**Abstract**

Urea cycle converts ammonia, a waste product of protein catabolism and a neurotoxin, into non-toxic urea. Urea cycle disorders are a group of rare genetic diseases that have protein-restricted diet as a common treatment modality. Expression of urea cycle genes is regulated in concert by the dietary protein intake, but the mechanism of this regulation is not well understood. Data mining of databases such as ENCODE and Cistrome can be used to gain new information about regulatory elements, transcription factors, and epigenetic mechanisms that regulate expression of urea cycle genes. This can lead to better understanding of the common mechanism, which regulates urea cycle genes, and can generate testable hypotheses about regulation of gene expression and new treatments for urea cycle disorders.

**Keywords:** urea cycle, transcriptional regulation, transcription factor, data mining, ChIP-Seq, epigenetic, histone modification, chromatin remodeler
