Ruben Chevez
M.Sc. Thesis Proposal
Supervisor: Dr. Lourdes Pena-Castillo

Promotech: A universal tool for promoter detection in bacterial DNA sequences

Department of Computer Science
Friday, September 20, 2019, 12:30 p.m., Room EN 2022

Abstract

A promoter is a genomic sequence where the transcription machinery binds to start copying a gene into an mRNA molecule. Detecting bacterial promoter sequences is important for microbiology since promoters play a central role in the regulation of gene expression. Most of the tools currently available focus on a single bacterium or a set of sigma factors. Promotech is being developed to overcome this limitation, offering a machine-learning-based classifier trained to generate a model that generalizes and detects promoters in a wide range of bacteria.