Vol. 10, Issue 9, 1381-1392, September 2000

LETTER
An Annotated Catalog of Inverted Repeats of Caenorhabditis elegans Chromosomes III and X, with Observations Concerning Odd/Even Biases and Conserved Motifs

¹ Department of Math and Computer Science and ² Department of Biology, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts USA, 02766

We have taken a computational approach to the problem of discovering and deciphering the grammar and syntax of gene regulation in eukaryotes. A logical first step is to produce an annotated catalog of all regulatory sites in a given genome. Likely candidates for such sites are direct and indirect repeats, including three subcategories of indirect repeats: inverted (palindromic), everted, and mirror-image repeats. To that end we have produced a searchable database of inverted repeats of chromosomes III and X of Caenorhabditis elegans, the first completely sequenced multicellular eukaryote. Initial results from the use of this catalog are observations concerning odd/even biases in perfect IRs. The potential usefulness of the catalog as a discovery tool for promoters was shown for some of the genes involved with G-protein functions and for heat shock protein 104 (hsp104).