CelEst: A New Tool for Understanding Gene Regulation in C. elegans

An IBMB researcher, Dr. Marcos Francisco Perez, has developed CelEst, a unified gene regulatory network that can estimate the activity of hundreds of transcription factors from gene expression data in the important model organism C. elegans. This new resource will allow scientists to gain faster, more accurate insights into how genes are controlled in this important model organism and beyond.

Abstract

A new computational tool called CelEst has been developed at the IBMB to help researchers better understand how genes are regulated in the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. Transcription factors (TFs) are proteins that control which genes are turned on or off, and CelEst is a gene regulatory network designed to estimate the activity of hundreds of TFs in C. elegans. Dr. Perez created the network by integrating existing data on which genes are targeted by specific TFs. The rigorously tested CelEst network then allows researchers to infer TF activity from gene expression data in their own experiments to work out which TFs are the key players in the processes they are studying. The tool is freely available as an R Shiny app, which makes it easy for researchers to use, even those without strong coding skills. The resource should allow new insights to be derived from existing and future experiments. As gene regulation is evolutionarily conserved across species, by helping scientists to understand the complex patterns of gene regulation in C. elegans, CelEst will help advance understanding of similar processes in other organisms

Reference:

Perez, M.F., 2024. Cel Est: a unified gene regulatory network for estimating transcription factor activities in C. elegans. Genetics, p.iyae189.

doi: 10.1093/genetics/iyae189