Core B: Advanced Bioinformatics Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT CORE B – ADVANCED BIOINFORMATICS CORE The Advanced Bioinformatics Core will provide innovative and collaborative computational support for all three Projects, in close partnership with the Advanced Proteomics and Genome Editing Cores. We have several decades of experience in developing statistics and bioinformatics methods for genomics and proteomics, including open source software for analysis and visualization. For nearly 10 years, we have been working closely with the Srivastava, Bruneau, and Black labs to dissect cardiac regulatory mechanisms using the latest tools for data quantification and integrative analysis. These investigations identified several key cardiac transcription factors and chromatin-remodeling proteins that can alter cardiac development and cause CHDs when mutated. Yet we do not fully understand the mechanisms through which these regulatory proteins function. It is clear from our preliminary studies that mutations alter their subcellular localization, protein interactions, and genomic occupancy. New techniques in proteomics (e.g., APEX-MS) and genomics (single- cell RNA-seq) promise to shed light on how these effects translate into disease phenotypes through altered gene regulatory networks. But there are major challenges quantifying and jointly analyzing these diverse data types. The objective of the Advanced Bioinformatics Core is to rule out chance, bias and confounding in the data from Projects 1–3, using state-of-art analyses tools when available and developing new techniques where needed. Our rigorous statistical approach will enable the Core to integrate data within and across projects to decode novel mechanisms of CHD etiology that would otherwise be missed.