April 22, 2002. Hamid Bolouri, Modeling genetic regulatory networks

Abstract


Aside from asymmetries in the egg, all animal development and evolution must be encoded in DNA. Since animals mostly share the same protein families, differences among species must be due to differential regulation of genes. The primary means of controlling location, timing, and level of gene activity is transcriptional. This means models of genetic regulatory networks can be fully experimentally tested by identification of predicted transcription factor binding sites and in-situ hybridization of reporter constructs; two well-established technologies.

I will describe some approaches to modeling genetic regulatory networks and discuss some challenges ahead. 

Reading Material. See science article, 'A Genomic Regulatory Network for Development':

 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/5560/1669