An Exact Algorithm to Identify Motifs in Orthologous Sequences from Multiple Species

The identification of sequence motifs is a fundamental method for suggesting good candidates for biologically functional regions such as promoters, splice sites, binding sites, etc. We investigate the following approach to identifying motifs: given a collection of orthologous sequences from multiple species related by a known phylogenetic tree, search for motifs that are well conserved (according to a parsimony measure) in the species. We present an exact algorithm for solving this problem. We then discuss experimental results on finding promoters of the rbcS gene for a family of 10 plants, on finding promoters of the adh gene for 12 Drosophila species, and on finding promoters of several chloroplast encoded genes.