Genomics and Transcriptomics of Heart Disease

Igor Efimov, PhD - Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Medicine (Division of Cardiology), Northwestern University

A deeper knowledge of the dynamic transcriptional activity of promoters and enhancers is needed to improve mechanistic understanding of the pathogenesis of heart failure and heart diseases. In this talk, Dr. Efimov discusses how regulatory elements are alternatively transcribed in different heart regions, in healthy versus failing hearts and in ischemic versus non-ischemic heart failure. Cardiac-disease-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) appear to be enriched in TREs, potentially affecting the allele-specific transcription factor binding. Among other topics, the talk includes the open-source heart CAGE atlas that will serve the cardiovascular community in improving the understanding of the role of cardiac gene regulatory networks in cardiovascular disease and therapy.