Gene regulatory network (GRN) science combines experimental approaches at any scale, from single gene to genome wide, together with computational modeling approaches and incorporates the insights gained from these analyses into a framework used to explain the causality of developmental processes and animal evolution. Expanding our understanding of GRNs has been identified as one of the research priorities of the Developmental Biology branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The key objective of this short course on GRNs is to help students develop a conceptual understanding of developmental control mechanisms that serves as a basis to formulate research questions and hypotheses, and to learn how to apply diverse experimental and computational approaches to solve them. Students will take away from this course a sense for how systems level explanations can be obtained for developmental processes in any biological context using a variety of experimental and computational techniques. This will be accomplished through an intensive series of lectures, discussions, and hands-on workshops using computational methods to analyze big data from a large number of studies in order to construct comprehensible models for gene networks that guide development.
In recent years it has become clear that the regulation of gene expression is a crucial determinant of development and health, and the disruption of these control mechanisms is the cause of numerous serious diseases, including developmental defects, physiological disorders and cancer. This course will train pre- and postdoctoral scholars in the experimental analysis and computational modeling of gene regulatory networks controlling developmental gene expression, and show how evidence from various fields including basic science studies of cell behavior, cell specification, embryogenesis, stem cell behavior, and gene expression studies, can be incorporated into one conceptual framework. This will foster a deeper understanding of how alterations in one GRN can have widespread effects on normal development, leading to a better understanding of disease mechanisms.
