Prediction of transcription and genomic sequences

Technological developments have enhanced DNA sequencing at genomic scale. On the basis of the resulting sequences, computational biologists now attempt to localise the most important functional regions, starting with genes, but also importantly the regulatory motifs and conditions controlling their expression. In a recent paper published in Cell, M.A. Beer and S. Tavazoie report the results obtained by combining statistical classifications (clustering) of transcriptome data (DNA chips), software for the discovery of cis-regulatory patterns, together with a probabilistic learning method to infer regulatory rules tentatively accounting for the observed transcriptional profiles.