Atonal and Senseless perturbations in Drosophila melanogaster eye-antennal imaginal discs.

The goal of this study is to identify co-expressed genes downstream of Atonal and Senseless. These gene lists are used as candidate target genes (technically: as foreground sets) in computational predictions of cis-regulatory elements using the cisTargetX method (http://med.kuleuven.be/cme-mg/lng/cisTargetX). Together, the gene expression results and cis-regulatory predictions, yield a gene regulatory network underlying the early events in retinal differentiation. Predicted cis-regulatory interactions have been validated extensively in vivo using enhancer reporter assays and genetic perturbations.

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