Research on modular organization of gene regulatory network

Gene regulatory network is very important for researchers to understand biological processes and gene functions. It can deliver complex information about how could large amount of genes be regulated by transcriptional factors and translated into proteins which can carried out biological functions. Generally, knowledge of network topological structure and organization formation can be used to find the regulatory mechanism of genes in the regulatory network. It can illuminate the local characters of the network and reveal the constructing methods of regulatory network; moreover, it can also analyze regulatory pathway completely and systemically. Now, more and more researchers approbate the hierarchy structure of gene regulatory network: regulatory component, Motif, module and the whole network. Here, we discuss the middle two levels: motif and module. We compared various research results of network organization carried out in recent years, explicated their biology signification and pointed out the existing disadvantages and problems. According these problems, we also bring up some possible research trend. And at last, we discuss the prospect of gene regulatory network modular organization researching work.