Method

Core promoters are predicted by their distinct physicochemical properties in the genome of Plasmodium falciparum

Kevin Brick¹ , Junichi Watanabe² and Elisabetta Pizzi¹

¹  Dipartimento di Malattie Infettive, Parassitarie ed Immunomediate - Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena, 299, 00161 Rome, Italy

²  Department of Parasitology, Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo 4-6-1, Shirokanedai, Minatoku, Tokyo 108-8639, Japan

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2008, 9:R178doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-12-r178

Published:	18 December 2008

Subject areas: Bioinformatics, Microbiology and parasitology, Molecular biology

Abstract

Little is known about the structure and distinguishing features of core promoters in Plasmodium falciparum. In this work, we describe the first method to computationally identify core promoters in this AT-rich genome. This prediction algorithm uses solely DNA physicochemical properties as descriptors. Our results add to a growing body of evidence that a physicochemical code for eukaryotic genomes plays a crucial role in core promoter recognition.