A System for Describing Cis-Regulatory Machinery Unit

Studies on cellular pathways and networks are now one of the most actively researched topics in all fields of biomedicine ranging from developmental biology to etiology. Many databases have been developed and quantitative simulation models have been proposed. One of the eventual goals of pathway/network studies is to integrate different types of pathway/network models and databases to simulate overall cellular responses. A bottleneck to this goal is modeling gene expression since the mechanism of this process is not yet fully unveiled. We are developing a small scale computer program called CiRMU (Cis-Regulatory Machinery Unit model) for describing, viewing, analyzing, and modeling the process of gene expression. A prototype system is being designed and implemented for analyzing functions of nuclear receptors.