Terry Furey
Contact Information
Office: 5022 Genetic Medicine BuildingEmail: tsfurey[at]unc.edu
Office Phone: (919) 966-7033
Furey Lab Website
Affiliations
Department of GeneticsCarolina Center for Genome Sciences
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Research Description
Chromatin Structure and Relationship to Gene Expression
Chromosomes are compacted into increasingly complex chromatin structures within eukaryotic nuclei. In collaboration with Greg Crawford (Duke) and Jason Lieb (UNC-CH), we analyze regions open chromatin identified using genome-wide DNaseI hypersensitivity (Crawford) and FAIRE (Lieb) experiments, both of which involve high-throughput Illumina sequencing. The computational integration of these data with related gene expression, transcription factor binding, and epigenetic data provide a more complete picture of the complex process of gene transcription.
We are members of the ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) Consortium whose goal is to identify all functional elements in the human genome. Along with the Drs. Crawford and Lieb, our group includes Vishy Iyer’s lab at Univ Texas-Austin, and Ewan Birney’s lab at the EBI. Our group has created open chromatin maps of the human genome in several diverse cell types with chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) data providing initial functional annotations for these regions. We are also investigating allele-specific regulatory regions identified using sequences from the open chromatin and ChIP experiments. We have and continue to develop computational methods to integrate and analyze sequence data DNase I hypersensitivity, FAIRE, and ChIP experiments. We are currently focused on understanding chromatin changes between related cell types such as myoblasts and myotubes, prostate cancer with and without androgen stimulation, and between common cell types across multiple primate species.
Cancer Genomics
Cancer is a complex disease with many histological subtypes and probably thousands of molecular subtypes that differ substantially with respect to their onset, progression, and response to treatment. High-throughput microarray and sequence-based assays are now capable of providing high-density genotypes and assessing genome-wide changes and variation in gene expression, genome copy number, allelic expression, and DNA methylation status throughout cancer initiation and progression. These experiments reveal different yet complementary information regarding the current state of a population of cancer cells and cells from other complex diseases. This ability to molecularly characterize complex disease has already resulted in novel diagnostic tests and treatments.
Current computational models designed to distinguish between phenotypically disparate samples are generally accurate but are difficult to interpret biologically and primarily rely on data from a single molecular assay. The careful and accurate integration of complementary data in biologically interpretable models provide a more complete and interpretable portrait of cancer, for example providing new and stronger evidence of genetic changes associated with the root causes of observed differential gene expression.