Detecting Biological Patterns The Integration of Databases, Models, and Algorithms

Every cell in an organism essentially contains the same genome. However, the subset of genes expressed in one cell type is different from another and is determined by the functional role of that cell. It is also known that the protein coding regions in an eukaryotic genome only account for 10-20% of the DNA. Research has shown that the majority of nuclear DNA is noncoding and is important for the regulation of gene expression. Furthermore, the mechanisms of gene regulation are coordinated by the presence of biologically significant DNA sequence patterns that are observed in the noncoding regions within the neighborhood of genes (1 ).