Inference of hierarchical regulatory network of TCF7L2 binding sites in MCF7 cell line

Abstract

The TCF7L2 transcription factor (TF) is a member of Wnt signalling pathway, and may influence transcription of several genes by binding to distinct regulatory regions. Genome-wide studies have identified thousands of TCF7L2 binding sites and have revealed some associated TF partners. However, there is still a large uncharted region in the hierarchical regulatory network for TCF7L2 and the partner TFs in MCF7 cells. We analysed ChIP-seq data by searching for motifs in the enriched peak region based on TF-specific position weight matrix (PWM). We found association of FOXO1 and CAD with up-regulated genes, AP2α, PBF and AP1 with down-regulated genes. TCF7L2 and GATA3 were found to be associated with both up and down-regulated genes. Our study uncovers new TCF7L2 associated regulatory networks by mining ChIP-seq data in MCF7 cell, which may contribute to further study of the mechanisms related to Wnt pathway in breast cancer or other diseases.