Cited by 4,247Genomics and Chromatin DynamicsGenomics and Phylogenetic StudiesAlgorithms and Data Compression

FIMO: scanning for occurrences of a given motif

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Grant, Charles E., Bailey, Timothy L., Noble, William Stafford·2011·Bioinformatics

Abstract

Summary: A motif is a short DNA or protein sequence that contributes to the biological function of the sequence in which it resides. Over the past several decades, many computational methods have been described for identifying, characterizing and searching with sequence motifs. Critical to nearly any motif-based sequence analysis pipeline is the ability to scan a sequence database for occurrences of a given motif described by a position-specific frequency matrix. Results: We describe Find Individual Motif Occurrences (FIMO), a software tool for scanning DNA or protein sequences with motifs described as position-specific scoring matrices. The program computes a log-likelihood ratio score for each position in a given sequence database, uses established dynamic programming methods to convert this score to a P-value and then applies false discovery rate analysis to estimate a q-value for each position in the given sequence. FIMO provides output in a variety of formats, including HTML, XML and several Santa Cruz Genome Browser formats. The program is efficient, allowing for the scanning of DNA sequences at a rate of 3.5 Mb/s on a single CPU. Availability and Implementation: FIMO is part of the MEME Suite software toolkit. A web server and source code are available at http://meme.sdsc.edu. Contact: t.bailey@imb.uq.edu.au; t.bailey@imb.uq.edu.au Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

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  • The spacer sequences were, to the extent reasonable and feasible, void of TF motifs for the 38 selected TFs.

    “The spacer sequences are therefore, to the extent reasonable and feasible, void of TF motifs for our 38 TFs.”

    From Design principles of cell-state-specific enhancers in hematopoiesis (2025) · cites this paper as [52]

    The Implementation section (page unavailable) describes how FIMO scans sequences for motifs, and the Example section (page unavailable) reports a CTCF search. Neither addresses the citing authors’ spacer sequences or whether they were free of motifs for 38 selected TFs. Searches for spacer design and the 38 TFs found no such passage in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.77)

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Research works printed but not linked: 6

  1. Bailey T.L. Noble W.S. Searching for statistically significant regulatory modules Bioinformatics 2003 19 Suppl. 2 ii16 ii25 14534166
  2. Bailey T.L. Gribskov M. Combining evidence using p-values: Application to sequence homology searches Bioinformatics 1998 14 48 54 9520501
  3. Bailey T. MEME suite: tools for motif discovery and searching Nucleic Acids Res. 2009 37 W202 W208 19458158 PMC2703892
  4. Haverty P.M. Weng Z. CisML: an XML-based format for sequence motif detection software Bioinformatics 2004 20 1815 1817 15001475
  5. Phillips J.E. Corces V.G. CTCF: master weaver of the genome Cell 2009 137 1194 1211 19563753 PMC3040116
  6. Staden R. Searching for motifs in nucleic acid sequences Methods Mol. Biol. 1994 25 93 102 8004185

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Authors
Grant, C. E., Bailey, T. L., & Noble, W. S.
Affiliations
The University of Queensland (AU)
Corresponding author
  • Bailey, Timothy L.
  • Noble, William Stafford
Venue
Bioinformatics
Published
2011-02-16
Volume
27
Issue
7
Pages
1017-1018
ISSN
  • 1367-4803 (ISSN-L)
  • 1367-4811
OpenAlex
W2140952049
Cited by
4,247
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 473 · 2025: 428 · 2024: 465 · 2023: 359 · 2022: 421 · 2021: 453 · 2020: 337 · 2019: 303 · 2018: 277 · 2017: 193 · 2016: 179 · 2015: 129 · 2014: 97 · 2013: 86 · 2012: 36
FWCI
27.66
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Bioinformatics (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (5r01rr021692-06)
  • National Center for Research Resources (2 R01 RR021692, R0-1 RR021692)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Chromatin Dynamics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Algorithms and Data Compression
Keywords
position weight matrices, DNA sequence motifs, protein motifs, log-likelihood ratio, p-value estimation, false discovery rate, Q-value, sequence database searching
MeSH terms
CCCTC-Binding Factor, Base Sequence, Binding Sites, DNA, Humans, Repressor Proteins, Software, Genome, Human, Conserved Sequence, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Sequence Analysis, Protein, Amino Acid Motifs, Databases, Genetic, Position-Specific Scoring Matrices

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