Development of a tool for computational prediction of σ70 promoters in Pseudomonas spp using SVM and HMM approaches

Abstract

Promoters are regions in DNA that play important role in the regulation of gene expression. The ability to locate promoters within a section of DNA is known to be a very difficult and important task in DNA analysis. Since experimental techniques to identify promoters are costly and time consuming, in silico methods offer an alternative. In this study, we have developed a tool for identification of s70 promoters in the –10 and –35 regions of sequences from Pseudomonas spp. Promoters were predicted using both Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based approaches. SVM performed better when trained using RBF kernel with a cross-validation of 5 and a value of 0.03 for the gamma parameter. The module developed using SVM showed a sensitivity of 78% and a specificity of 80%. The programmes required to process the user input were written using Perl and HTML codes were used to create a user interface. The user interface accepts a query sequence and the processed result will be displayed in a new window. The tool named ‘PROMIT’ (PROMoter Identification Tool), was developed in the Windows platform, has a user friendly interface and works well for sequences from Pseudomonas spp.

Keywords

• HMM
• Promoter
• Pseudomonas
• SVM
• σ70