• Transcription-factor-binding site (TFBSs) are short sequences near the transcription-start site of each to which specific transcription-factor proteins bind.
• DNAse footprinting is an experimental technique used to identify the DNA region bound by a given transcription factor. It is often used with electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA) to demonstrate specific DNA-protein interactions.
• A position weight matrix (PWM) is a statistical model that represents the frequency at which a DNA sequence motif. These are used for computational prediction of putative TFBSs.
• Phylogenetic footprinting attempts to identify regulatory DNA sequences on the basis of their conservation in an alignment of genomic DNA from different species.
• Cis-regulatory modules are the clusters of TFBSs that regulate each gene, often including multiple site for each transcription factor that regulates the gene.
• ChIP-onchip or ChIP-chip is a recently developed techinqe that uses chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) of transcription factors with their associated DNA, followed by microarray (DNA chip) analysis of the bound DNA sequences.