Comprehensive detection of genes causing a phenotype using phenotype sequencing and pathway analysis.

Autor: Marc Harper, Luisa Gronenberg, James Liao, Christopher Lee
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 2, p e88072 (2014)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088072
Popis: Discovering all the genetic causes of a phenotype is an important goal in functional genomics. We combine an experimental design for detecting independent genetic causes of a phenotype with a high-throughput sequencing analysis that maximizes sensitivity for comprehensively identifying them. Testing this approach on a set of 24 mutant strains generated for a metabolic phenotype with many known genetic causes, we show that this pathway-based phenotype sequencing analysis greatly improves sensitivity of detection compared with previous methods, and reveals a wide range of pathways that can cause this phenotype. We demonstrate our approach on a metabolic re-engineering phenotype, the PEP/OAA metabolic node in E. coli, which is crucial to a substantial number of metabolic pathways and under renewed interest for biofuel research. Out of 2157 mutations in these strains, pathway-phenoseq discriminated just five gene groups (12 genes) as statistically significant causes of the phenotype. Experimentally, these five gene groups, and the next two high-scoring pathway-phenoseq groups, either have a clear connection to the PEP metabolite level or offer an alternative path of producing oxaloacetate (OAA), and thus clearly explain the phenotype. These high-scoring gene groups also show strong evidence of positive selection pressure, compared with strictly neutral selection in the rest of the genome.
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