Enabling Studies of Genome-Scale Regulatory Network Evolution in Large Phylogenies with MRTLE
Year: 2022
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Transcriptional regulatory networks specify context-specific patterns of genes and play a central role in how species evolve and adapt. Inferring genome-scale regulatory networks in non-model species is the first step for examining patterns of conservation and divergence of regulatory networks. Transcriptomic data obtained under varying environmental stimuli in multiple species are becoming increasingly available, which can be used to infer regulatory networks. However, inference and analysis of multiple gene regulatory networks in a phylogenetic setting remains challenging. We developed an algorithm, Multi-species Regulatory neTwork LEarning (MRTLE), to facilitate such studies of regulatory network evolution. MRTLE is a probabilistic graphical model-based algorithm that uses phylogenetic structure, transcriptomic data for multiple species, and sequence-specific motifs in each species to simultaneously infer genome-scale regulatory networks across multiple species. We applied MRTLE to study regulatory network evolution across six ascomycete yeasts using transcriptomic measurements collected across different stress conditions. MRTLE networks recapitulated experimentally derived interactions in the model organism S. cerevisiae as well as non-model species, and it was more beneficial for network inference than methods that do not use phylogenetic information. We examined the regulatory networks across species and found that regulators associated with significant expression and network changes are involved in stress-related processes. MTRLE and its associated downstream analysis provide a scalable and principled framework to examine evolutionary dynamics of transcriptional regulatory networks across multiple species in a large phylogeny.
Source: Methods in molecular biology
Authors: Shilu Zhang, Sara Knaack, Sushmita Roy
Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Awards: Computational Inference of Regulatory Network Dynamics on Cell Lineages, CAREER: Comparative Network Biology to Study the Evolution of Regulatory Networks, Computational approaches for comparative regulatory genomics to decipher long-range gene regulation, G9000139996, Defining gene regulatory networks controlling cell fate
OpenAlex ID: W4285198437