The pancreatic islet regulome browser

Abstract

The pancreatic islet is a highly specialized tissue embedded in the exocrine pancreas whose primary function is that of controlling glucose homeostasis. Thus, understanding the transcriptional control of islet-cell may help to puzzle out the pathogenesis of glucose metabolism disorders. Integrative computational analyses of transcriptomic and epigenomic data allows predicting genomic coordinates of putative regulatory elements across the genome and, decipher tissue-specific functions of the non-coding genome. We herein present the Islet Regulome Browser, a tool that allows fast access and exploration of pancreatic islet epigenomic and transcriptomic data produced by different labs worldwide. The Islet Regulome Browser is now accessible on the internet or may be installed locally. It allows uploading custom tracks as well as providing interactive access to a wealth of information including Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) variants, different classes of regulatory elements, together with enhancer clusters, stretch-enhancers and transcription factor binding sites in pancreatic progenitors and adult human pancreatic islets. Integration and visualization of such data may allow a deeper understanding of the regulatory networks driving tissue-specific transcription and guide the identification of regulatory variants. We believe that such tool will facilitate the access to pancreatic islet public genomic datasets providing a major boost to functional genomics studies in glucose metabolism related traits including diabetes.