AIKYATAN: mapping distal regulatory elements using convolutional learning on GPU.
Journal:
BMC bioinformatics
Published Date:
Oct 7, 2019
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The data deluge can leverage sophisticated ML techniques for functionally annotating the regulatory non-coding genome. The challenge lies in selecting the appropriate classifier for the specific functional annotation problem, within the bounds of the hardware constraints and the model's complexity. In our system AIKYATAN, we annotate distal epigenomic regulatory sites, e.g., enhancers. Specifically, we develop a binary classifier that classifies genome sequences as distal regulatory regions or not, given their histone modifications' combinatorial signatures. This problem is challenging because the regulatory regions are distal to the genes, with diverse signatures across classes (e.g., enhancers and insulators) and even within each class (e.g., different enhancer sub-classes).