First Booster-supported paper successfully published
Breakthrough study unveils plant gene regulatory networks (GRNs) with MINI-AC method.
In a significant stride forward for plant genomics, BOOSTER partners Julia Engelhorn, Hilde Nelissen, and Thomas Hartwig, under the leadership of principal investigator Klaas Vandepoele of the VIB Ghent, in collaboration with other esteemed authors, have successfully published their paper titled “MINI-AC: Inference of Plant Gene Regulatory Networks Using Bulk or Single-Cell Accessible Chromatin Profiles” in The Plant Journal by the Society for Experimental Biology (SEB).
The research focuses on understanding gene regulatory networks (GRNs) in plants, which play vital roles in growth, development, and stress responses. Despite challenges in deciphering these networks, the study introduces MINI-AC, a method that combines accessible chromatin (AC) data with transcription factor binding site (TFBS) information to infer GRNs in plants. MINI-AC has been validated using datasets from Arabidopsis thaliana and successfully applied to maize, revealing regulatory interactions in leaf tissues. This demonstrates MINI-AC’s efficacy in identifying both general and cell-type-specific regulators, particularly in the context of C4 metabolism.
