Intrinsic disorder in yeast transcriptional regulatory network

Abstract

Intrinsic disorder has been shown to be important in mediating protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions. Proteins involved in regulatory functions are particularly enriched in intrinsic disorder. In this study we explored the role of intrinsic disorder in transcriptional regulatory network of yeast. Using disorder prediction programs we show that transcription factors (TFs) regulating large number of targets (transcriptional hubs) have significantly increased intrinsic disorder, though targets regulated by multiple TFs did not show increased intrinsic disorder. Intrinsic disorder may allow these transcriptional hubs to bind to diverse promoter regions of their targets in different contexts, and may also allow complex regulatory control of transcriptional hubs that are involved in coordinating different cellular processes.