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Enhancing the prediction of transcription factor binding sites by incorporating structural properties and nucleotide covariations

Z. Zhang S. Gunewardena P. Jeavons

Abstract

A problem faced by many algorithms for finding transcription factor (TF) binding sites is the high number of false positive hits that result with the increased sensitivity of their prediction. A main contributing factor to this is the short and degenerate nature of these sites which results in a low signal-to-noise ratio. In order to counter this problem, one needs to look beyond the assumption that individual bases of a TF binding site act independently from each other when binding to a transcription factor. In this paper, we present a new method based on templates, designed to exploit the discriminatory features, nucleotide polymorphism, and structural homology present in TF binding sites for distinguishing them from nonbinding sites.

Journal
Journal of Computational Biology
Number
4
Pages
929−945
Volume
13
Year
2006