A New Approach to Predicting Regulatory Elements in Dictyostelium Gene Expression

Abstract

In current bioinformatics, the prediction of transcriptional regulatory elements (TREs) is one of the major challenges. It is a key step toward deciphering entire genetic regulatory networks. The goal of this study is to predict TREs associated with four classes of developmentally regulated genes in Dictyostelium discoideum (Dd). Applying a pattern recognition method to 5' untranscribed region of Dd sequences, the evaluation score (E-score) for each candidate TRE is calculated. Based on these E-scores and the proposed selection criteria, putative class-specific TREs are predicted in each developmentally regulated class of Dd.