Genome-wide inference of regulatory networks in Streptomyces coelicolor

Background: The onset of antibiotics production in Streptomyces species is co-ordinated with differentiation events. An understanding of the genetic circuits that regulate these coupled biological phenomena is essential to discover and engineer the pharmacologically important natural products made by these species. The availability of genomic tools and access to a large warehouse of transcriptome data for the model organism, Streptomyces coelicolor, provides incentive to decipher the intricacies of the regulatory cascades and develop biologically meaningful hypotheses.

Results: In this study, more than 500 samples of genome-wide temporal transcriptome data, comprising wild-type and more than 25 regulatory gene mutants of Streptomyces coelicolor probed across multiple stress and medium conditions, were investigated. Information based on transcript and functional similarity was used to update a previously-predicted whole-genome operon map and further applied to predict transcriptional networks constituting modules enriched in diverse functions such as secondary metabolism, and sigma factor. The predicted network displays a scale-free architecture with a small-world property observed in many biological networks. The networks were further investigated to identify functionally-relevant modules that exhibit functional coherence and a consensus motif in the promoter elements indicative of DNA-binding elements.

Conclusions: Despite the enormous experimental as well as computational challenges, a systems approach for integrating diverse genome-scale datasets to elucidate complex regulatory networks is beginning to emerge. We present an integrated analysis of transcriptome data and genomic features to refine a whole-genome operon map and to construct regulatory networks at the cistron level in Streptomyces coelicolor. The functionally-relevant modules identified in this study pose as potential targets for further studies and verification.