Machine Learning Applied to Uncovering Gene Regulation

Now that the complete genomes of numerous organisms have been ascertained, key problems in molecular biology include determining the functions of the genes in each organism, the relationships that exist among these genes, and the regulatory mechanisms that control their operation. These problems can be partially addressed by using machine learning methods to induce predictive models from available data. My group is applying and developing machine learning methods for several tasks that involve characterizing gene regulation. In one project, for example, we are using machine learning methods to identify transcriptional control elements such as promoters, terminators and operons. In another project, we are using learning methods to identify and characterize sets of genes that are affected by tumor promoters in mammals. Our approach to these tasks involves learning multiple models for inter-related tasks, and applying learning algorithms to rich and diverse data sources including sequence data, microarray data, and text from the scientific literature.