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.