Center for Bioinformatics, Saarland Informatics Campus, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
Cluster of Excellence Multimodal Computing and Interaction, Saarland Informatics Campus, 66123 Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2017 Jul 3;45(W1):W146-W153. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkx350.
Transcriptional regulators such as transcription factors and chromatin modifiers play a central role in most biological processes. Alterations in their activities have been observed in many diseases, e.g. cancer. Hence, it is of utmost importance to evaluate and assess the effects of transcriptional regulators on natural and pathogenic processes. Here, we present RegulatorTrail, a web service that provides rich functionality for the identification and prioritization of key transcriptional regulators that have a strong impact on, e.g. pathological processes. RegulatorTrail offers eight methods that use regulator binding information in combination with transcriptomic or epigenomic data to infer the most influential regulators. Our web service not only provides an intuitive web interface, but also a well-documented RESTful API that allows for a straightforward integration into third-party workflows. The presented case studies highlight the capabilities of our web service and demonstrate its potential for the identification of influential regulators: we successfully identified regulators that might explain the increased malignancy in metastatic melanoma compared to primary tumors, as well as important regulators in macrophages. RegulatorTrail is freely accessible at: https://regulatortrail.bioinf.uni-sb.de/.
转录因子和染色质修饰物等转录调控因子在大多数生物过程中起着核心作用。在许多疾病中，如癌症，已经观察到它们的活性发生了改变。因此，评估和评估转录调控因子对自然和致病过程的影响至关重要。在这里，我们介绍了 RegulatorTrail，这是一个网络服务，提供了丰富的功能，用于识别和优先考虑对，例如，病理过程有强烈影响的关键转录调控因子。RegulatorTrail 提供了八种方法，这些方法结合转录组或表观基因组数据，利用调控因子结合信息来推断最具影响力的调控因子。我们的网络服务不仅提供了直观的网络界面，还提供了记录良好的 RESTful API，允许直接集成到第三方工作流程中。所呈现的案例研究强调了我们网络服务的功能，并展示了其在识别有影响力的调控因子方面的潜力：我们成功地识别出了可能解释转移性黑色素瘤与原发性肿瘤相比恶性程度增加的调控因子，以及巨噬细胞中的重要调控因子。RegulatorTrail 可在以下网址免费访问：https://regulatortrail.bioinf.uni-sb.de/。
