PriorsEditor: a tool for the creation and use of positional priors in motif discovery

Bioinformatics. 2010 Sep 1;26(17):2195-7. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btq357. Epub 2010 Jul 13.

Abstract

Summary: Computational methods designed to discover transcription factor binding sites in DNA sequences often have a tendency to make a lot of false predictions. One way to improve accuracy in motif discovery is to rely on positional priors to focus the search to parts of a sequence that are considered more likely to contain functional binding sites. We present here a program called PriorsEditor that can be used to create such positional priors tracks based on a combination of several features, including phylogenetic conservation, nucleosome occupancy, histone modifications, physical properties of the DNA helix and many more.

Availability: PriorsEditor is available as a web start application and downloadable archive from http://tare.medisin.ntnu.no/priorseditor (requires Java 1.6). The web site also provides tutorials, screenshots and example protocol scripts.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Amino Acid Motifs / genetics
  • Binding Sites / genetics
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / methods*
  • Software*
  • Transcription Factors / genetics*

Substances

  • Transcription Factors