Using a large-scale knowledge database on reactions and regulations to propose key upstream regulators of various sets of molecules participating in cell metabolism.

Background: Most of the existing methods to analyze high-throughput data are based on gene ontology principles, providing information on the main functions and biological processes. However, these methods do not indicate the regulations behind the biological pathways. A critical point in this context is the extraction of information from many possible relationships between the regulated genes, and its combination with biochemical regulations.

Transcriptome profiling of the feeding-to-fasting transition in chicken liver.

Background: Starvation triggers a complex array of adaptative metabolic responses including energy-metabolic responses, a process which must imply tissue specific alterations in gene expression and in which the liver plays a central role. The present study aimed to describe the evolution of global gene expression profiles in liver of 4-week-old male chickens during a 48 h fasting period using a chicken 20 K oligoarray.

Results: A large number of genes were modulated by fasting (3532 genes with a pvalue corrected by Benjamini-Hochberg < 0.