Computational tools for inferring transcription factor activity

1 December 2023·
Dennis Hecker
Dennis Hecker
,
Michael Lauber
,
Fatemeh Behjati Ardakani
Shamim Ashrafiyan
Shamim Ashrafiyan
,
Quirin Manz
,
Johannes Kersting
,
Markus Hoffmann
,
Marcel H. Schulz
,
Markus List
· 0 min read
DOI
Abstract
Transcription factors (TFs) are essential players in orchestrating the regulatory landscape in cells. Still, their exact modes of action and dependencies on other regulatory aspects remain elusive. Since TFs act cell type-specific and each TF has its own characteristics, untangling their regulatory interactions from an experimental point of view is laborious and convoluted. Thus, there is an ongoing development of computational tools that estimate transcription factor activity (TFA) from a variety of data modalities, either based on a mapping of TFs to their putative target genes or in a genome-wide, gene-unspecific fashion. These tools can help to gain insights into TF regulation and to prioritize candidates for experimental validation. We want to give an overview of available computational tools that estimate TFA, illustrate examples of their application, debate common result validation strategies, and discuss assumptions and concomitant limitations.
Type
Publication
Proteomics
publications
Dennis Hecker
Authors
Postdoc
I am a biologist by training that turned into a bioinformatician for the PhD. Since starting in the SchulzLab, I have been working on analysing a variety of data and their integration with a focus on the epignome, specifically interactions between regulatory regions and genes. I also have a love-hate relationship with chromatin contact data. What keeps me going is the variety of research questions that we work on to know more about human biology and its use in medicine. I am a big fan of Python and coffee.
Shamim Ashrafiyan
Authors
PhD Student

I’m a PhD student in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, with a background in Computer Science. My path into computational biology was not a straight line: during my Master’s degree, I worked on image processing and machine learning approaches for fMRI data analysis, and before starting my PhD, I spent five years as a software engineer in industry.

During my PhD, I have been applying machine learning and computational approaches to biological questions while building expertise in genomics and molecular biology. One of my main projects focuses on understanding the relationship between epigenomic regulation and gene expression by developing and benchmarking machine learning approaches to predict transcriptomic states from epigenomic features. Beyond prediction performance, I am interested in making these models interpretable by identifying the regulatory elements and biological features that contribute to their decisions, enabling a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying gene regulation.

In parallel, I work on integrating and analyzing large-scale single-cell RNA-seq datasets and developing visualization tools for exploring single-cell atlases. Through these projects, I aim to bridge machine learning and computational methods with biological insights to better understand cellular regulation and disease processes.