Escherichia coli transcriptional regulatory network

Escherichia coli is the most well-know bacterial model about the function of its molecular components. In this review are presented several structural and functional aspects of their transcriptional regulatory network constituted by transcription factors and target genes. The network discussed here represent to 1531 genes and 3421 regulatory interactions. This network shows a power-law distribution with a few global regulators and most of genes poorly connected. 176 of genes in the network correspond to transcription factors, which form a sub-network of seven hierarchical layers where global regulators tend to be set in superior layers while local regulators are located in the lower ones. There is a small set of proteins know as nucleoid-associated proteins, which are in a high cellular concentrations and reshape the nucleoid structure to influence the running of global transcriptional programs, to this mode of regulation is named analog regulation. Specific signal effectors assist the activity of most of transcription factors in E. coli. These effectors switch and tune the activity of transcription factors. To this type of regulation, depending of environmental signals is named the digital-precise-regulation. The integration of regulatory programs have place in the promoter region of transcription units where it is common to observe co-regulation among global and local TFs as well as of TFs sensing exogenous and endogenous conditions. The mechanistic logic to understand the harmonious operation of regulatory programs in the network should consider the globalism of TFs, their signal perceived, coregulation, genome position, and cellular concentration. Finally, duplicated TFs and their horizontal transfer influence the evolvability of members of the network. The most duplicated and transferred TFs are located in the network periphery.