Systems microbiology: Gaining insights in transcriptional networks

Abstract

Bacteria are able to adapt to continuously changing environmental conditions. This complex cellular behavior is mediated by the underlying transcriptional network. The advent of high-throughput techniques has allowed large-scale identification of the different cellular entities, their expression patterns, and their biochemical and genetic interactions. Because different omics data such as transcription, regulatory motif, or ChIP-chip data unveil distinct aspects of the transcriptional network, their integration leads to a more complete insight into the biological system. Systems microbiology exploits these heterogeneous genome-wide data to obtain global insight into how different biological entities function and interact under various conditions. Several methods for the reconstruction of the corresponding transcriptional networks will be discussed in this chapter. We will also show how their application can contribute to our understanding of biological systems and lead to an improved management of bacterial infections and drug target discovery. © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.