Abstract
Naturally occurring Antisense Transcripts (NATs) compose an emerging group of regulatory RNAs. These regulatory elements appear in all organisms examined, but little is known about global expression of NATs in fungi. Analysis of currently available EST sequences suggests that 352 cis NATs are present in Aspergillus flavus. An Affymetrix GeneChip® microarray containing probes for these cis NATs, as well as all predicted genes in A. flavus, allowed a whole genome expression analysis of these elements in response to two ecologically important temperatures for the fungus. RNA expression analysis showed that 32 NATs and 2,709 genes were differentially expressed between 37°C, the optimum temperature for growth, and 28°C, the conducive temperature for the biosynthesis of aflatoxin (AF) and many other secondary metabolites. These NATs correspond to sense genes with diverse functions including transcription initiation, carbohydrate processing and binding, temperature sensitive morphogenesis, and secondary metabolism. This is the first report of a whole genome transcriptional analysis of NAT expression in a fungus.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams AE, Botstein D, Drubin DG (1991) Requirement of yeast fimbrin for actin organization and morphogenesis in vivo. Nature 354:404–408
Andersen J, Forst SA, Zhao K, Inouye M, Delihas N (1989) The function of micF RNA. micF RNA is a major factor in the thermal regulation of OmpF protein in Escherichia coli. J Biol Chem 264:17961–17970
Aravin AA, Klenov MS, Vagin VV, Bantignies F, Cavalli G, Gvozdev VA (2004) Dissection of a natural RNA silencing process in the Drosophila melanogaster germ line. Mol Cell Biol 24:6742–6750
Ashburner M et al (2000) Gene ontology: tool for the unification of biology. The Gene Ontology Consortium. Nat Genet 25:25–29
Belkacemi L, Barton RC, Hopwood V, Evans EG (1999) Determination of optimum growth conditions for gliotoxin production by Aspergillus fumigatus and development of a novel method for gliotoxin detection. Med Mycol 37:227–233
Benjamini Y, Hochberg Y (1995) Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. J R Stat Soc: Ser B (Methodol) 57:289–300
Bretscher A (1981) Fimbrin is a cytoskeletal protein that crosslinks F-actin in vitro. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 78:6849–6853
Burset M, Seledtsov IA, Solovyev VV (2000) Analysis of canonical and non-canonical splice sites in mammalian genomes. Nucleic Acids Res 28:4364–4375
Calvo AM, Hinze LL, Gardner HW, Keller NP (1999) Sporogenic effect of polyunsaturated fatty acids on development of Aspergillus spp. Appl Environ Microbiol 65:3668–3673
Canovas D, Andrianopoulos A (2006) Developmental regulation of the glyoxylate cycle in the human pathogen Penicillium marneffei. Mol Microbiol 62:1725–1738
Carbone I, Ramirez-Prado JH, Jakobek JL, Horn BW (2007) Gene duplication, modularity and adaptation in the evolution of the aflatoxin gene cluster. BMC Evol Biol 7:111
Cary JW, Ehrlich KC, Bland JM, Montalbano BG (2006) The aflatoxin biosynthesis cluster gene, aflX, encodes an oxidoreductase involved in conversion of versicolorin A to demethylsterigmatocystin. Appl Environ Microbiol 72:1096–1101
Chang PK, Cary JW, Bhatnagar D, Cleveland TE, Bennett JW, Linz JE, Woloshuk CP, Payne GA (1993) Cloning of the Aspergillus parasiticus apa-2 gene associated with the regulation of aflatoxin biosynthesis. Appl Environ Microbiol 59:3273–3279
Chen JJ et al (2004) Over 20% of human transcripts might form sense–antisense pairs. Nucleic Acids Res 32:4812–4820
Chen N, Stein LD (2006) Conservation and functional significance of gene topology in the genome of Caenorhabditis elegans. Genome Res 16:606–617
Colantuoni C, Henry G, Zeger S, Pevsner J (2002) Local mean normalization of microarray element signal intensities across an array surface: quality control and correction of spatially systematic artifacts. Biotechniques 32:1316–1320
Dahary D, Elroy-Stein O, Sorek R (2005) Naturally occurring antisense: transcriptional leakage or real overlap? Genome Res 15:364–368
David L et al (2006) A high-resolution map of transcription in the yeast genome. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103:5320–5325
Delihas N, Forst S (2001) MicF: an antisense RNA gene involved in response of Escherichia coli to global stress factors. J Mol Biol 313:1–12
Drubin DG, Miller KG, Botstein D (1988) Yeast actin-binding proteins: evidence for a role in morphogenesis. J Cell Biol 107:2551–2561
Engstrom PG et al (2006) Complex loci in human and mouse genomes. PLoS Genet 2:e47
Farrell CM, Lukens LN (1995) Naturally-occurring antisense transcripts are present in chick-embryo chondrocytes simultaneously with the down-regulation of the alpha-1(I) collagen gene. J Biol Chem 270:3400–3408
Feng GH, Leonard TJ (1995) Characterization of the polyketide synthase gene (pksL1) required for aflatoxin biosynthesis in Aspergillus parasiticus. J Bacteriol 177:6246–6254
Feng GH, Leonard TJ (1998) Culture conditions control expression of the genes for aflatoxin and sterigmatocystin biosynthesis in Aspergillus parasiticus and A. nidulans. Appl Environ Microbiol 64:2275–2277
Ghormade V, Deshpande MV (2000) Fungal spore germination into yeast or mycelium: possible implications of dimorphism in evolution and human pathogenesis. Naturwissenschaften 87:236–240
Goodman A, Goode BL, Matsudaira P, Fink GR (2003) The Saccharomyces cerevisiae calponin/transgelin homolog Scp1 functions with fimbrin to regulate stability and organization of the actin cytoskeleton. Mol Biol Cell 14:2617–2629
Gqaleni N, Smith JE, Lacey J, Gettinby G (1997) Effects of temperature, water activity, and incubation time on production of aflatoxins and cyclopiazonic acid by an isolate of Aspergillus flavus in surface agar culture. Appl Environ Microbiol 63:1048–1053
Gyorffy A, Tulassay Z, Surowiak P, Gyorffy B (2006) Computational analysis reveals 43% antisense transcription in 1,182 transcripts in mouse muscle. DNA Seq 17:422–430
Hansen KR et al (2005) Global effects on gene expression in fission yeast by silencing and RNA interference machineries. Mol Cell Biol 25:590–601
Harris SD (2006) Cell polarity in filamentous fungi: shaping the mold. Int Rev Cytol 251:41–77
Harris SD, Hofmann AF, Tedford HW, Lee MP (1999) Identification and characterization of genes required for hyphal morphogenesis in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans. Genetics 151:1015–1025
Hastings ML, Milcarek C, Martincic K, Peterson ML, Munroe SH (1997) Expression of the thyroid hormone receptor gene, erbAalpha, in B lymphocytes: alternative mRNA processing is independent of differentiation but correlates with antisense RNA levels. Nucleic Acids Res 25:4296–4300
Henz SR et al (2007) Distinct expression patterns of natural antisense transcripts in Arabidopsis. Plant Physiol 144:1247–1255
Hogan LH, Klein BS (1994) Altered expression of surface alpha-1,3-glucan in genetically related strains of Blastomyces dermatitidis that differ in virulence. Infect Immun 62:3543–3546
Irizarry RA et al (2003) Exploration, normalization, and summaries of high density oligonucleotide array probe level data. Biostatistics 4:249–264
Kaminskyj SG (2000) Septum position is marked at the tip of Aspergillus nidulans hyphae. Fungal Genet Biol 31:105–113
Kaminskyj SG, Hamer JE (1998) hyp loci control cell pattern formation in the vegetative mycelium of Aspergillus nidulans. Genetics 148:669–680
Kent WJ (2002) BLAT—the BLAST-like alignment tool. Genome Res 12:656–664
Kimelman D, Kirschner MW (1989) An antisense mRNA directs the covalent modification of the transcript encoding fibroblast growth factor in Xenopus oocytes. Cell 59:687–696
Kiyosawa H, Yamanaka I, Osato N, Kondo S, Hayashizaki Y (2003) Antisense transcripts with FANTOM2 clone set and their implications for gene regulation. Genome Res 13:1324–1334
Klein BS, Tebbets B (2007) Dimorphism and virulence in fungi. Curr Opin Microbiol 10:314–319
Klich MA (2002) Biogeography of Aspergillus in soil and litter. Mycologia 94:21–27
Kramer C, Loros JJ, Dunlap JC, Crosthwaite SK (2003) Role for antisense RNA in regulating circadian clock function in Neurospora crassa. Nature 421:948–952
Kubler E, Riezman H (1993) Actin and fimbrin are required for the internalization step of endocytosis in yeast. EMBO J 12:2855–2862
Kumar M, Carmichael GG (1997) Nuclear antisense RNA induces extensive adenosine modifications and nuclear retention of target transcripts. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 94:3542–3547
Lapidot M, Pilpel Y (2006) Genome-wide natural antisense transcription: coupling its regulation to its different regulatory mechanisms. EMBO Rep 7:1216–1222
Lavorgna G, Dahary D, Lehner B, Sorek R, Sanderson CM, Casari G (2004) In search of antisense. Trends Biochem Sci 29:88–94
Li C, Hung Wong W (2001) Model-based analysis of oligonucleotide arrays: model validation, design issues and standard error application. Genome Biol 2:RESEARCH0032
Liu BH, Chu FS (1998) Regulation of aflR and its product, AflR, associated with aflatoxin biosynthesis. Appl Environ Microbiol 64:3718–3723
Loftus BJ et al (2005) The genome of the basidiomycetous yeast and human pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans. Science 307:1321–1324
Machida M et al (2005) Genome sequencing and analysis of Aspergillus oryzae. Nature 438:1157–1161
Makalowska I, Lin CF, Makalowski W (2005) Overlapping genes in vertebrate genomes. Comput Biol Chem 29:1–12
Matranga C, Zamore PD (2007) Small silencing RNAs. Curr Biol 17:R789–R793
Masse E, Gottesman S (2002) A small RNA regulates the expression of genes involved in iron metabolism in Escherichia coli. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99:4620–4625
Medoff G, Painter A, Kobayashi GS (1987) Mycelial- to yeast-phase transitions of the dimorphic fungi Blastomyces dermatitidis and Paracoccidioides brasiliensis. J Bacteriol 169:4055–4060
Meyers DM, Obrian G, Du WL, Bhatnagar D, Payne GA (1998) Characterization of aflJ, a gene required for conversion of pathway intermediates to aflatoxin. Appl Environ Microbiol 64:3713–3717
Misra S, et al. (2002) Annotation of the Drosophila melanogaster euchromatic genome: a systematic review. Genome Biol 3:RESEARCH0083
Moller T, Franch T, Udesen C, Gerdes K, Valentin-Hansen P (2002) Spot 42 RNA mediates discoordinate expression of the E. coli galactose operon. Genes Dev 16:1696–1706
Momany M, Westfall PJ, Abramowsky G (1999) Aspergillus nidulans swo mutants show defects in polarity establishment, polarity maintenance and hyphal morphogenesis. Genetics 151:557–567
Morfeldt E, Taylor D, von Gabain A, Arvidson S (1995) Activation of alpha-toxin translation in Staphylococcus aureus by the trans-encoded antisense RNA, RNAIII. EMBO J 14:4569–4577
Naef F, Hacker CR, Patil N, Magnasco M (2002) Characterization of the expression ratio noise structure in high-density oligonucleotide arrays. Genome Biol 3:PREPRINT0001
Nemecek JC, Wuthrich M, Klein BS (2006) Global control of dimorphism and virulence in fungi. Science 312:583–588
Noguchi M, Miyamoto S, Silverman TA, Safer B (1994) Characterization of an antisense Inr element in the eIF-2-alpha gene. J Biol Chem 269:29161–29167
OBrian GR et al (2007) The effect of elevated temperature on gene transcription and aflatoxin biosynthesis. Mycologia 99:232–239
OBrian GR, Fakhoury AM, Payne GA (2003) Identification of genes differentially expressed during aflatoxin biosynthesis in Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Fungal Genet Biol 39:118–127
Oeder S, Mages J, Flicek P, Lang R (2007) Uncovering information on expression of natural antisense transcripts in Affymetrix MOE430 datasets. BMC Genomics 8:200–207
Osato N et al (2003) Antisense transcripts with rice full-length cDNAs. Genome Biol 5:R5
Payne GA, Nierman WC, Wortman JR, Pritchard BL, Brown D et al (2006) Whole genome comparison of Aspergillus flavus and A. oryzae. Med Mycol 44:9–11
Peters NT, Rohrbach JA, Zalewski BA, Byrkett CM, Vaughn JC (2003) RNA editing and regulation of Drosophila 4f-rnp expression by sas-10 antisense readthrough mRNA transcripts. RNA 9:698–710
Price MS, Conners SB, Tachdjian S, Kelly RM, Payne GA (2005) Aflatoxin conducive and non-conducive growth conditions reveal new gene associations with aflatoxin production. Fungal Genet Biol 42:506–518
Rappleye CA, Engle JT, Goldman WE (2004) RNA interference in Histoplasma capsulatum demonstrates a role for alpha-(1,3)-glucan in virulence. Mol Microbiol 53:153–165
Ritchie SW, Hanway JJ, Benson GO (1997) How a corn plant develops: special report no. 48. Iowa State University of Science and Technology Cooperative Extension Service
San-Blas G, San-Blas F (1984) Molecular aspects of fungal dimorphism. Crit Rev Microbiol 11:101–127
Schindler AF, Palmer JG, Eisenberg WV (1967) Aflatoxin Production by Aspergillus flavus as related to various temperatures. Appl Microbiol 15:1006–1009
Shi X, Sha Y, Kaminskyj S (2004) Aspergillus nidulans hypA regulates morphogenesis through the secretion pathway. Fungal Genet Biol 41:75–88
Silverman TA, Noguchi M, Safer B (1992) Role of sequences within the 1st intron in the regulation of expression of eukaryotic initiation factor-2-alpha. J Biol Chem 267:9738–9742
Steigele S, Nieselt K (2005) Open reading frames provide a rich pool of potential natural antisense transcripts in fungal genomes. Nucleic Acids Res 33:5034–5044
Stevens DA et al (2000) Practice guidelines for diseases caused by Aspergillus. Infectious Diseases Society of America. Clin Infect Dis 30:696–709
Sun M, Hurst LD, Carmichael GG, Chen J (2006) Evidence for variation in abundance of antisense transcripts between multicellular animals but no relationship between antisense transcription and organismic complexity. Genome Res 16:922–933
Takehara T, Inoue M, Morioka T, Yokogawa K (1981) Purification and properties of endo-alpha-1,3-glucanase from a Streptomyces chartreusis strain. J Bacteriol 145:729–735
Tatusov RL, Koonin EV, Lipman DJ (1997) A genomic perspective on protein families. Science 278:631–637
Tatusov RL, Fedorova ND, Jackson JD, Jacobs AR, Kiryutin B, Koonin EV, Krylov DM, Mazumder R, Mekkedov SL, Nikolskaya AN, Rao BS, Smirnov S, Sverdlov AV, Vasudevan S, Wolf YI, Yin JJ, Natale DA (2003) The COG database: an updated version includes eukaryotes. BMC Bioinformatics 4:41–54
Volpe TA, Kidner C, Hall IM, Teng G, Grewal SI, Martienssen RA (2002) Regulation of heterochromatic silencing and histone H3 lysine-9 methylation by RNAi. Science 297:1833–1837
Wang XJ, Gaasterland T, Chua NH (2005) Genome-wide prediction and identification of cis-natural antisense transcripts in Arabidopsis thaliana. Genome Biology 6(4):R30
Wang Y, Miao ZH, Pommier Y, Kawasaki ES, Player A (2007) Characterization of mismatch and high-signal intensity probes associated with Affymetrix genechips. Bioinformatics 23:2088–2095
Wen Y, Hatabayashi H, Arai H, Kitamoto HK, Yabe K (2005) Function of the cypX and moxY genes in aflatoxin biosynthesis in Aspergillus parasiticus. Appl Environ Microbiol 71:3192–3198
Wilson RA, Chang PK, Dobrzyn A, Ntambi JM, Zarnowski R, Keller NP (2004) Two Delta9-stearic acid desaturases are required for Aspergillus nidulans growth and development. Fungal Genet Biol 41:501–509
Woloshuk CP, Foutz KR, Brewer JF, Bhatnagar D, Cleveland TE, Payne GA (1994) Molecular characterization of Aflr, a regulatory locus for aflatoxin biosynthesis. Appl Environ Microbiol 60:2408–2414
Wutz A, Smrzka OW, Schweifer N, Schellander K, Wagner EF, Barlow DP (1997) Imprinted expression of the Igf2r gene depends on an intronic CpG island. Nature 389:745–749
Yelin R et al (2003) Widespread occurrence of antisense transcription in the human genome. Nat Biotechnol 21:379–386
Yu JJ, Whitelaw CA, Nierman WC, Bhatnagar D, Cleveland TE (2004) Aspergillus flavus expressed sequence tags for identification of genes with putative roles in aflatoxin contamination of crops. FEMS Microbiol Lett 237:333–340
Zhang Y, Li J, Kong L, Gao G, Liu QR, Wei L (2007) NATsDB: natural antisense transcripts database. Nucleic Acids Res 35:D156–D161
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Andrea L. Dolezal for planting, pollinating, and taking care of the maize used in this study. The authors also thank Charles P. Woloshuk and Andrea L. Dolezal for their suggestions and assistance in setting up the maize kernel assay. This project was supported by the National Research Initiative of the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, grant number # 2004-35600-14172. C.A.S. was supported by the United States Department of Agriculture/Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems award no. 2001–52101-11507.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by A. Brakhage.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smith, C.A., Robertson, D., Yates, B. et al. The effect of temperature on Natural Antisense Transcript (NAT) expression in Aspergillus flavus . Curr Genet 54, 241–269 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-008-0215-9
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-008-0215-9