PGBTR: a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks

Abstract Predicting bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks (TRNs) through computational methods is a core challenge in systems biology, and there is still a long way to go. Here we propose a powerful, general, and stable computational framework called PGBTR (Powerful and General Bacterial Tra...

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Main Authors: Wei-Cheng Gu, Bin-Guang Ma
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2025-08-01
Series:BMC Genomics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-025-11863-9
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author Wei-Cheng Gu
Bin-Guang Ma
author_facet Wei-Cheng Gu
Bin-Guang Ma
author_sort Wei-Cheng Gu
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Predicting bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks (TRNs) through computational methods is a core challenge in systems biology, and there is still a long way to go. Here we propose a powerful, general, and stable computational framework called PGBTR (Powerful and General Bacterial Transcriptional Regulatory networks inference method), which employs Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to predict bacterial transcriptional regulatory relationships from gene expression data and genomic information. PGBTR consists of two main components: the input generation step PDGD (Probability Distribution and Graph Distance) and the deep learning model CNNBTR (Convolutional Neural Networks for Bacterial Transcriptional Regulation inference). On the real Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis datasets, PGBTR outperforms other advanced supervised and unsupervised learning methods in terms of AUROC (Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve), AUPR (Area Under Precision-Recall Curve), and F1-score. Moreover, PGBTR exhibits greater stability in identifying real transcriptional regulatory interactions compared to existing methods. PGBTR provides a new software tool for bacterial TRNs inference, and its core ideas can be further extended to other molecular network inference tasks and other biological problems using gene expression data.
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spelling doaj-art-a1e0a9768a694ad0a8c46e633d7c4cb12025-08-20T04:01:47ZengBMCBMC Genomics1471-21642025-08-0126111010.1186/s12864-025-11863-9PGBTR: a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networksWei-Cheng Gu0Bin-Guang Ma1Hubei Key Laboratory of Agricultural Bioinformatics, College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural UniversityHubei Key Laboratory of Agricultural Bioinformatics, College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural UniversityAbstract Predicting bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks (TRNs) through computational methods is a core challenge in systems biology, and there is still a long way to go. Here we propose a powerful, general, and stable computational framework called PGBTR (Powerful and General Bacterial Transcriptional Regulatory networks inference method), which employs Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to predict bacterial transcriptional regulatory relationships from gene expression data and genomic information. PGBTR consists of two main components: the input generation step PDGD (Probability Distribution and Graph Distance) and the deep learning model CNNBTR (Convolutional Neural Networks for Bacterial Transcriptional Regulation inference). On the real Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis datasets, PGBTR outperforms other advanced supervised and unsupervised learning methods in terms of AUROC (Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve), AUPR (Area Under Precision-Recall Curve), and F1-score. Moreover, PGBTR exhibits greater stability in identifying real transcriptional regulatory interactions compared to existing methods. PGBTR provides a new software tool for bacterial TRNs inference, and its core ideas can be further extended to other molecular network inference tasks and other biological problems using gene expression data.https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-025-11863-9Transcriptional regulatory networkEscherichia coliBacillus subtilisDeep learningNetwork inference
spellingShingle Wei-Cheng Gu
Bin-Guang Ma
PGBTR: a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks
BMC Genomics
Transcriptional regulatory network
Escherichia coli
Bacillus subtilis
Deep learning
Network inference
title PGBTR: a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks
title_full PGBTR: a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks
title_fullStr PGBTR: a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks
title_full_unstemmed PGBTR: a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks
title_short PGBTR: a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks
title_sort pgbtr a powerful and general method for inferring bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks
topic Transcriptional regulatory network
Escherichia coli
Bacillus subtilis
Deep learning
Network inference
url https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-025-11863-9
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