Open AccessIdentifying DNA Sequence Motifs of Pdx-1 and NeuroD1 Transcription Factors
Author(s) -
Hassan Aldarwish
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
epic series in computing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Conference proceedings
ISSN - 2398-7340
DOI - 10.29007/sfxr
Subject(s) - motif (music) , gene , sequence motif , transcription factor , biology , transcription (linguistics) , genetics , computational biology , linguistics , philosophy , physics , acoustics
Diabetes is a disease reported to be the 8th leading cause of death across the world. Nearly 38 million people worldwide have Type I diabetes caused by a dysfunction of beta cells that impairs insulin production. A better understanding of mechanisms related to gene expression in beta cells might help in the development of novel strategies for the effective treatment of diabetes. Two known transcription factors, Pdx-1 and NeuroD1, are shown to regulate gene expression in beta cells. Recently gene targets that are regulated by both Pdx-1 and NeuroD1 have been identified experimentally [7]. However, the motifs for this set of genes have not been found yet. Here we undertake the task of finding statistically overrepresented motifs in genes regulated by Pdx-1 and NeuroD1. The challenge of this project is to identify statistically significant pairs of motifs: one motif of each pair is for Pdx-1 and the other for NeuroD1. Commonly known motif-finding methods are usually restricted to finding a set of potential candidates, each of which is a single motif.