COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF REGULATORY GENE CIRCUITS ACROSS EVOLUTIONARILY DIVERGENT SPECIES

Abstract

Regulatory gene circuits are key elements in the regulation of cellular activities, cell development as well as adaptive biological responses in various species. Learning how these regulatory networks can be preserved or altered during evolution offers important clues into the underlying molecular processes which regulate phenotypic diversity, environmental adaptation and species evolution. This paper provides a comparative systems-level view of the regulatory gene-circuits in the evolutionarily separated species based on combined methods of computational and functional genomics. The evolutionary interactions of gene regulation were studied using comparative genomics, transcriptional regulation analysis, and gene regulatory network modeling. The cross-species computational analysis was conducted to find conserved transcription factors, regulation motifs, signaling pathways, and functional gene modules related to cellular regulation and adaption. Functional enrichment analysis additionally demonstrated the presence of critical biological pathways about development, metabolism, response to stress and cellular signaling. The analysis of the evolutionary divergence in regulatory architectures was also studied, which defined regulatory rewiring and adaptive changes in the network evolution across species. Network-based methods and systems biology made it possible to find out central hub regulators that play a role in maintaining conserved biological functions and supporting species-specific adaptations. On the whole, the paper offers a profoundly detailed overview of the evolutionary processes of regulatory gene circuitries and illustrates the significance of integrative computation methods in comprehending cross-species regulation of transcription based on evolutionary theory and evolutionary functional genomic arrangement.