Conformational and physicochemical DNA features specific for transcription factor binding sites

Abstract

Motivation: A reliable recognition of transcription factor binding sites is essential for analysis of regulatory genomic sequences. The experimental data make evident an important role of DNA conformational features for site functioning. However, Internet-available tools for revealing conformational and physicochemical DNA features significant for the site functioning and subsequent use of these features for site recognition have not been developed up to now. Results: We suggest an approach for revealing significant conformational and physicochemical properties of functional sites implemented in the database B-DNA-VIDEO. This database is designed to study the sets of various transcription factor binding sites, providing evidence that transcription factor binding sites are characterized by specific sets of significant conformational and physicochemical DNA properties. For a fixed site, by using the B-DNA features selected for this site recognition the C-program recognizing this site may be generated, control tested and stored in the database B-DNA-VIDEO. Each B-DNA-VIDEO entry links to the Web-applet recognizing the site, whose significant B-DNA features are stored in this entry as the 'site recognition programs'. The pairwise linked entry-applet pairs are compiled within the B-DNA-VIDEO system, which is simultaneously the database and the program tools package applicable immediately for recognizing the sites stored in the database. Indeed this is the novelty. Hence, B-DNA-VIDEO is the Web resource of both 'searching for static data' and 'active computation' type, that is why it was called an 'activated database'. Availability: B-DNA-VIDEO is available at http://wwwmgs.bionet.nsc.ru/systems/BDNAVideo/ and the mirror site at http://www.cbil.upenn.edu/mgs/systems/consfreq/.