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Publications

Publications by Nuno Fonseca

2021

Shedding Light on the African Enigma: In Vitro Testing of Homo sapiens-Helicobacter pylori Coevolution

Authors
Cavadas, B; Leite, M; Pedro, N; Magalhaes, AC; Melo, J; Correia, M; Maximo, V; Camacho, R; Fonseca, NA; Figueiredo, C; Pereira, L;

Publication
MICROORGANISMS

Abstract
The continuous characterization of genome-wide diversity in population and case-cohort samples, allied to the development of new algorithms, are shedding light on host ancestry impact and selection events on various infectious diseases. Especially interesting are the long-standing associations between humans and certain bacteria, such as the case of Helicobacter pylori, which could have been strong drivers of adaptation leading to coevolution. Some evidence on admixed gastric cancer cohorts have been suggested as supporting Homo-Helicobacter coevolution, but reliable experimental data that control both the bacterium and the host ancestries are lacking. Here, we conducted the first in vitro coinfection assays with dual human- and bacterium-matched and -mismatched ancestries, in African and European backgrounds, to evaluate the genome wide gene expression host response to H. pylori. Our results showed that: (1) the host response to H. pylori infection was greatly shaped by the human ancestry, with variability on innate immune system and metabolism; (2) African human ancestry showed signs of coevolution with H. pylori while European ancestry appeared to be maladapted; and (3) mismatched ancestry did not seem to be an important differentiator of gene expression at the initial stages of infection as assayed here.

2019

A Pan-cancer Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Pervasive Regulation through Alternative Promoters

Authors
Demircioglu, D; Cukuroglu, E; Kindermans, M; Nandi, T; Calabrese, C; Fonseca, NA; Kahles, A; Kjong Van Lehmann,; Stegle, O; Brazma, A; Brooks, AN; Ratsch, G; Tan, P; Goke, J;

Publication
CELL

Abstract
Most human protein-coding genes are regulated by multiple, distinct promoters, suggesting that the choice of promoter is as important as its level of transcriptional activity. However, while a global change in transcription is recognized as a defining feature of cancer, the contribution of alternative promoters still remains largely unexplored. Here, we infer active promoters using RNA-seq data from 18,468 cancer and normal samples, demonstrating that alternative promoters are a major contributor to context-specific regulation of transcription. We find that promoters are deregulated across tissues, cancer types, and patients, affecting known cancer genes and novel candidates. For genes with independently regulated promoters, we demonstrate that promoter activity provides a more accurate predictor of patient survival than gene expression. Our study suggests that a dynamic landscape of active promoters shapes the cancer transcriptome, opening new diagnostic avenues and opportunities to further explore the interplay of regulatory mechanisms with transcriptional aberrations in cancer.

2019

ArrayExpress update - from bulk to single-cell expression data

Authors
Athar, A; Fullgrabe, A; George, N; Iqbal, H; Huerta, L; Ali, A; Snow, C; Fonseca, NA; Petryszak, R; Papatheodorou, I; Sarkans, U; Brazma, A;

Publication
NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH

Abstract
ArrayExpress (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress) is an archive of functional genomics data from a variety of technologies assaying functional modalities of a genome, such as gene expression or promoter occupancy. The number of experiments based on sequencing technologies, in particular RNA-seq experiments, has been increasing over the last few years and submissions of sequencing data have overtaken microarray experiments in the last 12 months. Additionally, there is a significant increase in experiments investigating single cells, rather than bulk samples, known as single-cell RNA-seq. To accommodate these trends, we have substantially changed our submission tool Annotare which, along with raw and processed data, collects all metadata necessary to interpret these experiments. Selected datasets are re-processed and loaded into our sister resource, the value-added Expression Atlas (and its component Single Cell Expression Atlas), which not only enables users to interpret the data easily but also serves as a test for data quality. With an increasing number of studies that combine different assay modalities (multi-omics experiments), a new more general archival resource the BioStudies Database has been developed, which will eventually supersede ArrayExpress. Data submissions will continue unchanged; all existing ArrayExpress data will be incorporated into BioStudies and the existing accession numbers and application programming interfaces will be maintained.

2021

Metabarcoding with MinION: Speeding up the detection of invasive aquatic species using environmental DNA and nanopore sequencing

Authors
Egeter, B; Veríssimo, J; Lopes-Lima, M; chaves, c; Pinto, J; Riccardi, N; Beja, P; Fonseca, NA;

Publication
ARPHA Conference Abstracts

Abstract
Traditional detection of aquatic invasive species, via morphological identification is often time-consuming and can require a high level of taxonomic expertise, leading to delayed mitigation responses. Environmental DNA (eDNA) detection approaches of multiple species using Illumina-based sequencing technology have been used to overcome these hindrances, but sample processing is often lengthy. More recently, portable nanopore sequencing technology has become available, which has the potential to make molecular detection of invasive species more widely accessible and to substantially decrease sample turnaround times. However, nanopore-sequenced reads have a much higher error rate than those produced by Illumina platforms, which has so far hindered the adoption of this technology. We provide a detailed laboratory protocol and bioinformatic tools to increase the reliability of nanopore sequencing to detect invasive species, and we test its application using invasive bivalves. We sampled water from sites with pre-existing bivalve occurrence and abundance data, and contrasting bivalve communities, in Italy and Portugal. We extracted, amplified and sequenced eDNA with a turnaround of 3.5 days. The majority of processed reads were = 99 % identical to reference sequences. There were no taxa detected other than those known to occur. The lack of detections of some species at some sites could be explained by their known low abundances. The approach is now being tested on other target taxa such as fish and other vertebrates.

2020

Publisher Correction: Butler enables rapid cloud-based analysis of thousands of human genomes (Nature Biotechnology, (2020), 10.1038/s41587-019-0360-3)

Authors
Yakneen, S; Waszak, SM; Yakneen, S; Aminou, B; Bartolome, J; Boroevich, KA; Boyce, R; Brooks, AN; Buchanan, A; Buchhalter, I; Butler, AP; Byrne, NJ; Cafferkey, A; Campbell, PJ; Chen, Z; Cho, S; Choi, W; Clapham, P; Davis Dusenbery, BN; De La Vega, FM; Demeulemeester, J; Dow, MT; Dursi, LJ; Eils, J; Eils, R; Ellrott, K; Farcas, C; Favero, F; Fayzullaev, N; Ferretti, V; Flicek, P; Fonseca, NA; Gelpi, JL; Getz, G; Gibson, B; Grossman, RL; Harismendy, O; Heath, AP; Heinold, MC; Hess, JM; Hofmann, O; Hong, JH; Hudson, TJ; Hutter, B; Hutter, CM; Hübschmann, D; Imoto, S; Ivkovic, S; Jeon, SH; Jiao, W; Jung, J; Kabbe, R; Kahles, A; Kerssemakers, JNA; Kim, HL; Kim, H; Kim, J; Kim, Y; Kleinheinz, K; Koscher, M; Koures, A; Kovacevic, M; Lawerenz, C; Leshchiner, I; Liu, J; Livitz, D; Mihaiescu, GL; Mijalkovic, S; Mijalkovic Lazic, A; Miyano, S; Miyoshi, N; Nahal Bose, HK; Nakagawa, H; Nastic, M; Newhouse, SJ; Nicholson, J; O’Connor, BD; Ocana, D; Ohi, K; Ohno Machado, L; Omberg, L; Ouellette, BFF; Paramasivam, N; Perry, MD; Pihl, TD; Prinz, M; Puiggròs, M; Radovic, P; Raine, KM; Rheinbay, E; Rosenberg, M; Royo, R; Rätsch, G; Saksena, G; Schlesner, M; Shorser, SI; Short, C; Sofia, HJ; Spring, J; Stein, LD; Struck, AJ; Tiao, G; Tijanic, N; Torrents, D; Van Loo, P; Vazquez, M; Vicente, D; Wala, JA; Wang, Z; Waszak, SM; Weischenfeldt, J; Werner, J; Williams, A; Woo, Y; Wright, AJ; Xiang, Q; Yang, L; Yuen, D; Yung, CK; Zhang, J; Korbel, JO; Gertz, M; Korbel, JO;

Publication
Nature Biotechnology

Abstract
This paper was originally published under standard Springer Nature copyright (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.). It is now available as an open-access paper under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. © 2020, The Author(s).

2020

Pathway and network analysis of more than 2500 whole cancer genomes

Authors
Reyna, MA; Haan, D; Paczkowska, M; Verbeke, LPC; Vazquez, M; Kahraman, A; Pulido Tamayo, S; Barenboim, J; Wadi, L; Dhingra, P; Shrestha, R; Getz, G; Lawrence, MS; Pedersen, JS; Rubin, MA; Wheeler, DA; Brunak, S; Izarzugaza, JMG; Khurana, E; Marchal, K; von Mering, C; Sahinalp, SC; Valencia, A; Abascal, F; Amin, SB; Bader, GD; Bandopadhayay, P; Beroukhim, R; Bertl, J; Boroevich, KA; Busanovich, J; Campbell, PJ; Carlevaro Fita, J; Chakravarty, D; Chan, CWY; Chen, K; Choi, JK; Deu Pons, J; Diamanti, K; Feuerbach, L; Fink, JL; Fonseca, NA; Frigola, J; Gambacorti Passerini, C; Garsed, DW; Gerstein, M; Guo, Q; Gut, IG; Hamilton, MP; Haradhvala, NJ; Harmanci, AO; Helmy, M; Herrmann, C; Hess, JM; Hobolth, A; Hodzic, E; Hong, C; Hornshøj, H; Isaev, K; Johnson, R; Johnson, TA; Juul, M; Juul, RI; Kahles, A; Kellis, M; Kim, J; Kim, JK; Kim, Y; Komorowski, J; Korbel, JO; Kumar, S; Lanzós, A; Larsson, E; Lee, D; Lehmann, KV; Li, S; Li, X; Lin, Z; Liu, EM; Lochovsky, L; Lou, S; Madsen, T; Martincorena, I; Martinez Fundichely, A; Maruvka, YE; McGillivray, PD; Meyerson, W; Muiños, F; Mularoni, L; Nakagawa, H; Nielsen, MM; Park, K; Park, K; Pons, T; Reyes Salazar, I; Rheinbay, E; Rubio Perez, C; Saksena, G; Salichos, L; Sander, C; Schumacher, SE; Shackleton, M; Shapira, O; Shen, C; Shuai, S; Sidiropoulos, N; Sieverling, L; Sinnott Armstrong, N; Stein, LD; Tamborero, D; Tiao, G; Tsunoda, T; Umer, HM; Uusküla Reimand, L; Wadelius, C; Wang, J; Warrell, J; Waszak, SM; Weischenfeldt, J; Wu, G; Yu, J; Zhang, J; Zhang, X; Zhang, Y; Zhao, Z; Zou, L; Reimand, J; Stuart, JM; Raphael, BJ;

Publication
Nature Communications

Abstract
The catalog of cancer driver mutations in protein-coding genes has greatly expanded in the past decade. However, non-coding cancer driver mutations are less well-characterized and only a handful of recurrent non-coding mutations, most notably TERT promoter mutations, have been reported. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2658 cancer across 38 tumor types, we perform multi-faceted pathway and network analyses of non-coding mutations across 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumor types compiled by the ICGC/TCGA PCAWG project that was motivated by the success of pathway and network analyses in prioritizing rare mutations in protein-coding genes. While few non-coding genomic elements are recurrently mutated in this cohort, we identify 93 genes harboring non-coding mutations that cluster into several modules of interacting proteins. Among these are promoter mutations associated with reduced mRNA expression in TP53, TLE4, and TCF4. We find that biological processes had variable proportions of coding and non-coding mutations, with chromatin remodeling and proliferation pathways altered primarily by coding mutations, while developmental pathways, including Wnt and Notch, altered by both coding and non-coding mutations. RNA splicing is primarily altered by non-coding mutations in this cohort, and samples containing non-coding mutations in well-known RNA splicing factors exhibit similar gene expression signatures as samples with coding mutations in these genes. These analyses contribute a new repertoire of possible cancer genes and mechanisms that are altered by non-coding mutations and offer insights into additional cancer vulnerabilities that can be investigated for potential therapeutic treatments. © 2020, The Author(s).

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