Cytosines in plants standout, as ~60% of TF binding motifs in the promoters of genes in
Arabidopsis
like model plants have cytosines as the most conserved base. And this becomes more pronounced
considering the
fact that in plants cytosine methylation is the most important way of epigenetic regulation. But are
all
cytosines equally important in the downstream gene regulation? Certainly not. Thus, it becomes a
very
interesting question to identify the critical cytosines for gene regulation.
The criticality, so far, could be assessed only experimentally, consuming lots of time, efforts, and
money.
This makes it quite an impractical job to assess the criticality of every cytosine, for every gene,
for all
infinitely possible conditions, and for so many species.
Realizing this, for the first time, we are bringing here a highly innovative algorithm of
CritiCal-C. It uses
methylated promoter sequence data to first predict the downstream gene's expression level. The
predicted
expression level itself becomes a guide to decode the most critical cytosine in the 2kb upstream
region.
Knowing these critical cytosines, one can carry out genomic interventions to control the downstream
genes at
large scale, in highly cost effective and precise manner. We foresee an upcoming regulomics
revolution with
CritiCal-C.
Access the species-specific database and tool by clicking the image below:
If you use CritiCal-C in your research, please cite our work: