TITLE:

A BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES TO STUDY GENE REGULATION (No. 8)

DATE:

Friday, March 7th, 2003

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 214

SPEAKER:

Robert W. Zeller, Department of Biology, San Diego State University

ABSTRACT:

Despite tremendous advances in recent years, our understanding of gene regulation is far from complete. Genes are linear pieces of chromosomes composed of two parts: 1) the sequence information needed to encode a protein and 2) regulatory sequences required for gene expression (the cis-regulatory domain). In order for proper gene expression to occur, a vast array of information, such as temporal and spatial data as well as signaling interactions between cells and tissues, must be integrated. Data integration occurs via the combinatorial binding of proteins to specific DNA target sequences in the cis-regulatory region of a gene. These DNA target sites are short and degenerate – typical genes may have around 50 sites serviced by 20 or more proteins. The experimental identification of these sites and the demonstration of their roles in gene regulation is tedious and requires months of work. Comparative genomics and bioinformatics-based approaches promise to provide tools to help biologists identify cis-regulatory sites, predict the functions of these sites and suggest key experiments. Although a wide-variety of computational approaches are available, the biological verification of such approaches, particularly in multicellular organisms is severely lacking. This presentation will introduce the ascidian embryo as an ideal experimental model in which to test computational predictions of gene regulation. I will describe select computational approaches, discuss our efforts to integrate these methods and demonstrate how ascidians will be used to validate computational methods for studying gene regulation

HOST:

Jose Castillo

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