ExpertDiscovery and UGENE integrated system for intelligent analysis of regulatory regions of genes

The task of automatic extraction of the hierarchical structure of eukaryotic gene regulatory regions is in the junction of the fields of biology, mathematics and information technologies. A solution of the problem involves understanding of sophisticated mechanisms of eukaryotic gene regulation and applying advanced data mining technologies. In the paper the integrated system, implementing a powerful relation mining of biological data method, is discussed. The system allows taking into account prior information about the gene regulatory regions that is known by the biologist, performing the analysis on each hierarchical level, searching for a solution from a simple hypothesis to a complex one. The integration of ExpertDiscovery system into UGENE toolkit provides a convenient environment for conducting complex research and automating the work of a biologist. For demonstration, the system has been applied for recognition of SF1, SREBP, HNF4 vertebrate binding sites and for the analysis the human gene regulatory regions that promote liver-specific transcription.