 |
|  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 | FACULTY BIOGRAPHY |
 |
 | <-- Back

|
 | Dana Pe'er |
 | Assistant Professor |
 |
 |
 | Lab Website
Understanding the
organization and function of molecular networks:
Our lab endeavors to
understand the organization, function and evolution of molecular networks. The
molecular network needs to sense multiple signals from the environment,
robustly process an appropriate cellular response and orchestrate the
regulation of hundreds of genes and proteins to execute this response. This
remarkable functionality occurs through diverse mechanisms including regulation
of transcription, epigenetic changes, translation, degradation,
post-translational signaling, and localization The advent of high throughput
genomic and proteomic technologies is providing biology with an explosion of
new experimental data, quantitatively measuring the molecular workings of the
cell at a genome-wide scale.
High throughput datasets are rapidly
being produced, probing the diverse facets of the cell’s activity on a genome
wide scale.Microarrays provide a global
snap shot of gene expression and factor binding under different environmental
conditions and stimuli.SNP arrays read
up to 500,000 nucleotide polymorphisms in an individual’s genome.Flow cytometry combined with florescent
antibodes measure the level and activities of proteins in thousands of
individual cells.Small
interfering RNA and synthetic biology techniques facilitate the perturbation of
the molecular network in a variety of sophisticated ways. Our lab
combines high-throughput experimentation along with the development of novel
algorithms and computational learning methods to integrate diverse high
throughput data and unravel from these the workings of the cell. The computational methodology is used to
reconstruct models of the molecular network and these models are then used to elucidate
properties of molecular networks, the design principles by which they function,
and the forces that drove their evolution.
The type of question we ask
is “How does a mutation at one point in the network, propagate through the
network and influence signal processing at a more global scale?” A population
contains many genetic sequence polymorphisms that lead to variability in the
complex web of regulatory interactions between individuals.We study how genetic variation perturbs the
regulatory network, leading to changes gene expression and manifesting in phenotypic
diversity. We use this approach to ask
questions such as:How do changes in the
molecular network influence fitness under different environmental
conditions?How do changes in the
network lead to dysfunctional signal processing, causing human disease such as
cancer and autoimmunity?
Potential projects include:
- Genetic Genomics – Combining genotyping, gene
expression and complex phenotypes to understand how the molecular network
is altered between individuals and how these differences manifest in
phenotype.
- Cancer Genomics -Combining heterogeneous measurements of tumors such as sequence
(copy number, SNPs),gene
expression,and signaling events to
understand how dysfunctional regulation in cancer cells.
- Mapping Mammalian Signaling – Using correlations
within single cells (measured by intracellular phospho-specific flow
cytometry) to understand how the behavior of the same core signaling
pathways respond differently between different cell types.
- Synthetic Biology – Using gene synthesis and
systems biology approaches to dissect the organization and logic of gene
promoters and larger networks.
- Evolution and fitness – Understand the connection
between regulation and fitness and how this connection drives the evolution
of molecular networks.
- See lab webpage for more projects.
|
 |
 |
|
Representative Recent Publications
|
 |
- Lee, S*., Pe’er, D*., Dudley, A., Church, G., and Koller, D. (Sep 2006) Identifying Regulatory Mechanisms and their Individual Variation Reveals Key Role of Chromatin Modification. PNAS 103(38): 14062-7.
- Pe’er, D., Regev, A., and Tanay, A. (Feb 2006) Minreg: A Scalable Algorithm for Learning Parsimonious Regulatory networks in Yeast and Mammals. Journal of Machine Learning Research 7: 167-189.
- Pe’er, D. (April 2005) Bayesian network analysis of signaling networks: a primer. Science STKE 281: p14.
- Sachs, K*., Perez, O*., Pe’er, D*., Lauffenburger, D., and Nolan, G. (April 2005) Causal protein-signaling networks derived from multiparameter single-cell data. Science 308: 523-529.
- Segal, E*., Shapira, M., Regev, A*., Pe’er, D.*, Botstein, D., Koller, D. and Friedman, N. (June 2003) Module networks: identifying regulatory modules and their condition specific regulators from gene expression data. Nature Genetics 34: 166-176.
- Pe’er, D., Regev, A., Elidan, G., and Friedman N. (2001) Inferring Subnetworks from Preturbed Expression Profiles. Bioinformatics 17: S215-S224.
|
|
|  |  |
|
|