March 2010:
This is a lecture that I gave at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in June 2009. It aimed at giving an overview about some basics of transcription control, about the beginnings of transcription factor research, and how we approached the subject in the late 80th with bioinformatic methods. The latter starts with the first data compilation that led to the development of the TRANSFAC database, and ends up with the preliminary end-point of constructing and analyzing transcription networks.

The presentation can be downloaded as pdf in the original English version (4.3 MB) or with conclusions in Japanese (4.4 MB), for which I have to acknowledge the help of Dr. Ryota Kunita, BIOBASE Japan.