Publication Date:
2012-08-23
Description:
The field of regulatory genomics today is characterized by the generation of high-throughput data sets that capture genome-wide transcription factor (TF) binding, histone modifications, or DNAseI hypersensitive regions across many cell types and conditions. In this context, a critical question is how to make optimal use of these publicly available datasets when studying transcriptional regulation. Here, we address this question in Drosophila melanogaster for which a large number of high-throughput regulatory datasets are available. We developed i-cisTarget (where the ‘ i ’ stands for integrative ), for the first time enabling the discovery of different types of enriched ‘regulatory features’ in a set of co-regulated sequences in one analysis, being either TF motifs or ‘ in vivo ’ chromatin features, or combinations thereof. We have validated our approach on 15 co-expressed gene sets, 21 ChIP data sets, 628 curated gene sets and multiple individual case studies, and show that meaningful regulatory features can be confidently discovered; that bona fide enhancers can be identified, both by in vivo events and by TF motifs; and that combinations of in vivo events and TF motifs further increase the performance of enhancer prediction.
Keywords:
Computational Methods, Genomics
Print ISSN:
0305-1048
Electronic ISSN:
1362-4962
Topics:
Biology
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