[Comparative analysis of conservation and regulatory network on core transcription factors in mouse inner ear...

During vertebrate inner ear development, several core genes, such as Six1, Six4, Pax2, Pax8, Foxi1, Dlx5, Gbx2, Irx2/3, and Msx1, are crucial to the regulation of the otic placode induction. In order to get the gene regulatory network during inner ear development, bioinformatics methods were adopted to analyze conservation and regulation of the core transcription factors in mice. Pax2, Pax8, Foxi1, and Dlx5 remained to be the main regulators during inner ear development, which was consistent with the gene regulatory network from literature. Six1 was regulated by many transcription factors, and Gbx2, Irx2/3, and Msx1 played important roles in the regulatory network. The differences in the constructed regulatory network were reasonably analyzed. It was predicted that Msxl regulated the expression of Six1 and Gbx2. In addition, several transcription factors, such as Sox5, Lhx2, Rax, Otx1, Otx2, Pitxl, Pitx2, Nkx2-5, Irx4, Irx6, Dlx2, Hmx1/2/3, Pou4f3, Pax4 and Tlx2, were found to be involved in the regulatory network. Our results provide an improved understanding of the regulatory mechanism during inner ear development.