Research
Gene expression regulation in the context of mouse interspecific mosaic genomes
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* Corresponding author: Daniel Vaiman vaiman@cochin.inserm.fr
1 U567 Department of Genetics and Development, Institut Cochin, INSERM, 24 rue du Faubourg St Jacques, Paris, 75014, France
2 UMR8104 Department of Genetics and Development, Institut Cochin, CNRS, 24 rue du Faubourg St Jacques, Paris, 75014, France
3 Faculté de médecine, Hôpital Cochin, Université Paris Descartes, 24 rue du Faubourg St Jacques, Paris, 75014, France
4 UMR 1061, Unité de Génétique Moléculaire Animale, INRA/Université de Limoges, Université de Limoges, 123 Av. Albert Thomas, Limoges, 87060, France
5 Unité de Génétique des Mammifères, Institut Pasteur, 25 rue du Docteur Roux, Paris, 75724, France
6 Department of Animal Genetics, INRA, Domaine de Vilvert, Jouy-en-Josas, 78352, France
Genome Biology 2008, 9:R133 doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-8-r133
Published: 27 August 2008Abstract
Background
Accumulating evidence points to the mosaic nature of the mouse genome. However, little is known about the way the introgressed segments are regulated within the context of the recipient genetic background. To address this question, we have screened the testis transcriptome of interspecific recombinant congenic mouse strains (IRCSs) containing segments of Mus spretus origin at a homozygous state in a Mus musculus background.
Results
Most genes (75%) were not transcriptionally modified either in the IRCSs or in the parent M. spretus mice, compared to M. musculus. The expression levels of most of the remaining transcripts were 'dictated' by either M. musculus transcription factors ('trans-driven'; 20%), or M. spretus cis-acting elements ('cis-driven'; 4%). Finally, 1% of transcripts were dysregulated following a cis-trans mismatch. We observed a higher sequence divergence between M. spretus and M. musculus promoters of strongly dysregulated genes than in promoters of similarly expressed genes.
Conclusion
Our study indicates that it is possible to classify the molecular events leading to expressional alterations when a homozygous graft of foreign genome segments is made in an interspecific host genome. The inadequacy of transcription factors of this host genome to recognize the foreign targets was clearly the major path leading to dysregulation.