Global regulatory factor for transcription may be identifiable by their multitude of binding sites for different inducers, substrates and DNA sequence

Global regulatory factor exerts regulatory control on transcription of particular regulon based on presence/absence of a specific inducer or substrate as well as their concentration. To do this, binding site must exist on the protein to help sense the molecule that participate in the regulatory logic. Upon binding the inducer or substrate, there may be conformational changes that reduce the binding affinity of the regulatory protein for DNA sequence, and thereby, incurs a transcriptional response in reduced expression level of particular genes. This form of regulatory control is typically present in transcription factor. But to qualify as a global regulatory factor, a protein effector must have multiple binding sites for different inducers and substrates whose concentration contributes to the regulatory logic. Concentration of inducers or substrate is important here as it titrates the amount of response from the regulatory protein based on percentage of regulatory factor that binds the inducer or substrate. Hence, with multiple binding sites for different inducers and substrates, a global regulatory factor would likely use allosteric effects from binding of different molecules to different binding sites in different protein domains to effect a response to DNA binding and at the transcriptional level. Overall, by determining the number of binding sites on a protein, it is possible to estimate its role in cellular metabolism and regulation. Proteins with a number of binding sites for inducers or substrates would qualify as global regulatory factors that uses concentrations of multiple molecules as inputs to compute (allosterically through conformational change) a regulatory logic for implementation at the DNA binding level and determine a transcriptional response.