A biological data warehousing system for identifying transcriptional regulatory sites from gene expressions of microarray data

Identification of transcriptional regulatory sites plays an important role in the investigation of gene regulation. For this propose, we designed and implemented a data warehouse to integrate multiple heterogeneous biological data sources with data types such as text-file, XML, image, MySQL database model or Oracle database model. The utility of the biological data warehouse in predicting transcriptional regulatory sites of co-regulated genes was explored using a synexpression group derived from a microarray study. Both of the binding sites of known transcription factors and predicted over-represented (OR) oligonucleotides were demonstrated for the gene group. The potential biological roles of both known and one OR nucleotides were demonstrated using bioassays. Therefore, the results from the wet-lab experiments reinforce the power and utility of the data warehouse as an approach to the genome-wide search for important transcription regulatory elements that are the key to many complex biological systems.