Bioinformatics Tools for Modeling Transcription Factor Target Genes and Epigenetic Changes

The combinatorial control of gene regulatory switches involves both transcription factor (TF) complexes and associated epigenetic modifications to the chromatin template. The novel highthroughput technologies, such as Chromatin ImmunoPrecipitation ChIP-chip, have enabled genome-wide in vivo identification of TF target regulatory regions and related epigenetic modifications, which led to the view of highly dynamic TF-DNA interactions in activated or repressed promoters. Consequently, modeling and elucidating the combinatorial interaction of TFs and corresponding cis -regulatory modules in target promoters is of paramount interest. An estimated 5% of the genes in mammalian genomes code for TF proteins, and computational modeling of cis -regulatory logic would rapidly increase the pace of experimental confirmation of TF target promoters at the bench. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the use of different bioinformatics tools for predicting the target genes of TFs of interest in mammalian genomes, and the application of these methods in the analysis of ChIP-chip experimental data. The author describes most commonly used databases and prediction programs that are available on the World Wide Web and demonstrate the use of some of these programs by an example. A list of these programs is provided along with their web Uniform Resource Locator (URLs) and guidelines for successful application are suggested.