VISION: ValIdated Systematic IntegratiON of epigenomic data

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Project Summary VISION: ValIdated Systematic IntegratiON of hematopoietic epigenomes Technological advances enabling the production of large numbers of rich, genome-wide, sequence-based datasets have transformed biology. However, the volume of data is overwhelming for most investigators. Also, we do not know the mechanisms by which the vast majority of epigenetic features regulate normal differentiation or lead to aberrant function in disease. We have formed an interdisciplinary, collaborative team of investigators to address the problem of how to effectively utilize the enormous amount of epigenetic data both for basic research and precision medicine. At this point, acquisition of data is no longer the major barrier to understanding mechanisms of gene regulation during normal and pathological tissue development. The chief challenges are how to: (i) integrate epigenetic data in terms that are accessible and understandable to a broad community of researchers, (ii) build validated quantitative models explaining how the dynamics of gene expression relates to epigenetic features, and (iii) translate information effectively from mouse models to potential applications in human health. These needs are addressed by the proposed ValIdated Systematic IntegratiON (VISION) of epigenetic data to analyze mouse and human hematopoiesis, a tractable system with clear clinical significance and importance to NIDDK. By pursuing the following Specific Aims, the interdisciplinary collaboration will deliver comprehensive catalogs of cis regulatory modules (CRMs), extensive chromatin interaction maps and deduced regulatory domains, validated quantitative models for gene regulation, and a guide for investigators to translate insights from mouse models to human clinical studies. These deliverables will be provided to the community in readily accessible, web-based platforms including customized genome browsers, databases with facile query interfaces, and data-driven on-line tools. Specifically, the proposed work in Aim 1 will build comprehensive, integrative catalogs of hematopoietic CRMs and transcriptomes by compiling and determining informative epigenetic features and transcript levels in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells and in mature cells. CRMs will be predicted using the novel IDEAS (Integrative and Discriminative Epigenome Annotation System) method. Work proposed in Aim 2 will build and validate quantitative models for gene regulation informed by chromatin interaction maps and epigenetic data. Compiling and determining chromosome interaction frequencies will predict likely target genes for CRMs. Gene regulatory models will be built that predict the contributions of CRMs and specific proteins to regulated expression; these models will be validated by extensive testing using genome-editing in ten reference loci. Finally, work in Aim 3 will produce a guide for investigators to translate insights from mouse models to human clinical studies. This effort will include categorizing orthologous mouse and human genes by conservation versus divergence of expression patterns, assigning CRMs to informative categories of epigenomic evolution, and testing the interspecies functional maps experimentally by genome-editing.