SPONGE

Reconstructing gene regulatory networks and transcription factor activity is crucial to understand biological processes and holds potential for developing personalized treatment. Yet, it is still an open problem as state-of-art algorithm are often not able to handle large amounts of data. Furthermore, many of the present methods predict numerous false positives and are unable to integrate other sources of information such as previously known interactions. Here we introduce KBoost, an algorithm that uses kernel PCA regression, boosting and Bayesian model averaging for fast and accurate reconstruction of gene regulatory networks. KBoost can also use a prior network built on previously known transcription factor targets. We have benchmarked KBoost using three different datasets against other high performing algorithms. The results show that our method compares favourably to other methods across datasets.

The package clusters gene activity along chromosome into zones, detects differential zones as outstanding, and visualizes maps of outstanding zones across the genome. It enables characterization of effects on multiple genes within adaptive genomic neighborhoods, which could arise from genome reorganization, structural variation, or epigenome alteration. It guarantees cluster optimality, linear runtime to sample size, and reproducibility. One can apply it on genome-wide activity measurements such as copy number, transcriptomic, proteomic, and methylation data.

An implementation of a probabilistic modeling framework that jointly analyzes personal genome and transcriptome data to estimate the probability that a variant has regulatory impact in that individual. It is based on a generative model that assumes that genomic annotations, such as the location of a variant with respect to regulatory elements, determine the prior probability that variant is a functional regulatory variant, which is an unobserved variable. The functional regulatory variant status then influences whether nearby genes are likely to display outlier levels of gene expression in that person. See the RIVER website for more information, documentation and examples.

Genetic variants associated with diseases often affect non-coding regions, thus likely having a regulatory role. To understand the effects of genetic variants in these regulatory regions, identifying genes that are modulated by specific regulatory elements (REs) is crucial. The effect of gene regulatory elements, such as enhancers, is often cell-type specific, likely because the combinations of transcription factors (TFs) that are regulating a given enhancer have cell-type specific activity. This TF activity can be quantified with existing tools such as diffTF and captures differences in binding of a TF in open chromatin regions. Collectively, this forms a gene regulatory network (GRN) with cell-type and data-specific TF-RE and RE-gene links. Here, we reconstruct such a GRN using single-cell or bulk RNAseq and open chromatin (e.g., using ATACseq or ChIPseq for open chromatin marks) and optionally (Capture) Hi-C data. Our network contains different types of links, connecting TFs to regulatory elements, the latter of which is connected to genes in the vicinity or within the same chromatin domain (TAD). We use a statistical framework to assign empirical FDRs and weights to all links using a permutation-based approach.

This is a probabilistic modelling pipeline for computing per- nucleotide posterior probabilities of modification from the data collected in structure probing experiments. The model supports multiple experimental replicates and empirically corrects coverage- and sequence-dependent biases. The model utilises the measure of a "drop-off rate" for each nucleotide, which is compared between replicates through a log-ratio (LDR). The LDRs between control replicates define a null distribution of variability in drop-off rate observed by chance and LDRs between treatment and control replicates gets compared to this distribution. Resulting empirical p-values (probability of being "drawn" from the null distribution) are used as observations in a Hidden Markov Model with a Beta-Uniform Mixture model used as an emission model. The resulting posterior probabilities indicate the probability of a nucleotide of having being modified in a structure probing experiment.

Exon-intron split analysis (EISA) uses ordinary RNA-seq data to measure changes in mature RNA and pre-mRNA reads across different experimental conditions to quantify transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. For details see Gaidatzis et al., Nat Biotechnol 2015. doi: 10.1038/nbt.3269. eisaR implements the major steps of EISA in R.