Terry Furey, PhD

Assistant Professor

Research Interests

Key words: chromatin and gene regulation, integrative cancer genomics, computational biology, high-throughput sequencing

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.

We develop statistical methods and computational software that integrate high-dimensional heterogeneous but complementary data from cancer samples to identify fundamental genomic alterations with clinical and biological relevance. These methods are being developed in collaboration with Sayan Mukherjee and Beth Hauser, both at Duke University.

Publications

Lab Members

Contact Information

Mailing Address:

CB#7264
Unversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7264

Office: 5022 Genetic Medicine Building
Office phone: 919-966-7033
Lab phone:
FAX:

Email: Terry Furey, PhD

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