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Apprehending multicellularity: regulatory networks, genomics and evolution
- Publication Year :
- 2009
-
Abstract
- The genomic revolution has provided the first glimpses of the architecture of regulatory networks. Combined with evolutionary information, the “network view” of life processes leads to remarkable insights into how biological systems have been shaped by various forces. This understanding is critical because biological systems, including regulatory networks, are not products of engineering but of historical contingencies. In this light, we attempt a synthetic overview of the natural history of regulatory networks operating in the development and differentiation of multicellular organisms. We first introduce regulatory networks and their organizational principles as can be deduced using ideas from the graph theory. We then discuss findings from comparative genomics to illustrate the effects of lineage-specific expansions, gene-loss, and non-protein-coding DNA on the architecture of networks. We consider the interaction between expansions of transcription factors, and cis regulatory and more general chromatin state stabilizing elements in the emergence of morphological complexity. Finally, we consider a case study of the Notch sub-network, which is present throughout Metazoa, to examine how such a regulatory system has been pieced together in evolution from new innovations and pre-existing components that were originally functionally distinct.
- Subjects :
- Proteomics
Embryology
Gene regulatory network
Genomics
Biology
Article
Evolution, Molecular
Animals
Humans
Gene Regulatory Networks
Evolutionary information
Architecture
Subnetwork
Phylogeny
Comparative genomics
Genetics
Cognitive science
Receptors, Notch
Graph theory
General Medicine
Multicellular organism
Eukaryotic Cells
Gene Expression Regulation
Sequence Alignment
Developmental Biology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....0cdd55a9cdff8fdda41b60224cb64c77