Project

Enhancers of transcription are regulatory sequences enabling gene expression from a distance. The landscape of active enhancers is cell-type specific and provides extensive information on the transcription factors at play. Currently, enhancers are mostly mapped based on the histone modifications positioned on their DNA sequence. This type of data is abundantly available for tumor-derived tissue culture cells, but difficult to obtain when the biological material has a limited availability. As an alternative approach, it is possible to detect enhancers as sites of divergent transcription. The objective of this project will be to develop tools allowing detection of sites of divergent transcription in transcriptome and run-on data, to evaluate the quality of the prediction by comparing the outcome with existing enhancer maps, and then ultimately use this approach to identify changes in the enhancer landscape between patients with multiple sclerosis and healthy controls.