ReLA, a local alignment search tool for the identification of distal and proximal gene regulatory regions and their conserved transcription factor binding sites

Abstract

We have developed ReLA (for REgulatory region Local Alignment tool), a unique tool optimized with the Smith-Waterman algorithm that allows local searches of conserved TFBS clusters and the detection of regulatory regions proximal to genes and enhancer regions. ReLA's performance shows specificities of 81 and 50% when tested on experimentally validated proximal regulatory regions and enhancers, respectively.