Erxi Wu, assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, co-wrote an article, “Inferring cell cycle feedback regulation from gene expression data,” that will be published in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics.
According to the authors, feedback control is an important regulatory process in biological systems, which confers robustness against external and internal disturbances. Genes involved in feedback structures are therefore likely to have a major role in regulating cellular processes. In this study, they rely on a dynamic Bayesian network approach to identify feedback loops in cell cycle regulation. They analyzed the transcriptional profile of the cell cycle in HeLa cancer cells and identified a feedback loop composed of 10 genes. In silico analyses showed that these genes hold important roles in system's dynamics. The results of published experimental assays confirmed the central role of eight of the identified feedback loop genes in cell cycle regulation.
“We provide a novel approach to identify critical genes for the dynamics of biological processes. This may lead to the identification of therapeutic targets in diseases that involve perturbations of these dynamics,” Wu said. “This work was led by a collaborator, Dr. Marco F Ramoni, associate professor in the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program and Director of Biomedical Cybernetics Laboratory, Harvard Medical School.”
The Journal of Biomedical Informatics (formerly Computers and Biomedical Research) has been redesigned to reflect a commitment to high-quality original research papers and reviews in the area of biomedical informatics. Although published articles are motivated by applications in the biomedical sciences (for example, clinical medicine, health care, population health, imaging and bioinformatics), the journal emphasizes reports of new methodologies and techniques that have general applicability and that form the basis for the evolving science of biomedical informatics (www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622857/description#description).
Wu lab is interested in tumor therapeutic targets, signaling pathways, drug discovery and biomarkers. Wu lab has had a close and long collaboration with the Ramoni lab at Harvard Medical School.
