Discovery of Over-Represented Words in Intron 1s of Drosophila Ribosomal Protein Genes

Abstract

Most of studies on transcriptional regulation mainly focus on upstream regions of genes. More and more recent researches indicate that introns may have important biological functions in transcription regulation of genes. The characterization of words in DNA sequences can be facilitated by the sequences’ functions. Using U-score and Z-score statistic, respectively, we extracted some over-represented words in intron 1s of ribosomal protein genes. A majority of them are accordance with known transcriptional factor binding sites and are potential regulatory elements. And, the detected over-represented words are more likely to form wider potential sequences and are denser in intron 1s of RP genes. We speculate the properties of these words may be associated with the transcriptional regulation of RP genes.