Statistical and Computational Methods for Transcriptomic Profile of Drosophila Melanogaster

People

Department of Statistics, Purdue University: Dr. Jun Xie
Department of Entomolgy, Purdue University: Dr. Larry Murdock and Dr. Barry Pittendrigh
Department of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University: Dr. Jing Wu

Description

The rich source of gene expression microarray data contains information about co-expressed genes. However, the underlying regulatory mechanisms of these genes are mostly unknown. For many species, for instance, Drosophila fruit fly, only a small number of transcription factor binding sites are annotated (mainly embryo developmental TFs). In addition to the collections of transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs), e.g. TRANSFAC, novel TFBSs can be computationally identified in a group of co-expressed genes. This project is a collaboration between faculty in Statistics (Drs. Wu and Xie) and faculty in Entomology (Drs. Murdock and Pittendrigh) at Purdue. We are developing computational and statistical methods to identify transcriptomic profiles (a set of transcription factors regulating a set of genes) of Drosophila Melanogaster genes, especially those associated with midgut.

References

Hong-Mei Li, Lijie Sun, Omprakash Mittapalli, William M. Muir, Jun Xie, Jing Wu, Brandi Schemerhorn, Weilin Sun, Larry Murdock, and Barry R. Pittendrigh, "Transcriptional Signatures in Response to Wheat Germ Agglutinin and Starvation in Drosophila melanogaster Larval Midgut", Insect Molecular Biology, 2008, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2583.2008.00844.x.

Hong-Mei Li, Grzegorz Buczkowski, Omprakash Mittapalli, Jun Xie, Jing Wu, Rick Westerman, Brandy Schemerhorn, Larry L. Murdock, and Barry R. Pittendrigh, "Transcriptomic profile of Drosophila melanogaster third-instar larval midgut and responses to oxidative stress", Insect Mocular Biology, 2008, Vol. 17(4), 325-339.