YGMD: a repository for yeast cooperative transcription factor sets and their target gene modules.

Abstract

By organizing the genome into gene modules (GMs), a living cell coordinates the activities of a set of genes to properly respond to environmental changes. The transcriptional regulation of the expression of a GM is usually carried out by a cooperative transcription factor set (CoopTFS) consisting of several cooperative transcription factors (TFs). Therefore, a database which provides CoopTFSs and their target GMs is useful for studying the cellular responses to internal or external stimuli. To address this need, here we constructed YGMD (Yeast Gene Module Database) to provide 34120 CoopTFSs, each of which consists of two to five cooperative TFs, and their target GMs. The cooperativity between TFs in a CoopTFS is suggested by physical/genetic interaction evidence or/and predicted by existing algorithms. The target GM regulated by a CoopTFS is defined as the common target genes of all the TFs in that CoopTFS. The regulatory association between any TF in a CoopTFS and any gene in the target GM is supported by experimental evidence in the literature. In YGMD, users can (i) search the GM regulated by a specific CoopTFS of interest or (ii) search all possible CoopTFSs whose target GMs contain a specific gene of interest. The biological relevance of YGMD is shown by a case study which demonstrates that YGMD can provide a GM enriched with genes known to be regulated by the query CoopTFS (Cbf1-Met4-Met32). We believe that YGMD provides a valuable resource for yeast biologists to study the transcriptional regulation of GMs. Database URL: http://cosbi4.ee.ncku.edu.tw/YGMD/, http://cosbi5.ee.ncku.edu.tw/YGMD/ or http://cosbi.ee.ncku.edu.tw/YGMD/