BackgroundSeveral methods have been developed for analyzing genome-scale models of metabolism and transcriptional regulation. Many of these methods, such as Flux Balance Analysis, use constrained optimization to predict relationships between metabolic flux and the genes that encode and regulate enzyme activity. Recently, mixed integer programming has been used to encode these gene-protein-reaction (GPR) relationships into a single optimization problem, but these techniques are often of limited generality and lack a tool for automating the conversion of rules to a coupled regulatory/metabolic model.ResultsWe present TIGER, a Toolbox for Integrating Genome-scale Metabolism, Expression, and Regulation. TIGER converts a series of generalized, Boolean or multilevel rules into a set of mixed integer inequalities. The package also includes implementations of existing algorithms to integrate high-throughput expression data with genome-scale models of metabolism and transcriptional regulation. We demonstrate how TIGER automates the coupling of a genome-scale metabolic model with GPR logic and models of transcriptional regulation, thereby serving as a platform for algorithm development and large-scale metabolic analysis. Additionally, we demonstrate how TIGER's algorithms can be used to identify inconsistencies and improve existing models of transcriptional regulation with examples from the reconstructed transcriptional regulatory network of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.ConclusionThe TIGER package provides a consistent platform for algorithm development and extending existing genome-scale metabolic models with regulatory networks and high-throughput data.
SUMMARY
The first epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) occurs in trophoblast stem (TS) cells during implantation. Inactivation of the serine/threonine kinase MAP3K4 in TS cells (TSKI4 cells) induces an intermediate state of EMT, where cells retain stemness, lose epithelial markers, and gain mesenchymal characteristics. Investigation of relationships between MAP3K4 activity, stemness, and EMT in TS cells may reveal key regulators of EMT. Here, we show that MAP3K4 activity controls EMT through the ubiquitination and degradation of HDAC6. Loss of MAP3K4 activity in TSKI4 cells results in elevated HDAC6 expression and the deacetylation of cytoplasmic and nuclear targets. In the nucleus, HDAC6 deacetylates the promoters of tight junction genes, promoting the dissolution of tight junctions. Importantly, HDAC6 knockdown in TSKI4 cells restores epithelial features including cell-cell adhesion and barrier formation. These data define an epigenetic role for HDAC6 in regulating gene expression during transitions between epithelial and mesenchymal phenotypes.
We address the problem of aligning the 3D structures of two proteins. Our pairwise comparisons are based on a new optimization model that is succinctly expressed in terms of linear transformations and highlights the problem's intrinsic geometry. The optimization problem is approximately solved with a new polynomial time algorithm. The worstcase analysis of the algorithm shows that the solution is bounded by a constant depending only on the data of the problem.
The promoters of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae histone H3 and H4 genes were examined for cis-acting DNA sequence elements regulating transcription and cell division cycle control. Deletion and linker disruption mutations identified two classes of regulatory elements: multiple cell cycle activation (CCA) sites and a negative regulatory site (NRS). Duplicate 19-bp CCA sites are present in both the copy I and copy II histone H3-H4 promoters arranged as inverted repeats separated by 45 and 68 bp. The CCA sites are both necessary and sufficient to activate transcription under cell division cycle control. A single CCA site provides cell cycle control but is a weak transcriptional activator, while an inverted repeat comprising two CCA sites provides both strong transcriptional activation and cell division cycle control. The NRS was identified in the copy I histone H3-H4 promoter. Deletion or disruption of the NRS increased the level of the histone H3 promoter activity but did not alter the cell division cycle periodicity of transcription. When the CCA sites were deleted from the histone promoter, the NRS element was unable to confer cell division cycle control on the remaining basal level of transcription. When the NRS element was inserted into the promoter of a foreign reporter gene, transcription was constitutively repressed and did not acquire cell cycle regulation.
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