Leveraging high-throughput datasets for studies of gene regulation
Author(s)
Yen, Angela
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Advisor
Manolis Kellis.
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In this thesis, I leveraged computational methods on biological data to better understand gene regulation and development of the human body, as well as of the model organisms mouse and yeast. Firstly, I tackled biological questions with machine learning techniques by studying pre-transcriptional gene regulation through nucleosome positioning, which resulted in the identification of function-specific factors and improved predictive performance. Next, computational analysis enabled the discovery of genome-wide epigenetic modifications that play a foundational role in silencing for the monoallelic and monogenic expression of olfactory receptor genes in mice. Lastly, signatures of functional, bound RNA regions provide insight into a potential protocol-specific bias and produce a new avenue for de novo discovery of functional regions.
Description
Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-102).
Date issued
2011Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer SciencePublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.