Workshop: Targeting mechanism of epigenetic factors

Summary form only given. Epigenetic patterns provide an extra layer of gene regulation beyond the genomic sequence and play a critical role in the maintenance of cell-type specific gene expression programs. Disruption of epigenetic regulation can cause severe diseases including cancer. During the past few years, large amount of epigenomic data have been generated displaying significant epigenetic pattern changes across cell-types and in disease tissues. On the other hand, the targeting mechanism for epigenetic factors remains poorly understood. A fundamental question is to what extent epigenetic targeting is encoded in the genome. Unlike transcription factors, epigenetic factors typically do not directly interact with DNA and their targeting is associated with many weakly interactions. We have developed computational approaches to tackle this challenge and applied to prediction of genome-wide nucleosome positions and histone modification patterns from DNA sequence information. Our work has provided mechanistic insights into epigenetic targeting and can be used to develop tools to reverse specific disease-causing, aberrant epigenetic changes as a potential novel therapeutic approach for cancer and other diseases.