Discovering novel cis-regulatory motifs using functional networks

Genome Res. 2003 May;13(5):883-95. doi: 10.1101/gr.866403.

Abstract

We combined functional information such as protein-protein interactions or metabolic networks with genome information in Saccharomyces cerevisiae to predict cis-regulatory motifs in the upstream region of genes. We developed a new scoring metric combining these two information sources and used this metric in motif discovery. To estimate the statistical significance of this metric, we used brute-force randomization, which shows a consistent well-behaved trend. In contrast, real data showed complex nonrandom behavior. With conservative parameters we were able to find 42 degenerate motifs (that touch 40% of yeast genes) based on 647 original patterns, five of which are well known. Some of these motifs also show limited spatial position in the promoter, indicative of a true motif. We also tested the metric on other known motifs and show that this metric is a good discriminator of real motifs. As well as a pragmatic motif discovery method, with many applications beyond this work, these results also show that interacting proteins are often coordinated at the level of transcription, even in the absence of obvious coregulation in gene expression data sets.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Motifs / genetics
  • Amino Acid Motifs / physiology
  • Base Composition / genetics
  • Base Composition / physiology*
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Computational Biology / statistics & numerical data
  • DNA, Fungal / genetics
  • DNA, Fungal / physiology*
  • Energy Metabolism / genetics
  • Energy Metabolism / physiology
  • Genes, Fungal / physiology
  • Genes, Overlapping / physiology
  • Genome, Fungal*
  • Protein Interaction Mapping / methods
  • Protein Interaction Mapping / statistics & numerical data
  • Regulatory Sequences, Nucleic Acid / genetics
  • Regulatory Sequences, Nucleic Acid / physiology*
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / genetics*
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / physiology

Substances

  • DNA, Fungal
  • Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins