Bioinformatic analysis of regulatory elements of multigene families within the Arabidopsis thaliana genome

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The Arabidopsis genome contains a large amount of sequence redundant genes and multigene families. Sequence redundant genes are organised in tandem arrays, segmental duplications or dispersed over the genome. Duplication mechanisms do not only affect coding regions but also regulatory regions. In analogy to evolutionary observations on coding sequences regions containing regulatory elements are subject to evolutionary change. Regions containing functionally important elements will thus be more conserved than regions without functional importance. Phylogenetic footprinting for the comparison of corresponding regions from orthologous genes has already been applied succesfully for the detection of conserved regulatory elements. The project aims to make use of the extensive amount of redundancy, e.g. in gene families, in the Arabidopsis genome by subjecting upstream regions of closely related genes to a comprehensive bioinformatic analysis for conserved motifs and their role as regulatory elements.