R Tutorial: What is ChIP-seq?

Want to learn more? Take the full course at https://learn.datacamp.com/courses/chip-seq-with-bioconductor-in-r at your own pace. More than a video, you'll learn hands-on coding & quickly apply skills to your daily work. --- Hi, and welcome to "ChIP-seq Workflows in R". My name is Peter, I'm a Statistician at Macquarie University and I will be your instructor for this course. I'm assuming that you have some experience with R and have worked through one of the introductory bioconductor courses on DataCamp. In this course you will learn how to process and analyze ChIP-seq data in R. Before we get into the meat of the course, let us briefly talk about what ChIP-seq is and how it is used. The question at the center of a ChIP-seq experiment is "How do cells know what to do?" Your body contains several trillion cells, each carrying the same genome. Yet, these cells do very different jobs. Some are neurons in your brain, some form your skin and some flow through your body as blood cells. What is it that makes these cells different from each other? The function of a cell is in large part determined by the genes that it expresses. Genes, encoded in the DNA that makes up the genome, are transcribed into RNA and then translated into proteins. The resulting proteins are responsible for carrying out the cells function. Inside each cell, a complex machinery of proteins is responsible for ensuring that the right genes are translated into proteins. Inhibitors are proteins that bind to DNA to deactivate specific genes. Such inhibitors have to be removed, through the interaction with other proteins, before genes can be expressed. A complex of activating transcription factors can then bind to the DNA, allowing gene expression to proceed. Through this process, the regulatory machinery ensures that a cell correctly performs its role. If these regulators are disrupted cells can get out of control, causing a variety of diseases, including cancer. ChIP, short for Chromatin Immunopr