A Yale research team has created a new computer tool that can pinpoint when exactly genes turn on and off over time during brain development – a finding that may one day help doctors identify the optimal window to deploy gene therapy treatments.
Dubbed “chronODE,” the tool uses math and machine learning to model how gene activity and chromatin (the DNA and protein mix that forms chromosomes) patterns change over time. The tool may offer a variety of applications in disease modeling and basic genomic research and perhaps lead to future therapeutic uses.
“Basically, we have an equation that can determine the precise moment of gene activation, which may dictate important steps such as the transition from one developmental or disease stage to another,” said Mor Frank, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and study co-author. “Consequently, this may represent a potential way to identify, in the future, critical points for therapeutic intervention.”
Results of the study were published August 19 in the journal Nature Communications.