Identification of Biomarkers Driving Blood Cell Development

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new gene expression pattern to identify key regulatory genes involved in blood cell development, demonstrated on mouse embryonic stem cell data across six stages.

Contribution

The study presents a novel method for detecting cell-specific key regulators during blood cell differentiation using gene expression data without network modeling.

Findings

Successfully identified stage-specific key regulators.

Validated approach on mouse embryonic stem cell data.

Provides insights into gene regulation during blood development.

Abstract

A blood cell lineage consists of several consecutive developmental stages from the pluripotent or multipotent stem cell to a particular stage of terminally differentiated cells. There is considerable interest in identifying the key regulatory genes that govern blood cell development from the gene expression data without considering the underlying network between transcription factors (TFs) and their target genes. In this study, we introduce a novel expression pattern that key regulators expose along the differentiation path. We deploy this pattern to identify the cell-specific key regulators responsible for the development. As proof of concept, we consider this approach to data on six developmental stages from mouse embryonic stem cells to terminally differentiated macrophages.