Unravelling the world of cis-regulatory elements.
Genome-wide comparisons indicate that only studying the coding regions will not be enough for explaining the biological complexity of an organism, while the genetic variants and the epigenetic differences of cis-regulatory elements are crucial to elucidate many complicated biological phenomena. Their various regulatory functions also play indispensable roles in forming organismal polymorphism. Recent studies showed that the cis-regulatory elements can regulate gene expression as nuclear organizers, and involve in functional noncoding transcription and produce regulatory noncoding RNA molecules. Novel high-throughput strategies and in silico analysis make a great amount data of cis-regulatory elements available. Particularly, the computational methods could help to combine reductionist studies with network biomedical investigations, and begin the era to understand organismal regulatory events at systems biology level.
Wang
Zhao
Z
National Laboratory of Medical Molecular Biology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Dong Dan San Tiao 5, 100005 Beijing, China.
Wei
Gong-Hong
GH
Liu
De-Pei
DP
Liang
Chih-Chuan
CC
D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D050436:Regulatory Elements, Transcriptional / Q000235:genetics*; D014158:Transcription, Genetic