New meta-analysis tools reveal common transcriptional regulatory basis for multiple determinants of behavior

摘要

Complex phenotypes are shaped by a multitude of heritable and environmental determinants (1). A key challenge is to learn whether different determinants of a phenotype are subserved by common or independent molecular machinery. Because many heritable and environmental determinants influence gene expression (2), it is logical to search for shared mechanisms at the level of transcriptional regulation, which leads to the following question: do the transcriptional regulatory networks used by apparently distinct determinants of a phenotype rely on shared components or modules, and if so, what are they? We developed tools to address this question, Metalysis and cis-Metalysis (Fig. P1A).