On the use of algorithms to discover motifs in DNA sequences

Abstract

Many approaches are currently devoted to find DNA motifs in nucleotide sequences. However, this task remains challenging for specialists nowadays due to the difficulties they find to deeply understand gene regulatory mechanisms, especially when analyzing binding sites in DNA. These sites or specific nucleotide sequences are known to be responsible for transcription processes. Thus, this work aims at providing an updated overview on strategies developed to discover meaningful motifs in DNA-related sequences, and, in particular, their attempts to find out relevant binding sites. From all existing approaches, this work is focused on dictionary, ensemble, and artificial intelligence-based algorithms since they represent the classical and the leading ones, respectively.