A Robust Approach to Identifying Tissue-Specific Gene Expression Regulatory Variants Using Personalized Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Normal variation in gene expression due to regulatory polymorphisms is often masked by biological and experimental noise. In addition, some regulatory polymorphisms may become apparent only in specific tissues. We derived human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from adult skin primary fibroblasts and attempted to detect tissue-specific cis-regulatory variants using in vitro cell differentiation. We used padlock probes and high-throughput sequencing for digital RNA allelotyping and measured allele-specific gene expression in primary fibroblasts, lymphoblastoid cells, iPS cells, and their differentiated derivatives. We show that allele-specific expression is both cell type and genotype-dependent, but the majority of detectable allele-specific expression loci remains consistent despite large changes in the cell type or the experimental condition following iPS reprogramming, except on the X-chromosome. We show that our approach to mapping cis-regulatory variants reduces in vitro experimental noise and reveals additional tissue-specific variants using skin-derived human iPS cells

APC15 mediates CDC20 autoubiquitylation by APC/CMCC and disassembly of the mitotic checkpoint complex

The anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome bound to CDC20 (APC/C(CDC20)) initiates anaphase by ubiquitylating B-type cyclins and securin. During chromosome bi-orientation, CDC20 assembles with MAD2, BUBR1 and BUB3 into a mitotic checkpoint complex (MCC) which inhibits substrate recruitment to the APC/C. APC/C activation depends on MCC disassembly, which has been proposed to require CDC20 auto-ubiquitylation. Here we characterized APC15, a human APC/C subunit related to yeast Mnd2. APC15 is located near APC/C’s MCC binding site, is required for APC/C(MCC)-dependent CDC20 auto-ubiquitylation and degradation, and for timely anaphase initiation, but is dispensable for substrate ubiquitylation by APC/C(CDC20) and APC/C(CDH1). Our results support the view that MCC is continuously assembled and disassembled to enable rapid activation of APC/C(CDC20) and that CDC20 auto-ubiquitylation promotes MCC disassembly. We propose that APC15 and Mnd2 negatively regulate APC/C coactivators, and report the first generation of recombinant human APC/C