epiregulon

netZooR unifies the implementations of several Network Zoo methods (netzoo, netzoo.github.io) into a single package by creating interfaces between network inference and network analysis methods. Currently, the package has 3 methods for network inference including PANDA and its optimized implementation OTTER (network reconstruction using mutliple lines of biological evidence), LIONESS (single-sample network inference), and EGRET (genotype-specific networks). Network analysis methods include CONDOR (community detection), ALPACA (differential community detection), CRANE (significance estimation of differential modules), MONSTER (estimation of network transition states). In addition, YARN allows to process gene expresssion data for tissue-specific analyses and SAMBAR infers missing mutation data based on pathway information.

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.

Gene regulatory networks model the underlying gene regulation hierarchies that drive gene expression and observed phenotypes. Epiregulon infers TF activity in single cells by constructing a gene regulatory network (regulons). This is achieved through integration of scATAC-seq and scRNA-seq data and incorporation of public bulk TF ChIP-seq data. Links between regulatory elements and their target genes are established by computing correlations between chromatin accessibility and gene expressions.

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.

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.