The Clement Lab has been awarded a University of Utah Research Foundation Interdisciplinary Research Initiative seed grant in partnership with Michael Werner's lab to explore how gene regulatory elements evolve across species.
Gene regulation - the process that turns genes on and off - is fundamental to development, differentiation, and disease. In this collaborative project, we will combine newly generated comparative genomics data from multiple nematode species with state-of-the-art machine learning approaches to better understand promoters and enhancers, the DNA elements that control transcription.
By leveraging evolutionary comparisons, our team aims to uncover shared patterns and constraints in regulatory DNA. This interdisciplinary effort brings together experimental genomics and computational modeling to advance our understanding of the fundamental “grammar” of gene regulation, with long-term implications for improving how we interpret genomes in health and disease.
