Systematic discovery of regulatory motifs in conserved regions of the human genome, including thousands of CTCF insulator sites.

ABSTRACT: Conserved noncoding elements (CNEs) constitute the majority of sequences under purifying selection in the human genome, yet their function remains largely unknown. Experimental evidence suggests that many of these elements play regulatory roles, but little is known about regulatory motifs contained within them. Here we describe a systematic approach to discover and characterize regulatory motifs within mammalian CNEs by searching for long motifs (12-22 nt) with significant enrichment in CNEs and studying their biochemical and genomic properties. Our analysis identifies 233 long motifs (LMs), matching a total of approximately 60,000 conserved instances across the human genome. These motifs include 16 previously known regulatory elements, such as the histone 3'-UTR motif and the neuron-restr

SUBMITTER: Xie X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1852749 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature