epiregulon

RegulonDB has collected, harmonized and centralized data from hundreds of experiments for nearly two decades and is considered a point of reference for transcriptional regulation in Escherichia coli K12. Here, we present the regutools R package to facilitate programmatic access to RegulonDB data in computational biology. regutools provides researchers with the possibility of writing reproducible workflows with automated queries to RegulonDB. The regutools package serves as a bridge between RegulonDB data and the Bioconductor ecosystem by reusing the data structures and statistical methods powered by other Bioconductor packages. We demonstrate the integration of regutools with Bioconductor by analyzing transcription factor DNA binding sites and transcriptional regulatory networks from RegulonDB. We anticipate that regutools will serve as a useful building block in our progress to further our understanding of gene regulatory networks.

Reconstructing gene regulatory networks and transcription factor activity is crucial to understand biological processes and holds potential for developing personalized treatment. Yet, it is still an open problem as state-of-art algorithm are often not able to handle large amounts of data. Furthermore, many of the present methods predict numerous false positives and are unable to integrate other sources of information such as previously known interactions. Here we introduce KBoost, an algorithm that uses kernel PCA regression, boosting and Bayesian model averaging for fast and accurate reconstruction of gene regulatory networks. KBoost can also use a prior network built on previously known transcription factor targets. We have benchmarked KBoost using three different datasets against other high performing algorithms. The results show that our method compares favourably to other methods across datasets.

A transcriptional regulatory network (TRN) consists of a collection of transcription factors (TFs) and the regulated target genes. TFs are regulators that recognize specific DNA sequences and guide the expression of the genome, either activating or repressing the expression the target genes. The set of genes controlled by the same TF forms a regulon. This package provides classes and methods for the reconstruction of TRNs and analysis of regulons.

SPICEY (SPecificity Index for Coding and Epigenetic activitY) is an R package designed to quantify cell-type specificity in single-cell transcriptomic and epigenomic data, particularly scRNA-seq and scATAC-seq. It introduces two complementary indices: the Gene Expression Tissue Specificity Index (GETSI) and the Regulatory Element Tissue Specificity Index (RETSI), both based on entropy to provide continuous, interpretable measures of specificity. By integrating gene expression and chromatin accessibility, SPICEY enables standardized analysis of cell-type-specific regulatory programs across diverse tissues and conditions.

Runs PANDA, an algorithm for discovering novel network structure by combining information from multiple complementary data sources.

This is an easy-to-use package for downloading, organizing, and integrative analyzing RNA expression data in GDC with an emphasis on deciphering the lncRNA-mRNA related ceRNA regulatory network in cancer. Three databases of lncRNA-miRNA interactions including spongeScan, starBase, and miRcode, as well as three databases of mRNA-miRNA interactions including miRTarBase, starBase, and miRcode are incorporated into the package for ceRNAs network construction. limma, edgeR, and DESeq2 can be used to identify differentially expressed genes/miRNAs. Functional enrichment analyses including GO, KEGG, and DO can be performed based on the clusterProfiler and DO packages. Both univariate CoxPH and KM survival analyses of multiple genes can be implemented in the package. Besides some routine visualization functions such as volcano plot, bar plot, and KM plot, a few simply shiny apps are developed to facilitate visualization of results on a local webpage.