Computational models for Epigenomic Analyis
Epigenetic mechanisms include nucleosome positioning, histone
modifications, and DNA methylation. They play an important role in the
regulation of cell-type specific gene activities, yet how epigenetic
patterns are established and maintained remains poorly understood.
Recent studies have supported a role of DNA sequences in recruitment of
epigenetic regulators, so that several methods based on such information
have been applied to identify distinct
sequence features that are associated with epigenetic patterns and to
predict epigenomic profiles.
Here we review recent advances in such applications, including the
methods to map DNA sequence to feature space, sequence comparison, and
prediction models.
Computational studies using these methods have provided important
insights into the epigenetic regulatory mechanisms.