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H Craig Mak

Publications and source records attributed to H Craig Mak.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

CellCircuits: a database of protein network models.

CellCircuits (http://www.cellcircuits.org) is an open-access database of molecular network models, designed to bridge the gap between databases of individual pairwise molecular interactions and databases of validated pathways. CellCircuits captures the output from an increasing number of approaches that screen molecular interaction networks to identify functional subnetworks, based on their correspondence with expression or phenotypic data, their internal structure or their conservation across species. This initial release catalogs 2019 computationally derived models drawn from 11 journal articles and spanning five organisms (yeast, worm, fly, Plasmodium falciparum and human). Models are available either as images or in machine-readable formats and can be queried by the names of proteins they contain or by their enriched biological functions. We envision CellCircuits as a clearinghouse in which theorists may distribute or revise models in need of validation and experimentalists may search for models or specific hypotheses relevant to their interests. We demonstrate how such a repository of network models is a novel systems biology resource by performing several meta-analyses not currently possible with existing databases.

Animals↗

A systems approach to mapping DNA damage response pathways.

Failure of cells to respond to DNA damage is a primary event associated with mutagenesis and environmental toxicity. To map the transcriptional network controlling the damage response, we measured genomewide binding locations for 30 damage-related transcription factors (TFs) after exposure of yeast to methyl-methanesulfonate (MMS). The resulting 5272 TF-target interactions revealed extensive changes in the pattern of promoter binding and identified damage-specific binding motifs. As systematic functional validation, we identified interactions for which the target changed expression in wild-type cells in response to MMS but was nonresponsive in cells lacking the TF. Validated interactions were assembled into causal pathway models that provide global hypotheses of how signaling, transcription, and phenotype are integrated after damage.

DNA Damage↗

Validation and refinement of gene-regulatory pathways on a network of physical interactions.

As genome-scale measurements lead to increasingly complex models of gene regulation, systematic approaches are needed to validate and refine these models. Towards this goal, we describe an automated procedure for prioritizing genetic perturbations in order to discriminate optimally between alternative models of a gene-regulatory network. Using this procedure, we evaluate 38 candidate regulatory networks in yeast and perform four high-priority gene knockout experiments. The refined networks support previously unknown regulatory mechanisms downstream of SOK2 and SWI4.

Computational Biology↗