Computation to unravel how genes are regulated and shed light on how cells become...(es cells can be de-differentiated in thi...)

The ability to lose as well as gain epigenetic marks that constrain the expression of certain genes is also important in early embryonic development, when rapid changes in structure and function are occurring. One presentation at the workshop by Dirk Schbeler of the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel described how whole sets of genes can have their expression modified just temporarily through the process of DNA methylation, one of the main mechanisms for blocking access to the underlying DNA of a gene.

But with so much still to be discovered about the complex and subtle nature of gene regulation through epigenetic modification, the greatest triumph of the ESF workshop lay not so much in the individual presentations, but the collective decisions over future research priorities, and the relationships established between computational and experimental biologists.

We think that the discussions among experimentalists and theorists regarding interesting outstanding questions has shaped the planning for future research of all participants, said van Nimwegen. Several participants felt the workshop was rather unique in that it brought together a wide variety of researchers working in a field that is rather new.

Experiments and observation provide the data about gene expression patterns, while computational methods analyse the changes over time and help identify sequences that have been in effect memorised, and others that have been forgotten. This phenomenon whereby cells in effect remember what has happened to them and respond through changes in their expression is fundamental to development of organisms, along with their structure and function during their lifetime, as well as inheritance of adaptations to envir
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