In silico analysis of regulatory motifs in gene promoters

Regulation of gene transcription is a complex process involving many different proteins, some of which bind in a sequence-specific manner to DNA motifs in the gene promoter. The need to maintain specific interactions between transcription factors and proteins involved in the RNA polymerase II comple...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Bellora Pereyra, Nicolás
Format: doctoral thesis
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2010
Country:España
Institution:CBUC, CESCA
Repository:TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red
OAI Identifier:oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/7202
Online Access:http://www.tdx.cat/TDX-0422110-095017
http://hdl.handle.net/10803/7202
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Housekeeping genes
Microarray
RNA polymerase
Transcription factor
DNA
Bioinformatics
Ribosome
Genome
Transcription
Promoter
Consensus sequence
Motif
Genomics
TFBS
TF
PWM
PEAKS
575
Description
Summary:Regulation of gene transcription is a complex process involving many different proteins, some of which bind in a sequence-specific manner to DNA motifs in the gene promoter. The need to maintain specific interactions between transcription factors and proteins involved in the RNA polymerase II complex is expected to impose constrains on the relative position and spacing of the interacting DNA motifs. The present work includes the development of a novel approach to identify motifs that show a preferential location in DNA sequences and the implementation of a public web application called PEAKS. We investigated if the arrangement and nature of the most common motifs depended on the breath of expression of the gene. We found differences that serve to illustrate that many key specific regulatory signals may be present in the proximal promoter region in mammalian genes. We also apply other methods for the identification of specific transcription factors (TFs) involved in the co-regulation of a set of genes. Data from experimentally-verified transcription factors binding sites (TFBSs) support the biological relevance of our findings.