Maximal numbers of transcription factors from each super-family in a single organism

Range Table - link
Organism Various
Reference Itzkovitz S, Tlusty T, Alon U. Coding limits on the number of transcription factors. BMC Genomics. 2006 Sep 19 7: 239.PubMed ID16984633
Method Researchers used the superfamily database (version 1.69) to obtain the numbers of TFs from each superfamily in different organisms. Position-Specific Score Matrices (PSSM) for 46 E. coli transcription factors, were constructed based on the RegulonDB database [66]. To measure the similarity between binding sequences of a pair of factors researchers assessed the distances between their PSSMs. Measurement of similarity of biological function of TFs. Assessment of the number of possible sequences.
Comments Transcription factor proteins bind specific DNA sequences to control the expression of genes. They contain DNA binding domains which belong to several super-families, each with a specific mechanism of DNA binding. The total number of transcription factors encoded in a genome increases with the number of genes in the genome. Here, researchers examined the number of transcription factors from each super-family in diverse organisms. The present study suggests that there are upper bounds on the number of transcription factors from different super-families. It seems that the more constrained the binding mechanism, the lower the bound. The present bounds may be understood in terms of an optimal coding strategy, in which misrecognition errors are minimized.
Entered by Uri M
ID 104996