Identification of conserved regulatory motif signatures in human miRNA upstream regions

Abstract

Discovering and characterizing regulatory elements of miRNA genes are fundamental problems in bioinformatics field. An upstream regulatory motif can be described as a sequence element designated for binding of various protein factors imparting their subsequent effects on the transcription of the genes. For example, the transcription factors often bind to cis-acting conserved motif to regulate transcription, which typically are located upstream of transcriptional start sites. This work focuses on the identification of upstream regulatory elements of human microRNA genes by screening of their Kullback Liebler distance.