3,708 research outputs found
A Posterior Probability Approach for Gene Regulatory Network Inference in Genetic Perturbation Data
Inferring gene regulatory networks is an important problem in systems
biology. However, these networks can be hard to infer from experimental data
because of the inherent variability in biological data as well as the large
number of genes involved. We propose a fast, simple method for inferring
regulatory relationships between genes from knockdown experiments in the NIH
LINCS dataset by calculating posterior probabilities, incorporating prior
information. We show that the method is able to find previously identified
edges from TRANSFAC and JASPAR and discuss the merits and limitations of this
approach
Motif Discovery through Predictive Modeling of Gene Regulation
We present MEDUSA, an integrative method for learning motif models of
transcription factor binding sites by incorporating promoter sequence and gene
expression data. We use a modern large-margin machine learning approach, based
on boosting, to enable feature selection from the high-dimensional search space
of candidate binding sequences while avoiding overfitting. At each iteration of
the algorithm, MEDUSA builds a motif model whose presence in the promoter
region of a gene, coupled with activity of a regulator in an experiment, is
predictive of differential expression. In this way, we learn motifs that are
functional and predictive of regulatory response rather than motifs that are
simply overrepresented in promoter sequences. Moreover, MEDUSA produces a model
of the transcriptional control logic that can predict the expression of any
gene in the organism, given the sequence of the promoter region of the target
gene and the expression state of a set of known or putative transcription
factors and signaling molecules. Each motif model is either a -length
sequence, a dimer, or a PSSM that is built by agglomerative probabilistic
clustering of sequences with similar boosting loss. By applying MEDUSA to a set
of environmental stress response expression data in yeast, we learn motifs
whose ability to predict differential expression of target genes outperforms
motifs from the TRANSFAC dataset and from a previously published candidate set
of PSSMs. We also show that MEDUSA retrieves many experimentally confirmed
binding sites associated with environmental stress response from the
literature.Comment: RECOMB 200
Identification of transcription factor binding sites in promoter databases
Transcription factors (TFs) are the proteins which regulates the expression of their target genes either in a positive or negative manner. TFs realize this task by binding to a specific DNA sequence contained in promoter regions, via their DNA binding motifs. Among ETS family TFs, Pea3 proteins are involved in the regulation of expression of genes, which are important for cell growth, development, differentiation, oncogenic transformation and apoptosis. In silico studies should be done to find out the novel target genes for this TF. Even though a few bioinformatics tools are available for this purpose, the user needs to go back and forth between different tools, and to repeat these steps for each of their candidate gene. Here we combined these tools and constituted a new tool which examines the affinity of any TF towards the selected target genes’ promoter sequences. The tool is tested on several genes, which are predicted to be regulated by Pea3 TF
Unveiling combinatorial regulation through the combination of ChIP information and in silico cis-regulatory module detection
Computationally retrieving biologically relevant cis-regulatory modules (CRMs) is not straightforward. Because of the large number of candidates and the imperfection of the screening methods, many spurious CRMs are detected that are as high scoring as the biologically true ones. Using ChIP-information allows not only to reduce the regions in which the binding sites of the assayed transcription factor (TF) should be located, but also allows restricting the valid CRMs to those that contain the assayed TF (here referred to as applying CRM detection in a query-based mode). In this study, we show that exploiting ChIP-information in a query-based way makes in silico CRM detection a much more feasible endeavor. To be able to handle the large datasets, the query-based setting and other specificities proper to CRM detection on ChIP-Seq based data, we developed a novel powerful CRM detection method 'CPModule'. By applying it on a well-studied ChIP-Seq data set involved in self-renewal of mouse embryonic stem cells, we demonstrate how our tool can recover combinatorial regulation of five known TFs that are key in the self-renewal of mouse embryonic stem cells. Additionally, we make a number of new predictions on combinatorial regulation of these five key TFs with other TFs documented in TRANSFAC
Allelic expression mapping across cellular lineages to establish impact of non-coding SNPs
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Functional effects of polymorphisms on glucocorticoid receptor modulation of human anxiogenic substance-P gene promoter activity in primary amygdala neurones
This work was funded by The BBSRC (BB/D004659/1) the Wellcome Trust (080980/Z/06/Z) and the Medical Research Council (G0701003). Colin Hay was funded by the Chief Scientist Office, Scotland. Scott Davidson was funded by a BBSRC strategic studentship (BBS/S/2005/12001). Philip Cowie was funded by the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULCA).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Predicting Combinatorial Binding of Transcription Factors to Regulatory Elements in the Human Genome by Association Rule Mining
Cis-acting transcriptional regulatory elements in mammalian genomes typically contain specific combinations of binding sites for various transcription factors. Although some cisregulatory elements have been well studied, the combinations of transcription factors that regulate normal expression levels for the vast majority of the 20,000 genes in the human genome are unknown. We hypothesized that it should be possible to discover transcription factor combinations that regulate gene expression in concert by identifying over-represented combinations of sequence motifs that occur together in the genome. In order to detect combinations of transcription factor binding motifs, we developed a data mining approach based on the use of association rules, which are typically used in market basket analysis. We scored each segment of the genome for the presence or absence of each of 83 transcription factor binding motifs, then used association rule mining algorithms to mine this dataset, thus identifying frequently occurring pairs of distinct motifs within a segment. Results: Support for most pairs of transcription factor binding motifs was highly correlated across different chromosomes although pair significance varied. Known true positive motif pairs showed higher association rule support, confidence, and significance than background. Our subsets of high-confidence, high-significance mined pairs of transcription factors showed enrichment for co-citation in PubMed abstracts relative to all pairs, and the predicted associations were often readily verifiable in the literature. Conclusion: Functional elements in the genome where transcription factors bind to regulate expression in a combinatorial manner are more likely to be predicted by identifying statistically and biologically significant combinations of transcription factor binding motifs than by simply scanning the genome for the occurrence of binding sites for a single transcription factor.NIAAA Alcohol Training GrantNational Science FoundationCellular and Molecular Biolog
Wide-Scale Analysis of Human Functional Transcription Factor Binding Reveals a Strong Bias towards the Transcription Start Site
We introduce a novel method to screen the promoters of a set of genes with
shared biological function, against a precompiled library of motifs, and find
those motifs which are statistically over-represented in the gene set. The gene
sets were obtained from the functional Gene Ontology (GO) classification; for
each set and motif we optimized the sequence similarity score threshold,
independently for every location window (measured with respect to the TSS),
taking into account the location dependent nucleotide heterogeneity along the
promoters of the target genes. We performed a high throughput analysis,
searching the promoters (from 200bp downstream to 1000bp upstream the TSS), of
more than 8000 human and 23,000 mouse genes, for 134 functional Gene Ontology
classes and for 412 known DNA motifs. When combined with binding site and
location conservation between human and mouse, the method identifies with high
probability functional binding sites that regulate groups of biologically
related genes. We found many location-sensitive functional binding events and
showed that they clustered close to the TSS. Our method and findings were put
to several experimental tests. By allowing a "flexible" threshold and combining
our functional class and location specific search method with conservation
between human and mouse, we are able to identify reliably functional TF binding
sites. This is an essential step towards constructing regulatory networks and
elucidating the design principles that govern transcriptional regulation of
expression. The promoter region proximal to the TSS appears to be of central
importance for regulation of transcription in human and mouse, just as it is in
bacteria and yeast.Comment: 31 pages, including Supplementary Information and figure
Representing and analysing molecular and cellular function in the computer
Determining the biological function of a myriad of genes, and understanding how they interact to yield a living cell, is the major challenge of the post genome-sequencing era. The complexity of biological systems is such that this cannot be envisaged without the help of powerful computer systems capable of representing and analysing the intricate networks of physical and functional interactions between the different cellular components. In this review we try to provide the reader with an appreciation of where we stand in this regard. We discuss some of the inherent problems in describing the different facets of biological function, give an overview of how information on function is currently represented in the major biological databases, and describe different systems for organising and categorising the functions of gene products. In a second part, we present a new general data model, currently under development, which describes information on molecular function and cellular processes in a rigorous manner. The model is capable of representing a large variety of biochemical processes, including metabolic pathways, regulation of gene expression and signal transduction. It also incorporates taxonomies for categorising molecular entities, interactions and processes, and it offers means of viewing the information at different levels of resolution, and dealing with incomplete knowledge. The data model has been implemented in the database on protein function and cellular processes 'aMAZE' (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/research/pfbp/), which presently covers metabolic pathways and their regulation. Several tools for querying, displaying, and performing analyses on such pathways are briefly described in order to illustrate the practical applications enabled by the model
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