Computational approaches to finding and analyzing cis-regulatory elements

The transcription of almost all developmental genes is driven by tissue- and time-specific regulatory elements. These transcriptional regulatory elements lie in the genomic DNA proximal to the gene, and hence are cis-regulatory (as opposed to trans-regulatory elements like transcription factor genes). Over the past three decades, a number of techniques have been applied to the problem of finding and characterizing these regulatory elements. In this chapter, I discuss some computational approaches that have been particularly useful in identifying developmental cis-regulatory regions, and provide a tutorial on how to apply these approaches to the study of chick development.