Tuberculosis Research: A ‘Molecular Road Map’ to Help Understand Gene Regulation
isbscience.org/news/2015/02/23/tuberculosis-research-a-molecular-road-map-to-help-understand-gene-regulation/
The journal “Trends in Microbiology” recently published a spotlight article on a tuberculosis research collaboration between scientists at Institute for Systems Biology and Seattle BioMed. The paper “The DNA-binding network of Mycobacterium tuberculosis” was published in the journal “Nature Communications” (Jan. 12, 2015):
“MTB employs about 200 different molecular switches to sense and respond to the shifting, hostile landscape of the host. To identify and understand the intertwining gene regulatory network that the molecular switches control, Seattle BioMed and ISB researchers (from the Baliga and Price Labs) examined the consequences of overexpressing (or boosting the function of) each switch. The team overexpressed almost every regulatory gene in MTB, measured the consequences of each perturbation, and used the results to identify genome-wide regulatory interactions for MTB. These results were assembled into an easily searchable map and will stimulate additional systems-level and hypothesis-driven efforts to understand MTB adaptations that promote disease.” Read more…
The spotlight article in “Trends in Microbiology” describes the “remarkable” comprehensiveness of the genome-wide characterization of transcription factor binding sites and highlighted ISB’s Baliga Lab:
“Baliga and coworkers have reconstructed a comprehensive gene regulatory network consisting of 3,922 genes, covering 98 percent of the genome by using more than 2,000 transcriptome datasets in different conditions and integrating protein–protein influences as well as operon associations derived from different computational methods.” Read more…
