Methods for discovering novel motifs in nucleic acid sequences

We describe a computer tool to aid the discovery of new motifsin nucleic acid sequences. A typical use would be to analysea set of upstream regions from a family of related genes inorder to find possible control sequences. The heart of the methodis the creation of dictionaries of related subsequences. Thesedictionaries can then be analysed to look for the commonestor best-defined subsequences, those that occur in the highestnumber of different sequences, or for those in equivalent positionswithin the family. We show the application of the method toa set of E. coli promoter sequences. Received on May 9, 1989; accepted on July 27, 1989