Single and Dual Ligand Effects on Gene Expression Changes in Mouse Macrophage Cells

We identified differentially expressed genes in RAW264.7 cells in response to single and double ligand treatments (LPS, IFNgamma, 2MA, LPS plus IFNgamma, and LPS plus 2MA). The majority of the regulated transcripts responded additively to dual ligand treatment. However, a significant fraction responded in a non-additive fashion. Several cytokines showing non-additive transcriptional responses to dual ligand treatment also showed non-additive protein production/secretion responses in separately performed experiments. Many of the genes with non-additive responses to LPS plus 2MA showed enhanced responses and encoded pro-inflammatory proteins. LPS plus IFNgamma appeared to induce both non-additive enhancement and non-additive attenuation of gene expression. The affected genes were associated with a variety of biological functions. These experiments reveal both dependent and independent regulatory pathways and point out the specific nature of the regulatory interactions.

Construction of Chromosome-Specific BAC Libraries from the Filamentous Ascomycete Ashbya gossypii

It is clear that the construction of large insert DNA libraries is important for map-based gene cloning, the assembly of physical maps, and simple screening for specific genomic sequences. The bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) system is likely to be an important tool for map-based cloning of genes since BAC libraries can be constructed simply and analyzed more efficiently than yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) libraries. BACs have significantly expanded the size of fragments from eukaryotic genomes that can be cloned in Escherichia coli as plasmid molecules. To facilitate the isolation of molecular-biologically important genes in Ashbya gossypii, we constructed Ashbya chromosome-specific BAC libraries using pBeloBAC11 and pBACwich vectors with an average insert size of 100 kb, which is equivalent to 19.8X genomic coverage. pBACwich was developed to streamline map-based cloning by providing a tool to integrate large DNA fragments into specific sites in chromosomes. These chromosome-specific libraries have provided a useful tool for the further characterization of the Ashbya genome including positional cloning and genome sequencing.