DNABIND: an interactive microcomputer program searching for nucleotide sequences that may code for conserved DNA-binding protein motifs

Abstract

This paper presents a simple program for interactive searching for nucleotide sequences that may code for the helix-turn-helix, zinc finger or leucine zipper motifs in proteins. The helix-turn-helix motifs are predicted using the recently published method of Dodd and Egan, while zinc fingers and leucine zippers are searched for by our original methods. DNABIND is shown to detect all four known helix-turn-helix motifs in bacteriophage lambda genes and both zinc fingers of the adr1 gene of yeast.