Computational inference of regulatory pathways in microbes

We present a computational protocol for inference of regulatory and signaling pathways in a microbial cell, through mining "high-throughput" biological data of various types, literature search, and computer-assisted human inference. This protocol consists of four key components: (a) construction of template pathways for microbial genomes related to the target genome, which have either been thoroughly studied or had a significant amount of relevant experimental data, (b) inference of target pathways for the target genome, by combining the template pathway models and target genome-specific information, (c) assignment of genes of the target genome to each individual functional roles in the pathway model, and (d) validation and refinement of the pathway models using pathway-specific experimental data or other information. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this procedure, we have applied this computational protocol to the construction of the phosphorus assimilation pathways in synechococcus WH8102. In this paper, we present a model of the core component of this pathway and provide our justification in support of the predicted model.