The promoter regions from the reference set were analyzed using the same procedures as were applied above (Figure 2d-f). In spite of the likelihood that the new reference collection will have greater noise than the small set collected by detailed literature analysis, the performance results are comparable between sets. The sensitivity is slightly lower for the large collection (Figure 2e,f), which in addition to the potential difference in annotation standards could be attributable to the TFs associated with the sites. The average information content of the models for TFs linked to sites in the reference collection is lower than that for the factors associated with the small test set (median information content: 9.7, as compared to 15.3 bits in the first test set). Selectivity performance is virtually identical to the test (Figure 2d,f).
Web implementation
The algorithm described for the identification of regulatory regions by comparative sequence analysis has been implemented as an intuitive and easy to use web service named ConSite [23]. The implementation allows for three analysis modes: first, alignment and conserved-site analysis of two orthologous genomic sequences applying one or more TF profiles; second, conserved site analysis on a submitted alignment, which allows users to generate alignments from their preferred tools and allows for the analysis of longer genomic sequences; and third, a single-sequence analysis tool. The single-sequence service is functionally comparable to the TESS system [24], but utilizes the