Difference between Gene co-expression network and Gene regulatory network

Question

[Mike]

Hi All,

What are basic difference between Gene co-expression network and Gene regulatory network ? I want to build co-expression and regulatory network for a list of genes from RNAseq data, could you please suggest me tools for both type of networks.

Thanks

[arta]

The main difference is that gene co-expression is built using expression data (RNA) for each pair of genes which they have relationship, whereas gene regulatory network is collection of regulators (DNA, RNA, proteins) which regulates the expression. So if you have just RNASeq data, you should start wit building co-expression network. In R, there is well known and used package called WGCNA.