EAPSI: Understanding gene expression changes leading to human diseases

Winkler James, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

Many diseases, including cancer, autoimmune disorders, and others are triggered by unusual perturbations in the expression of certain genes. The interactions between these genes and other present in the human genome are poorly understood, and it is not known how these interactions may be changed over time due to abnormal gene expression. This project will focus on computationally detecting perturbations that may lead to disease using publically available gene expression data from human cancer cell lines, with the eventual goal of confirming these results using experimental cell culture. This research will be conducted in collaboration with the Dr. Hsueh Fen Juan's laboratory at the National Taiwan University due to their expertise in computational and experimental analysis of human disease. This research will help to understand how these diseases begin and sustain themselves while revealing possible new targets for pharmaceutical treatments. The principal goal of this research is evaluate the transcriptional network motifs that drive the initial formation of cancerous or other diseased cells, and then discover how these motifs depend on the underlying transcriptional context of a given cell line. Both tissue and time dependence of these motifs will be considered to better understand the transition from normal to diseased cells. This project will also increase the visibility of a combined computational and experimental approach to biological problems. All new gene expression data will be stored in the National Center of Biotechnology Information Gene Expression Omnibus. Cell lines created for experimental validation will be distributed through cell line repositories for use by other researchers. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the National Science Council of Taiwan.