scholarly journals Gene Coregulation and Coexpression in the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor-mediated Transcriptional Regulatory Network in the Mouse Liver

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Navya Josyula ◽  
Melvin E. Andersen ◽  
Norbert Kaminski ◽  
Edward Dere ◽  
Timothy R. Zacharewski ◽  
...  

AbstractTissue-specific network models of chemical-induced gene perturbation can improve our mechanistic understanding of the intracellular events leading to adverse health effects resulting from chemical exposure. The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is a ligand-inducible transcription factor (TF) that activates a battery of genes and produces a variety of species-specific adverse effects in response to the potent and persistent environmental contaminant 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD). Here we assemble a global map of the AHR gene regulatory network in TCDD-treated mouse liver from a combination of previously published gene expression and genome-wide TF binding data sets. Using Kohonen selforganizing maps and subspace clustering, we show that genes co-regulated by common upstream TFs in the AHR network exhibit a pattern of co-expression. Specifically, directly-bound, indirectly-bound and non-genomic AHR target genes exhibit distinct patterns of gene expression, with the directly bound targets generally associated with highest median expression. Further, among the directly bound AHR target genes, the expression level increases with the number of AHR binding sites in the proximal promoter regions. Finally, we show that co-regulated genes in the AHR network activate distinct groups of downstream biological processes, with AHR-bound target genes enriched for metabolic processes and enrichment of immune responses among AHR-unbound target genes, likely reflecting infiltration of immune cells into the mouse liver upon TCDD treatment. This work describes an approach to the reconstruction and analysis of transcriptional regulatory cascades underlying cellular stress response using bioinformatic and statistical tools.

2019 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Navya Josyula ◽  
Melvin E. Andersen ◽  
Norbert E. Kaminski ◽  
Edward Dere ◽  
Timothy R. Zacharewski ◽  
...  

AbstractFour decades after its discovery, the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), a ligand-inducible transcription factor (TF) activated by the persistent environmental contaminant 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), remains an enigmatic molecule with a controversial endogenous role. Here, we have assembled a global map of the AHR gene regulatory network in female C57BL/6 mice orally gavaged with 30 µg/kg of TCDD from a combination of previously published gene expression and genome-wide TF-binding data sets. Using Kohonen self-organizing maps and subspace clustering, we show that genes co-regulated by common upstream TFs in the AHR network exhibit a pattern of co-expression. Directly bound, indirectly bound, and non-genomic AHR target genes exhibit distinct expression patterns, with the directly bound targets associated with highest median expression. Interestingly, among the directly bound AHR target genes, the expression level increases with the number of AHR-binding sites in the proximal promoter regions. Finally, we show that co-regulated genes in the AHR network activate distinct groups of downstream biological processes. Although the specific findings described here are restricted to hepatic effects under short-term TCDD exposure, this work describes a generalizable approach to the reconstruction and analysis of transcriptional regulatory cascades underlying cellular stress response, revealing network hierarchy and the nature of information flow from the initial signaling events to phenotypic outcomes. Such reconstructed networks can form the basis of a new generation of quantitative adverse outcome pathways.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guangzhong Xu ◽  
Kai Li ◽  
Nengwei Zhang ◽  
Bin Zhu ◽  
Guosheng Feng

Background. Construction of the transcriptional regulatory network can provide additional clues on the regulatory mechanisms and therapeutic applications in gastric cancer.Methods. Gene expression profiles of gastric cancer were downloaded from GEO database for integrated analysis. All of DEGs were analyzed by GO enrichment and KEGG pathway enrichment. Transcription factors were further identified and then a global transcriptional regulatory network was constructed.Results. By integrated analysis of the six eligible datasets (340 cases and 43 controls), a bunch of 2327 DEGs were identified, including 2100 upregulated and 227 downregulated DEGs. Functional enrichment analysis of DEGs showed that digestion was a significantly enriched GO term for biological process. Moreover, there were two important enriched KEGG pathways: cell cycle and homologous recombination. Furthermore, a total of 70 differentially expressed TFs were identified and the transcriptional regulatory network was constructed, which consisted of 566 TF-target interactions. The top ten TFs regulating most downstream target genes were BRCA1, ARID3A, EHF, SOX10, ZNF263, FOXL1, FEV, GATA3, FOXC1, and FOXD1. Most of them were involved in the carcinogenesis of gastric cancer.Conclusion. The transcriptional regulatory network can help researchers to further clarify the underlying regulatory mechanisms of gastric cancer tumorigenesis.


2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Keller ◽  
S. Addya ◽  
R. Vadigepalli ◽  
B. Banini ◽  
K. Delgrosso ◽  
...  

Deciphering the molecular basis for human erythropoiesis should yield information benefiting studies of the hemoglobinopathies and other erythroid disorders. We used an in vitro erythroid differentiation system to study the developing red blood cell transcriptome derived from adult CD34+ hematopoietic progenitor cells. mRNA expression profiling was used to characterize developing erythroid cells at six time points during differentiation ( days 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11). Eleven thousand seven hundred sixty-three genes (20,963 Affymetrix probe sets) were expressed on day 1, and 1,504 genes, represented by 1,953 probe sets, were differentially expressed (DE) with 537 upregulated and 969 downregulated. A subset of the DE genes was validated using real-time RT-PCR. The DE probe sets were subjected to a cluster metric and could be divided into two, three, four, five, or six clusters of genes with different expression patterns in each cluster. Genes in these clusters were examined for shared transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) in their promoters by comparing enrichment of each TFBS relative to a reference set using transcriptional regulatory network analysis. The sets of TFBS enriched in genes up- and downregulated during erythropoiesis were distinct. This analysis identified transcriptional regulators critical to erythroid development, factors recently found to play a role, as well as a new list of potential candidates, including Evi-1, a potential silencer of genes upregulated during erythropoiesis. Thus this transcriptional regulatory network analysis has yielded a focused set of factors and their target genes whose role in differentiation of the hematopoietic stem cell into distinct blood cell lineages can be elucidated.


2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (25) ◽  
pp. E4914-E4923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhana Duren ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Rui Jiang ◽  
Yong Wang ◽  
Wing Hung Wong

The rapid increase of genome-wide datasets on gene expression, chromatin states, and transcription factor (TF) binding locations offers an exciting opportunity to interpret the information encoded in genomes and epigenomes. This task can be challenging as it requires joint modeling of context-specific activation of cis-regulatory elements (REs) and the effects on transcription of associated regulatory factors. To meet this challenge, we propose a statistical approach based on paired expression and chromatin accessibility (PECA) data across diverse cellular contexts. In our approach, we model (i) the localization to REs of chromatin regulators (CRs) based on their interaction with sequence-specific TFs, (ii) the activation of REs due to CRs that are localized to them, and (iii) the effect of TFs bound to activated REs on the transcription of target genes (TGs). The transcriptional regulatory network inferred by PECA provides a detailed view of how trans- and cis-regulatory elements work together to affect gene expression in a context-specific manner. We illustrate the feasibility of this approach by analyzing paired expression and accessibility data from the mouse Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) and explore various applications of the resulting model.


Toxicology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 336 ◽  
pp. 99-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiyu Oshida ◽  
Naresh Vasani ◽  
Russell S. Thomas ◽  
Dawn Applegate ◽  
Frank J. Gonzalez ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yujia Liu ◽  
Xiaoping Hu ◽  
Zongfu Pan ◽  
Yuchen Jiang ◽  
Dandan Guo ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Gastric cancer is one of the most common fatal disease worldwide, but its mechanism and therapeutic targets are still unclear. In this study, we have analyzed the differences in gene modules and key pathways in gastric cancer patients, then elaborated the mechanism and effective treatment of gastric cancer with microarray data from the gene expression omnibus(GEO) database. Methods: GEO2R tools were used to identify differential expression genes (DEGs), String database was employed to construct a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. We imported the PPI network into the Cytoscape software to find key nodes, and employed statistical approach of MCODE to cluster genes. After that the ClueGO was used to enrich and annotate the pathways of key modules. To investigate the relationship between the upstream regulator and hub genes, the transcriptional regulatory network was built based on TFCAT database. Results: 63 characteristic genes of gastric cancer are involved in regulation of ECM-receptor interaction, focal adhesion and protein digestion and absorption. SPARC, FN1, BGN and COL1A2 are four key nodes relating to tumor proliferation and metastasis, and their expression were strongly associated with poor survival (p<0.05). 13 transcription factors including PRRX1 have remarkable changes in gastric cancer, which may play a key role in hub gene regulation. Conclusions: The present study defined the gene expression characteristics and transcriptional regulatory network that promote our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of gastric cancer, and might provide new insights into targeted therapy and prognostic markers for the personalized treatment of gastric cancer.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 117693432110413
Author(s):  
Chaoxin Zhang ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
Tongyan Cui ◽  
Shengwei Liu ◽  
Bing Zhang ◽  
...  

The CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (C/EBP) transcription factors (TFs) regulate many important biological processes, such as energy metabolism, inflammation, cell proliferation etc. A genome-wide gene identification revealed the presence of a total of 99 C/EBP genes in pig and 19 eukaryote genomes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that all C/EBP TFs were classified into 6 subgroups named C/EBPα, C/EBPβ, C/EBPδ, C/EBPε, C/EBPγ, and C/EBPζ. Gene expression analysis showed that the C/EBPα, C/EBPβ, C/EBPδ, C/EBPγ, and C/EBPζ genes were expressed ubiquitously with inconsistent expression patterns in various pig tissues. Moreover, a pig C/EBP regulatory network was constructed, including C/EBP genes, TFs and miRNAs. A total of 27 feed-forward loop (FFL) motifs were detected in the pig C/EBP regulatory network. Based on the RNA-seq data, gene expression patterns related to FFL sub-network were analyzed in 27 adult pig tissues. Certain FFL motifs may be tissue specific. Functional enrichment analysis indicated that C/EBP and its target genes are involved in many important biological pathways. These results provide valuable information that clarifies the evolutionary relationships of the C/EBP family and contributes to the understanding of the biological function of C/EBP genes.


BMC Genomics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Malobi Nandi ◽  
Kriti Sikri ◽  
Neha Chaudhary ◽  
Shekhar Chintamani Mande ◽  
Ravi Datta Sharma ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Latent tuberculosis infection is attributed in part to the existence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a persistent non-replicating dormant state that is associated with tolerance to host defence mechanisms and antibiotics. We have recently reported that vitamin C treatment of M. tuberculosis triggers the rapid development of bacterial dormancy. Temporal genome-wide transcriptome analysis has revealed that vitamin C-induced dormancy is associated with a large-scale modulation of gene expression in M. tuberculosis. Results An updated transcriptional regulatory network of M.tuberculosis (Mtb-TRN) consisting of 178 regulators and 3432 target genes was constructed. The temporal transcriptome data generated in response to vitamin C was overlaid on the Mtb-TRN (vitamin C Mtb-TRN) to derive insights into the transcriptional regulatory features in vitamin C-adapted bacteria. Statistical analysis using Fisher’s exact test predicted that 56 regulators play a central role in modulating genes which are involved in growth, respiration, metabolism and repair functions. Rv0348, DevR, MprA and RegX3 participate in a core temporal regulatory response during 0.25 h to 8 h of vitamin C treatment. Temporal network analysis further revealed Rv0348 to be the most prominent hub regulator with maximum interactions in the vitamin C Mtb-TRN. Experimental analysis revealed that Rv0348 and DevR proteins interact with each other, and this interaction results in an enhanced binding of DevR to its target promoter. These findings, together with the enhanced expression of devR and Rv0348 transcriptional regulators, indicate a second-level regulation of target genes through transcription factor- transcription factor interactions. Conclusions Temporal regulatory analysis of the vitamin C Mtb-TRN revealed that there is involvement of multiple regulators during bacterial adaptation to dormancy. Our findings suggest that Rv0348 is a prominent hub regulator in the vitamin C model and large-scale modulation of gene expression is achieved through interactions of Rv0348 with other transcriptional regulators.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
VIJAYKUMAR Yogesh MULEY ◽  
Rainer Koenig

Transcriptional regulatory network (TRN) orchestrates spatio-temporal expression of genes to generate cellular responses for survival. The transcription factors (TF) regulating expression of their target genes (TG) are the fundamental units of TRN. Several databases have been developed to catalogue human TRN based on low- and high-throughput experimental and computational studies considering their importance in understanding cellular physiology. However, literature lacks comparative assessment on the strength and weakness of each database. In this study, we compared over 2.2 million regulatory pairs between 1,379 TF and 22,518 TG assembled from 14 data resources. Our study reveals that the TF and TG were common across data resources but not their regulatory pairs. We observed that the TF and TG of the regulatory pairs showed weak expression correlation, significant gene ontology overlap, co-citations in PubMed and low numbers of TF-TG pairs representing transcriptional repression relationships. Furthermore, each TF-TG regulatory pair assigned a combined confidence score reflecting its reliability based on its presence in multiple databases and co-expression. The TRN containing 2,246,598 TF-TG pairs, of which, 44,284 with the information on TF′s activating or repressing effects on their TG is available upon request. This study brings the information about transcriptional regulation scattered over the literature and databases at one place in the form of one of the most comprehensive and complete human TRNs assembled to date, which will be a valuable resource for benchmarking TRN prediction tools, and to the scientific community working in functional genomics, gene expression and gene regulation analysis.


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