Time-Based Systems Biology Approaches to Capture and Model Dynamic Gene Regulatory Networks

Abstract

All aspects of transcription and its regulation involve dynamic events. However, capturing these dynamic events in gene regulatory networks (GRNs) offers both a promise and a challenge. The promise is that capturing and modeling the dynamic changes in GRNs will allow us to understand how organisms adapt to a changing environment. The ability to mount a rapid transcriptional response to environmental changes is especially important in nonmotile organisms such as plants. The challenge is to capture these dynamic, genome-wide events and model them in GRNs. In this review, we cover recent progress in capturing dynamic interactions of transcription factors with their targets—at both the local and genome-wide levels—and how they are used to learn how GRNs operate as a function of time. We also discuss recent advances that employ time-based machine learning approaches to forecast gene expression at future time points, a key goal of systems biology.