(402c) High Throughput, Quantitative Profiling of Multiple Transcription Factors in Parallel

Gene regulatory networks are composed of many signaling pathways. Central to the biological response to stimuli are transcription factors (TFs), which regulate cellular processes such as cell growth and apoptosis. TFs mediate the response to external stimuli through binding to specific sites on chromosomal DNA to upregulate expression of nearby genes. Signaling pathways are often branched such that the same TF can activate many different genes under different conditions and can be activated by multiple stimuli. Moreover, many TFs can play a role in activating a single gene. Therefore, to understand the broad functional state of a gene regulatory network, it is necessary to profile multiple TF activities simultaneously. In this presentation, we will describe our approach to developing an assay for measuring TF activities in parallel. Current results with the human TFs, NF-kB and SP1, will be described, along with future directions for the work, including expansion to larger sets of proteins.