Embryonic development is driven by a large set of finely orchestrated regulatory programs that control cell fate decisions, differentiation and morphogenesis, leading to formation of a complex organism. Understanding how these programs, encoded at the genome level, are translated into intricate networks of interacting biological components (genes, proteins, RNA) is essential to our understanding of mechanisms underlying developmental processes and human diseases, triggered when biological circuits go awry.

Modern epigenomic techniques are powerful tools to dissect complex regulatory networks, providing the ability to systematically analyse chromatin landscape and on-going transcriptional programs. Epigenomic profiling of histone modifications allows genome-wide chromatin signature mapping and classification of sites of regulatory activity (e.g. distal elements/enhancers, promoters, repressed regions, etc.). Concomitantly, active transcriptome analysis provides information about upstream inputs and downstream outputs within the Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs) that orchestrate diverse cellular processes.