In: Biology
The confluence of whole genome DNA sequence data together with high throughput technologies and novel algorithms can help identify and characterise the regulatory elements of a transcription factor. A popular method known is ChIp i.e chromatin immunoprecipitation which is used to study the interactions of DNA. Also, inorder to identify the genes regulated by transcription factor, they can be essentially used as a operon where the addition and the removal of the TF is used to study the effect on the genes.
Phylogenetic footprinting which is a novel approach to study the functional regulatory aspects of a gene involves separating them from the non coding regions of a gene and to apply them to single genomic loci can be essentially used to identify the function of a transcription factor. Essentially, the binding sites of the factors can be identified by looking for small conservative regions within multiple alignment of upstream regulatory regions.