Obiettivo
New high-throughput methods allow generation of massive amounts of molecular biological data. These, mainly phenomenological, data are often difficult to ascribe to the activation of particular signal transduction pathways and/or transcriptional regulators. A way to facilitate data interpretation is to construct gene regulatory networks that include signal transduction mediators, transcriptional regulators and target genes. This is a complex task, not only because of the huge number of molecules involved, but also because of variations across tissues, developmental stages and physiological conditions. However, these networks hold the key to the understanding of the regulatory processes within a cell and, thus, to most life processes in general. The aim of this project is, therefore, to develop a toolbox that combines and puts different high-throughput experimental methods together under the roof of bio- and chemoinformatics, to allow to exploit the full potential of the included methods as well as the generated data. The toolbox will comprise a combination of the most innovative bioinformatic techniques based on databases and methods of artificial intelligence, modern methods of chromatin structure analysis, micro-array technologies, transcription factor-binding site identification, as well as chemoinformatics methods for computer-aided prediction of biological activity spectra. The predictions which will arise during this project from the analysis of the initially generated data, shall lead to new experiments, for validation of the developed method / approach. This toolbox shall provide a cost effective, knowledge-based approach that allows identification of signal transduction mediators and/or transcriptional regulators responsible for certain changes or responses of the cell, in particular those which lead to diseases, thereby facilitating the discovery of new disease targets and consequently the rational design of target-specific drugs.
Campo scientifico
Argomento(i)
Invito a presentare proposte
FP6-2005-LIFESCIHEALTH-7
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