A robust and tunable mitotic oscillator in artificial cells
- University of Michigan, United States
- University of Science and Technology of China, China
- Wayne State University, United States
Abstract
Single-cell analysis is pivotal to deciphering complex phenomena like heterogeneity, bistability, and asynchronous oscillations, where a population ensemble cannot represent individual behaviors. Bulk cell-free systems, despite having unique advantages of manipulation and characterization of biochemical networks, lack the essential single-cell information to understand a class of out-of-steady-state dynamics including cell cycles. Here, by encapsulating Xenopus egg extracts in water-in-oil microemulsions, we developed artificial cells that are adjustable in sizes and periods, sustain mitotic oscillations for over 30 cycles, and function in forms from the simplest cytoplasmic-only to the more complicated ones involving nuclear dynamics, mimicking real cells. Such innate flexibility and robustness make it key to studying clock properties like tunability and stochasticity. Our results also highlight energy as an important regulator of cell cycles. We demonstrate a simple, powerful, and likely generalizable strategy of integrating strengths of single-cell approaches into conventional in vitro systems to study complex clock functions.
Data availability
-
Data from: A robust and tunable mitotic oscillator in artificial cellsAvailable at Dryad Digital Repository under a CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (MIRA #GM119688)
- Qiong Yang
National Science Foundation (CAREER Grant #1553031)
- Qiong Yang
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Sloan Research Fellowship)
- Qiong Yang
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Naama Barkai, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Version history
- Received: November 15, 2017
- Accepted: April 4, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: April 5, 2018 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: April 27, 2018 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2018, Guan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 4,079
- views
-
- 539
- downloads
-
- 36
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
A robust and tunable mitotic oscillator in artificial cells
eLife 7:e33549.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.33549
Further reading
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Chromosomes and Gene Expression
Recent findings indicate that the translation elongation rate influences mRNA stability. One of the factors that has been implicated in this link between mRNA decay and translation speed is the yeast DEAD-box helicase Dhh1p. Here, we demonstrated that the human ortholog of Dhh1p, DDX6, triggers the deadenylation-dependent decay of inefficiently translated mRNAs in human cells. DDX6 interacts with the ribosome through the Phe-Asp-Phe (FDF) motif in its RecA2 domain. Furthermore, RecA2-mediated interactions and ATPase activity are both required for DDX6 to destabilize inefficiently translated mRNAs. Using ribosome profiling and RNA sequencing, we identified two classes of endogenous mRNAs that are regulated in a DDX6-dependent manner. The identified targets are either translationally regulated or regulated at the steady-state-level and either exhibit signatures of poor overall translation or of locally reduced ribosome translocation rates. Transferring the identified sequence stretches into a reporter mRNA caused translation- and DDX6-dependent degradation of the reporter mRNA. In summary, these results identify DDX6 as a crucial regulator of mRNA translation and decay triggered by slow ribosome movement and provide insights into the mechanism by which DDX6 destabilizes inefficiently translated mRNAs.
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
The articles in this special issue highlight how modern cellular, biochemical, biophysical and computational techniques are allowing deeper and more detailed studies of allosteric kinase regulation.
