Study of pathway cross-talk interactions with NF-κB leading to its activation via ubiquitination or phosphorylation: A brief review

• Literature mining to analyse various pathways and establish their interactions with NFκB activation pathway.
• Application of STRING database to search for NFκB interactions.
• Using CellNOptR to analyse NFκB interactions.
• Using Cytoscape and its plugins to build and analyse cross-talk between NfκB and molecules of other related pathways.

NFκB has been known to be a necessary transcription factor for the functioning of nearly all cells in a living organism. For its proper functioning, it talks to several other molecular cofactors and interacts with their functionalities resulting in a convoluted cross talking mesh of signalling networks. To completely understand the working of nuclear factor-kappa B protein, one needs to understand the interactions that occur during its lifecycle, with cofactors from various biological processes. This study attempts to elaborate and bridge the gaps on the cross-talk interactions that NFkB is a part of, during its activation pathway. For this Cytoscape and its various plugins (Cytocopter, Allegro, AgilentLitSearch and Styles) are employed. Other related pathways were also collated and analysed for cross-talk between NfκB and interacting molecules. NFκB was found to mainly interact with E3 ubiquitin ligase, NIK, RIP, TCR, IRAK-1, TLR, TRAF-6, NLR and IL-1, details of which are discussed as a part of this study.