Function of noncoding RNA in epigenetic and transcriptional regulation

表观遗传调控因子，包括读者、编写者、组蛋白修饰的擦除器和DNA甲基化，已被认为在转录调控中发挥关键作用。破译表观遗传调控如何操纵转录网络是理解转录调控机制的关键。转录网络是指生物过程中所有驱动转录因子(Tf)及其靶基因之间的功能关系。构建转录网络的瓶颈是缺乏有效的方法来同时捕获所有驱动因子及其全局结合位点。虽然CHIP-SEQ在全基因组范围内捕获转录因子结合位点的能力很强，但这项技术的应用需要事先了解感兴趣的转录因子，并获得芯片级抗体。此外，CHIP-SEQ实验需要一次进行一个转录因子，这使得它在通常涉及多个转录因子的网络构建中效率低下。转录网络研究需要更经济有效的方法来同时确定多个转录因子的结合。

Epigenetic regulators including readers, writers, erasers of histone modifications and DNA methylation, have been recognized to play key roles in transcriptional regulation. Decipher how epigenetic regulators manipulate the transcriptional networks is critical to understand the mechanism of transcriptional regulation. Transcriptional network consists the functional relationship between all the driving transcription factors (TF) and their target genes in a biological process. The bottleneck in transcriptional network construction is the lacking of efficient method to simultaneously capture all driven factors and their global binding sites. Although ChIP-seq is powerful in capture transcription factor binding sites genome-widely, the application of this technology requires the knowledge of the transcription factors of interest beforehand, and the availability of ChIP grade antibodies. In addition, the ChIP-seq experiment needs to be conducted one transcription factor at a time, making it inefficient in network construction that usually involves multiple transcription factors. More cost effective approaches to determine multiple transcription factors binding simultaneously are needed for transcriptional network study.