Characterization of Transcriptional Activities

Transcription is the first stage of gene expression, leading to the eventual determination of protein abundance and affecting metabolism. Hence, there is a need to measure and characterize transcriptional activities accurately. This article discusses the experimental techniques to characterize transcriptional activities from a single-gene approach (quantitative PCR) to high-throughput methods (microarray technology and next generation sequencing). Computational approaches to predict relative transcript abundance from sequence features and gene co-expression network will be described. As a proxy to protein/enzyme abundance, transcriptional activities are critical in developing simulatable biochemical models, which can then be used to test biological hypotheses prior to laboratory experimentation.