Metabolic pathway relationships revealed by an integrative analysis of the transcriptional and metabolic temperature stress-response dynamics in yeast.

Abstract The integrated analysis of omics datasets covering different levels of molecular organization has become a central task of systems biology. We investigated the transcriptional and metabolic response of yeast exposed to increased (37°C) and lowered (10°C) temperatures relative to optimal reference conditions (28°C) in the context of known metabolic pathways. Pairwise metabolite correlation levels were found to carry more pathway-related information and to extend to farther distances within the metabolic pathway network than associated transcript level correlations. Metabolites were detected to correlate stronger to their cognate transcripts (metabolite is reactant of the enzyme encoded by the transcript) than to more remote or randomly chosen transcripts reflecting their close metabolic relationship. We observed a pronounced temporal hierarchy between metabolic and transcriptional molecular responses under heat and cold stress. Changes of metabolites were most significantly correlated to transcrip...