Genetic variation and the control of transcription

Abstract

Identifying and understanding genetic variation is akey driver of agricultural, biotechnological, and biomedical research and commercialization; the major focus ofgenetic variation research has until now been on changesto protein-coding sequences because these are computationally and experimentally accessible. In contrast, thecontribution of genetic variation to the temporal or spatialcontrol of transcription is not well understood, in part because we have no simple technologies to identify functional variants in control regions, nor do we, for the majority of genes, have a comprehensive understanding ofthe proteins that control gene expression...