Skip Navigation


Briefings in Functional Genomics Advance Access originally published online on June 4, 2009
Briefings in Functional Genomics 2009 8(4):215-230; doi:10.1093/bfgp/elp014
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
8/4/215    most recent
elp014v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Narlikar, L.
Right arrow Articles by Ovcharenko, I.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Narlikar, L.
Right arrow Articles by Ovcharenko, I.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Published by Oxford University Press 2009. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

This article appears in the following Briefings in Functional Genomics and Proteomics issue: Special Issue: Non-Coding Regulatory Regions in Genomes [View the issue table of contents]

Special Issue Papers

Identifying regulatory elements in eukaryotic genomes

Leelavati Narlikar and Ivan Ovcharenko

Corresponding author. Ivan Ovcharenko, Computational Biology Branch, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, USA. Tel: (301) 435-8944; Fax: (301) 480-2290; Zip Code: 20894; E-mail: ovcharei{at}ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Proper development and functioning of an organism depends on precise spatial and temporal expression of all its genes. These coordinated expression-patterns are maintained primarily through the process of transcriptional regulation. Transcriptional regulation is mediated by proteins binding to regulatory elements on the DNA in a combinatorial manner, where particular combinations of transcription factor binding sites establish specific regulatory codes. In this review, we survey experimental and computational approaches geared towards the identification of proximal and distal gene regulatory elements in the genomes of complex eukaryotes. Available approaches that decipher the genetic structure and function of regulatory elements by exploiting various sources of information like gene expression data, chromatin structure, DNA-binding specificities of transcription factors, cooperativity of transcription factors, etc. are highlighted. We also discuss the relevance of regulatory elements in the context of human health through examples of mutations in some of these regions having serious implications in misregulation of genes and being strongly associated with human disorders.

Keywords: transcriptional regulation, enhancers, silencers, tissue-specific regulatory elements, population variation, non-coding diseases, computational analysis of regulatory element sequence composition


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.