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Biomedical subjects

Jerzy Tiuryn

Publications and source records attributed to Jerzy Tiuryn.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

URec: a system for unrooted reconciliation.

UNLABELLED: URec is a software based on a concept of unrooted reconciliation. It can be used to reconcile a set of unrooted gene trees with a rooted species tree or a set of rooted species trees. Moreover, it computes detailed distribution of gene duplications and gene losses in a species tree. It can be used to infer optimal species phylogenies for a given set of gene trees. URec is implemented in C++ and can be easily compiled under Unix and Windows systems. AVAILABILITY: Software is freely available for download from our website at http://bioputer.mimuw.edu.pl/~gorecki/urec. This webpage also contains Windows executables and a number of advanced examples with explanations.

Algorithms↗

Using local gene expression similarities to discover regulatory binding site modules.

BACKGROUND: We present an approach designed to identify gene regulation patterns using sequence and expression data collected for Saccharomyces cerevisae. Our main goal is to relate the combinations of transcription factor binding sites (also referred to as binding site modules) identified in gene promoters to the expression of these genes. The novel aspects include local expression similarity clustering and an exact IF-THEN rule inference algorithm. We also provide a method of rule generalization to include genes with unknown expression profiles. RESULTS: We have implemented the proposed framework and tested it on publicly available datasets from yeast S. cerevisae. The testing procedure consists of thorough statistical analyses of the groups of genes matching the rules we infer from expression data against known sets of co-regulated genes. For this purpose we have used published ChIP-Chip data and Gene Ontology annotations. In order to make these tests more objective we compare our results with recently published similar studies. CONCLUSION: Results we obtain show that local expression similarity clustering greatly enhances overall quality of the derived rules, both in terms of enrichment of Gene Ontology functional annotation and coherence with ChIP-Chip binding data. Our approach thus provides reliable hypotheses on co-regulation that can be experimentally verified. An important feature of the method is its reliance only on widely accessible sequence and expression data. The same procedure can be easily applied to other microbial organisms.

Binding Sites↗

A model for the evolution of paralog families in genomes.

We introduce and analyse a simple probabilistic model of genome evolution. It is based on three fundamental evolutionary events: gene loss, duplication and accumulated change. This is motivated by previous works which consisted in fitting the available genomic data into, what is called paralog distributions. This formalism is described by a system of infinite number of linear equations. We show that this system generates a semigroup of linear operators on the space l (1). We prove that size distribution of paralogous gene families in a genome converges to the equilibrium as time goes to infinity. Moreover we show that when probabilities of gene removal and duplication are close to each other, then the resulting distribution is close to logarithmic distribution. Some empirical results for yeast genomes are presented.

Evolution, Molecular↗

A new approach to the assessment of the quality of predictions of transcription factor binding sites.

In this paper, we describe a novel method called Secondary Verification which assesses the quality of predictions of transcription factor binding sites. This method incorporates a distribution of prediction scores over positive examples (i.e. the actual binding sites) and is shown to be superior to p-value, routinely used statistical significance assessment, which uses only a distribution of prediction scores over background sequences. We also discuss how to integrate both distributions into a framework called Secondary Verification Assessment method which evaluates the quality of a model of a transcription factor. Based on that we create a hybrid representation of a transcription factor: we select the description (with or without dependencies) which is best for the transcription factor considered.

Algorithms↗

Applying dynamic Bayesian networks to perturbed gene expression data.

BACKGROUND: A central goal of molecular biology is to understand the regulatory mechanisms of gene transcription and protein synthesis. Because of their solid basis in statistics, allowing to deal with the stochastic aspects of gene expressions and noisy measurements in a natural way, Bayesian networks appear attractive in the field of inferring gene interactions structure from microarray experiments data. However, the basic formalism has some disadvantages, e.g. it is sometimes hard to distinguish between the origin and the target of an interaction. Two kinds of microarray experiments yield data particularly rich in information regarding the direction of interactions: time series and perturbation experiments. In order to correctly handle them, the basic formalism must be modified. For example, dynamic Bayesian networks (DBN) apply to time series microarray data. To our knowledge the DBN technique has not been applied in the context of perturbation experiments. RESULTS: We extend the framework of dynamic Bayesian networks in order to incorporate perturbations. Moreover, an exact algorithm for inferring an optimal network is proposed and a discretization method specialized for time series data from perturbation experiments is introduced. We apply our procedure to realistic simulations data. The results are compared with those obtained by standard DBN learning techniques. Moreover, the advantages of using exact learning algorithm instead of heuristic methods are analyzed. CONCLUSION: We show that the quality of inferred networks dramatically improves when using data from perturbation experiments. We also conclude that the exact algorithm should be used when it is possible, i.e. when considered set of genes is small enough.

Algorithms↗

Discovering regulatory binding-site modules using rule-based learning.

Transcription factors regulate expression by binding selectively to sequence sites in cis-regulatory regions of genes. It is therefore reasonable to assume that genes regulated by the same transcription factors should all contain the corresponding binding sites in their regulatory regions and exhibit similar expression profiles as measured by, for example, microarray technology. We have used this assumption to analyze genome-wide yeast binding-site and microarray expression data to reveal the combinatorial nature of gene regulation. We obtained IF-THEN rules linking binding-site combinations (binding-site modules) to genes with particular expression profiles, and thereby provided testable hypotheses on the combinatorial coregulation of gene expression. We showed that genes associated with such rules have a significantly higher probability of being bound by the same transcription factors, as indicated by a genome-wide location analysis, than genes associated with only common binding sites or similar expression. Furthermore, we also found that such genes were significantly more often biologically related in terms of Gene Ontology annotations than genes only associated with common binding sites or similar expression. We analyzed expression data collected under different sets of stress conditions and found many binding-site modules that are conserved over several of these condition sets, as well as modules that are specific to particular biological responses. Our results on the reoccurrence of binding sites in different modules provide specific data on how binding sites may be combined to allow a large number of expression outcomes using relatively few transcription factors.

Algorithms↗

Contextual alignment of biological sequences (Extended abstract).

We present a model of contextual alignment of biological sequences. It is an extension of the classical alignment, in which we assume that the cost of a substitution depends on the surrounding symbols. In this model the cost of transforming one sequence into another depends on the order of editing operations. We present efficient algorithms for calculating this cost, as well as reconstructing (the representation of) all the orders of operations which yield this optimal cost. A precise characterization of the families of linear orders which can emerge this way is given.

Algorithms↗

Alignment with context dependent scoring function.

In the paper by Gambin et al. (2002) we introduced the model of contextual alignment of biological sequences. It is an extension of the classical alignment, in which the cost of a substitution depends on the surrounding symbols. Consequently, in this model the cost of transforming one sequence into another depends on the order of editing operations. In this paper, we strengthen some of our results which concern reconstructing (the representation of) all the orders of operations which yield this optimal cost. We also present a procedure to construct context-dependent substitution tables and discuss the distribution of scores of local contextual alignment, which is shown to follow the extreme value distribution in the gap-free, reduced context case. We also demonstrate a linear time algorithm to compute the optimal local and global alignment without gaps.

Algorithms↗