Master Transcription Factors Identification and Use Thereof

摘要

Provided herein are methods for identifying master transcription factors (TFs) in a cell type of interest and for transdifferentiation of a somatic cell, e.g., a fibroblast to the cell type of interest. Also provided herein are induced retinal pigment epithelium (iRPE) cell, master TFs therefor, methods for making iRPE cell, and methods and compositions for treating an ocular disease such as age-related macular degeneration.

主权项

1. A method of identifying master transcription factors of a query cell type, comprising:
providing gene expression data of a plurality of transcription factors for a query cell type; relatively quantifying expression level and expression specificity of each transcription factor in the query cell type against a background gene expression profile assembled from a collection of cell types by using an entropy-based measure of Jensen-Shannon divergence (JSD), thereby generating a cell-type-specificity score for each transcription factor; and ranking the plurality of transcription factors based on their corresponding cell-type-specificity scores, wherein top ranked transcription factors are identified as master transcription factors of the query cell type.