Function of noncoding RNA in epigenetic and transcriptional regulation

表观遗传调控因子包括阅读因子、写入因子、组蛋白修饰的清除因子和DNA甲基化因子，它们在转录调控中起着关键作用。阐明表观遗传调控因子如何操纵转录网络对于理解转录调控机制至关重要。转录网络是由生物过程中所有驱动转录因子（TF）与其靶基因之间的功能关系组成。构建转录网络的瓶颈是缺乏同时捕获所有驱动因子及其全局结合位点的有效方法。虽然ChIP-seq在全基因组范围内捕获转录因子结合位点方面很强大，但该技术的应用需要事先了解感兴趣的转录因子，以及ChIP级抗体的可用性。此外，ChIP-seq实验需要一次进行一个转录因子，这使得通常涉及多个转录因子的网络构建效率低下。转录网络研究需要更经济有效的方法来确定多个转录因子同时结合。

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.