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I have read about basics of molecular genetics ,although its not a thorough in-depth knowledge. I would like to know about "regulatory genomics". What is it actually?

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    $\begingroup$ As I understand it, it is the study of regulatory mechanisms in gene or protein expression in populations and especially how these mechanisms vary between closely related lineages. $\endgroup$
    – Remi.b
    Jun 1, 2014 at 15:38
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    $\begingroup$ Can you tell us, in which context you read about it? $\endgroup$
    – Chris ♦
    Jun 1, 2014 at 17:23
  • $\begingroup$ @Chris : I was going through an institute website ( imsc.res.in/biology_imsc ). There a professor is specializing in regualatory genomics, and research programme for computational biology is going on. $\endgroup$
    – dexterdev
    Jun 2, 2014 at 4:22

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The genome may be divided into two classes of sequences - those that code for proteins and those that do not. Those that do not code for proteins may be again divided into classes consisting of actively transcribed sequences that have biological activity (such as long noncoding RNA, microRNA, competing endogenous RNA and so on) and those that aren't.

These untranscribed noncoding regions may be involved in regulating the activity of protein coding and actively transcribed regions by binding to transcription factors or transcriptional coactivators/corepressors that control whether certain genes are expressed or not - this can happen close to the start of the gene (i.e, promoters) or far away (at enhancers). Distant enhancers can still affect gene expression because they and the genes they affect can be close together in three-dimensional space (The genome is folded in cells!).

Regulatory genomics is, simply put, the study of these regions, which are called genomic "features" and how they regulate genes. A great example of studies in this area are offered by papers published as part of the ENCODE project http://www.nature.com/encode/#/threads

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the effort in answering. Good answer too, I got the essence. But I didn't completely understood. Since my subject is not biology I don't understand things like binding. Can you suggest me some reference for beginners other than papers. $\endgroup$
    – dexterdev
    Jun 2, 2014 at 4:41
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    $\begingroup$ Not to discourage you, but you're getting into some fairly advanced topics in molecular biology so you may want to read some basic biology/biochemistry textbooks first to get the prerequisite knowledge. $\endgroup$
    – canadianer
    Jun 2, 2014 at 4:45
  • $\begingroup$ @canadianer : I completely agree with you. I will have to see the basics. $\endgroup$
    – dexterdev
    Jun 2, 2014 at 10:58
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    $\begingroup$ Alberts' Molecular Biology of the Cell or Lewin's Genes would be a good starting point if you are looking for textbooks; alternatively, check out Scitable nature.com/scitable/topic/gene-expression-and-regulation-15 $\endgroup$
    – Ankur Chakravarthy
    Jun 2, 2014 at 15:45

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