Coherent functional modules improve transcription factor target identification, cooperativity prediction, and disease association

PLoS Genet. 2014 Feb 6;10(2):e1004122. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004122. eCollection 2014 Feb.

Abstract

Transcription factors (TFs) are fundamental controllers of cellular regulation that function in a complex and combinatorial manner. Accurate identification of a transcription factor's targets is essential to understanding the role that factors play in disease biology. However, due to a high false positive rate, identifying coherent functional target sets is difficult. We have created an improved mapping of targets by integrating ChIP-Seq data with 423 functional modules derived from 9,395 human expression experiments. We identified 5,002 TF-module relationships, significantly improved TF target prediction, and found 30 high-confidence TF-TF associations, of which 14 are known. Importantly, we also connected TFs to diseases through these functional modules and identified 3,859 significant TF-disease relationships. As an example, we found a link between MEF2A and Crohn's disease, which we validated in an independent expression dataset. These results show the power of combining expression data and ChIP-Seq data to remove noise and better extract the associations between TFs, functional modules, and disease.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cell Cycle / genetics
  • Computational Biology*
  • Gene Expression Profiling
  • Gene Expression Regulation / genetics*
  • Humans
  • Molecular Sequence Annotation
  • Protein Interaction Maps / genetics*
  • Transcription Factors / genetics
  • Transcription Factors / metabolism*

Substances

  • Transcription Factors