To determine the breadth and underpinning of changes in immunocyte gene expression due to genetic variation in mice we performed, as part of the Immunological Genome Project, gene expression profiling for CD4+ T cells and neutrophils purified from 39 inbred strains of the Mouse Phenome Database. Considering both cell types, a large number of transcripts showed significant variation across the inbred strains, 22% of the transcriptome varying by two-fold or more. These included 119 loci with apparently complete loss-of-function, where the corresponding transcript was not expressed in some of the strains, representing a useful resource of “natural knockouts”. We identified 1,222 cis- expression quantitative trait loci (cis-eQTL) that control some of this variation. Most (60%) cis-eQTLs were shared between T cells and neutrophils, but a significant portion uniquely impacted one of the cell types, suggesting cell-type specific regulatory mechanisms. Using a conditional regression algorithm we predicted regulatory interactions between transcription factors and potential targets, and demonstrated that these predictions overlap with regulatory interactions inferred from transcriptional changes during immunocyte differentiation. Finally, comparison of these and parallel data from CD4+ T cells of healthy humans demonstrated intriguing similarities in variability of a gene's expression: the most variable genes tended to be the same in both species, and there was an overlap in genes subject to strong cis-acting genetic variants. We speculate that this “conservation of variation” reflects a differential constraint on intra-species variation in expression levels of different genes, either through lower pressure for some genes, or by favoring variability for others.

Alternative splicing (AS) allows increased diversity and orthogonal regulation of the transcriptional products of mammalian genomes. To assess the distribution and variation of alternative splicing across cell lineages of the immune system, we comprehensively analyzed RNA sequencing and microarray data generated by the Immunological Genome Project Consortium. AS is pervasive: 60% of genes showed frequent AS isoforms in T or B lymphocytes, with 7,599 previously unreported isoforms. Distinct cell specificity was observed, with differential exon skipping in 5% of genes otherwise coexpressed in both B and T cells. The distribution of isoforms was mostly all or none, suggesting on/off switching as a frequent mode of AS regulation in lymphocytes. From the identification of differential exon use in the microarray data, clustering of exon inclusion/exclusion patterns across all Immunological Genome Project cell types showed that ∼70% of AS exons are distributed along a common pattern linked to lineage differentiation and cell cycling. Other AS events distinguished myeloid from lymphoid cells or affected only a small set of exons without clear lineage specificity (e.g., Ptprc). Computational analysis predicted specific associations between AS exons and splicing regulators, which were verified by detection of the hnRPLL/ Ptprc connection.A lternative splicing (AS), the process of selectively including or removing exons to create a variety of transcripts from the same pre-mRNA, plays an important role in amplifying the diversity and flexibility of genome-encoded molecules (1, 2). AS can result in different protein isoforms or generate mRNAs of identical coding sequence but varying in their stability, localization, susceptibility to translational control, or microRNA regulation. AS is frequent and ubiquitous, affecting 55-95% of multiexon genes in mammals in different estimates (3-6). It is involved in a wide range of biological phenomena, ranging from sex determination to apoptosis or tumor formation. It also allows evolutionary tinkering with transcript structure and gradual transitions in gene function (7).Splicing events are overrepresented in genes involved in signaling and transcriptional regulation (receptors, signaling transduction, and transcription factors) and immune and nervous system processes. It has been hypothesized that alternative splicing is particularly valuable in complex systems, where information is processed differently at different times (immune response) or fine-tuning of signal integration is important (5). In the immune system, the first instance of AS recognized was the now textbook case of differential processing of primary Ig transcripts generating either a membrane receptor in naïve B cells or a secreted protein after antigen-induced differentiation (8). Other notable examples are the splicing of transcripts encoding adhesion molecules such as PECAM1 or CD44, which modulate cell-stroma interactions, or the extracellular domain of the coinhibitory molecule CTLA4 (9). A particularly well-studie...

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Most human proteins lack chemical probes, and several large-scale and generalizable small-molecule binding assays have been introduced to address this problem. How compounds discovered in such binding-first assays affect protein function, nonetheless, often remains unclear. Here, we describe a function-first proteomic strategy that uses size exclusion chromatography (SEC) to assess the global impact of electrophilic compounds on protein complexes in human cells. Integrating the SEC data with cysteine-directed activity-based protein profiling identifies changes in protein-protein interactions that are caused by site-specific liganding events, including the stereoselective engagement of cysteines in PSME1 and SF3B1 that disrupt the PA28 proteasome regulatory complex and stabilize a dynamic state of the spliceosome, respectively. Our findings thus show how multidimensional proteomic analysis of focused libraries of electrophilic compounds can expedite the discovery of chemical probes with site-specific functional effects on protein complexes in human cells.

ELAVL1 primarily couples mRNA stability with the 3 0 UTRs of interferon-stimulated genes Graphical abstract Highlights d ELAVL1 changes its mRNA binding distribution during innate immunity d ELAVL1 stabilizes the mRNAs of interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) d RNA half-lives of ISG targets decrease in the absence of ELAVL1