Statistical significance of cis-regulatory modules

Background: It is becoming increasingly important for researchers to be able to scan through large genomic regions for transcription factor binding sites or clusters of binding sites forming cisregulatory modules. Correspondingly, there has been a push to develop algorithms for the rapid detection and assessment of cis-regulatory modules. While various algorithms for this purpose have been introduced, most are not well suited for rapid, genome scale scanning. Results: We introduce methods designed for the detection and statistical evaluation of cisregulatory modules, modeled as either clusters of individual binding sites or as combinations of sites with constrained organization. In order to determine the statistical significance of module sites, we first need a method to determine the statistical significance of single transcription factor binding site matches. We introduce a straightforward method of estimating the statistical significance of single site matches using a database of k...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Dustin E. Schones, Andrew D. Smith, Michael Q. Zhang
• Keywords: Binding Sites, BMCBI 2007, Statistical Significance, Transcription Factor