sequence that is annotated as being transcribed. A large proportion of transposable elements is found nested within other elements of the same or different classes. Lastly, an analysis of structural variation from different families reveals distinct patterns of deletion for elements belonging to different classes.
This analysis represents an initial characterization of the transposable elements in the Release 3 euchromatic genomic sequence of D. melanogaster for which comparison to the transposable elements of other organisms can begin to be made. These data have been made available on the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project website for future analyses.
BACKGROUND: Site-specific transcription factors (TFs) bind DNA regulatory elements to control expression of target genes, forming the core of gene regulatory networks. Despite decades of research, ...most studies focus on only a small number of TFs and the roles of many remain unknown. RESULTS: We present a systematic characterization of spatiotemporal gene expression patterns for all known or predicted Drosophila TFs throughout embryogenesis, the first such comprehensive study for any metazoan animal. We generated RNA expression patterns for all 708 TFs by in situ hybridization, annotated the patterns using an anatomical controlled vocabulary, and analyzed TF expression in the context of organ system development. Nearly all TFs are expressed during embryogenesis and more than half are specifically expressed in the central nervous system. Compared to other genes, TFs are enriched early in the development of most organ systems, and throughout the development of the nervous system. Of the 535 TFs with spatially restricted expression, 79% are dynamically expressed in multiple organ systems while 21% show single-organ specificity. Of those expressed in multiple organ systems, 77 TFs are restricted to a single organ system either early or late in development. Expression patterns for 354 TFs are characterized for the first time in this study. CONCLUSIONS: We produced a reference TF dataset for the investigation of gene regulatory networks in embryogenesis, and gained insight into the expression dynamics of the full complement of TFs controlling the development of each organ system.
High-content image acquisition is generally limited to cells grown in culture, requiring complex hardware and preset imaging modalities. Here we report an open source software package, OpenHiCAMM ...(Open Hi Content Acquisition for μManager), that provides a flexible framework for integration of generic microscope-associated robotics and image processing with sequential workflows. As an example, we imaged Drosophila embryos, detecting the embryos at low resolution, followed by re-imaging the detected embryos at high resolution, suitable for computational analysis and screening. The OpenHiCAMM package is easy to use and adapt for automating complex microscope image tasks. It expands our abilities for high-throughput image-based screens to a new range of biological samples, such as organoids, and will provide a foundation for bioimaging systems biology.
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•OpenHiCAMM is an open source software that integrates robotics and image acquisition•OpenHiCAMM is a module for the Fiji/ImageJ and μManager software packages•OpenHiCAMM tracks images on multiple slides and controls an optional slide loader•OpenHiCAMM is easily adapted for high-throughput screening and image analysis
Optical Imaging; Technical Aspects of Cell Biology; Bioinformatics
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