Deconstruction of regulatory complexity in Escherichia coli through systemic biology approaches

• Grant number: 18/03857-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2018
• End date: December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Biology and Physiology of Microorganisms
• Principal Investigator: Rafael Silva Rocha
• Grantee: Bianca Naomi de Carvalho
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto (FMRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 12/22921-8 - Synthetic biology approaches for deciphering the logic of signal integration in complex bacterial promoters, AP.JP

Abstract

The Escherichia coli bacterium is no doubt the organism best investigated from the molecular point of view. For this organism, there are a large number of data which refer to the mechanisms of regulation of the gene expression that have been generated in the last decades. From this, there are specialized databases that systematically compile this information manually and serve as a starting point for many studies in this organism. In the present project, information will be used on the regulatory interactions between transcription factors and target promoters in E. coli, such information being extracted from the RegulonDB database. In this way, naturally complex E. coli promoters will be selected (i.e., those regulated by 5 or more transcription factors) to analyze the dynamics of gene expression with similar promoter architectures. In this way, the list of selected promoters will be used to map and group the expression profiles of the target genes from the gene expression database Columbus Commons. Thus, through a systemic biology approach, it is expected to investigate whether similar regulatory architecture promoters generate similar expression profiles in E. coli, thus allowing deconstructing the regulatory complexity in this model organism. (AU)