Computational prediction of origin of replication in bacterial genomes using correlated entropy measure (CEM)

A computational platform to identify origins of replication sites in eukaryotes

The locations of the initiation of genomic DNA replication are defined as origins of replication sites (ORIs), which regulate the onset of DNA replication and play significant roles in the DNA replication process. The study of ORIs is essential for understanding the cell-division cycle and gene expression regulation. Accurate identification of ORIs will provide important clues for DNA replication research and drug development by developing computational methods. In this paper, the first integrated predictor named iORI-Euk was built to identify ORIs in multiple eukaryotes and multiple cell types. In the predictor, seven eukaryotic (Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Drosophila melanogaster, Arabidopsis thaliana, Pichia pastoris, Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Kluyveromyces lactis) ORI data was collected from public database to construct benchmark datasets. Subsequently, three feature extraction strategies which are k-mer, binary encoding and combination of k-mer and binary were used to formulate DNA sequence samples. We also compared the different classification algorithms' performance. As a result, the best results were obtained by using support vector machine in 5-fold cross-validation test and independent dataset test. Based on the optimal model, an online web server called iORI-Euk (http://lin-group.cn/server/iORI-Euk/) was established for the novel ORI identification.

Recent Advances on the Machine Learning Methods in Identifying DNA Replication Origins in Eukaryotic Genomics

The initiate site of DNA replication is called origins of replication (ORI) which is regulated by a set of regulatory proteins and plays important roles in the basic biochemical process during cell growth and division in all living organisms. Therefore, the study of ORIs is essential for understanding the cell-division cycle and gene expression regulation so that scholars can develop a new strategy against genetic diseases by using the knowledge of DNA replication. Thus, the accurate identification of ORIs will provide key clues for DNA replication research and clinical medicine. Although, the conventional experiments could provide accurate results, they are time-consuming and cost ineffective. On the contrary, bioinformatics-based methods can overcome these shortcomings. Especially, with the emergence of DNA sequences in the post-genomic era, it is highly expected to develop high throughput tools to identify ORIs based on sequence information. In this review, we will summarize the current progress in computational prediction of eukaryotic ORIs including the collection of benchmark dataset, the application of machine learning-based techniques, the results obtained by these methods, and the construction of web servers. Finally, we gave the future perspectives on ORIs prediction. The review provided readers with a whole background of ORIs prediction based on machine learning methods, which will be helpful for researchers to study DNA replication in-depth and drug therapy of genetic defect.