Spatial organization of the transcriptional regulatory network of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

A transcriptional regulatory network (TRN) is a complex network composed of all of the regulatory interactions between transcription factors and the corresponding target genes. Recently, three-dimensional (3D) genomic studies have shown that the 3D structure of the genome may influence the regulation of gene transcription, which provides us with a novel perspective. In the present study, we constructed the TRN of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and placed it in the context of a 3D genome model. We analyzed the spatial organization of the yeast TRN on four levels: global features, central nodes, hierarchical structure and network motifs. The results obtained suggest that the TRN of S. cerevisiae presents an optimized structure in space to adapt to functional requirements.