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Discovering Escherichia coli K-12 Promoter Features Using Convolutional Neural Network

Received: 24 May 2020    Accepted: 8 June 2020    Published: 20 June 2020
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Abstract

The mechanism of prokaryotic gene expression remains incompletely understood. Promoters are regions in genome that locating upstream to genes and regulate of gene expressions. Despite more and more E. coli K-12 promoter sequences have been obtained experimentally, and some regions such as -10 region and -30 region have been described, the features in promoter sequences are far from explicitly characterized. Here, we address this challenge using an approach based on the deep convolutional neural network (CNN). We collected six classes of E. coli K-12 promoter sequences which are all annotated as with strong evidence and belong to only one promoter class in RegulonDB database. Then, we applied the CNN model to recognize the six classes of promoters. The CNN model achieved an accuracy of above 97% for all six classes of promoters. Next, we extracted the weight matrix of the last convolution layer in CNN with the Grad-Cam algorithm, and convert the weight matrix to an information content matrix. Finally, we visualized the information content matrix as promoter logos using the logomaker tool and discover the promoter features in six classes of promoters. Our approach could not only find the previous described promoter feature regions, but could also discover promoter features with better sensitivity and accuracy. We provide a novel computational approach to discover features in biological sequences.

Published in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (Volume 8, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13
Page(s) 15-19
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Convolution Neural Network (CNN), Promoter, Biological Sequence, Features

References
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[5] Santos-Zavaleta A, Salgado H, Gama-Castro S, et al. RegulonDB v 10.5: tackling challenges to unify classic and high throughput knowledge of gene regulation in E. coli K-12. [J] Nucleic acids research, 2019, 47: D212-D220.
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[15] Gordon JJ, Towsey MW, Hogan JM, et al. Improved prediction of bacterial transcription start sites. [J] Bioinformatics, 2006, 22 (2): 142-148.
[16] Wang L, Wan P. Prediction of Escherichia Coli K-12 Promoters Using Convolutional Neural Network. [J] Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 2018, 6: 2.
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[18] Tareen A, Kinney JB. Logomaker: Beautiful sequence logos in python. [J] Bioinformatics, 2020, 36 (7): 2272–2274.
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Mengmeng Zhang, Lu Wang, Ping Wan. (2020). Discovering Escherichia coli K-12 Promoter Features Using Convolutional Neural Network. Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, 8(1), 15-19. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13

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    ACS Style

    Mengmeng Zhang; Lu Wang; Ping Wan. Discovering Escherichia coli K-12 Promoter Features Using Convolutional Neural Network. Comput. Biol. Bioinform. 2020, 8(1), 15-19. doi: 10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13

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    AMA Style

    Mengmeng Zhang, Lu Wang, Ping Wan. Discovering Escherichia coli K-12 Promoter Features Using Convolutional Neural Network. Comput Biol Bioinform. 2020;8(1):15-19. doi: 10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13,
      author = {Mengmeng Zhang and Lu Wang and Ping Wan},
      title = {Discovering Escherichia coli K-12 Promoter Features Using Convolutional Neural Network},
      journal = {Computational Biology and Bioinformatics},
      volume = {8},
      number = {1},
      pages = {15-19},
      doi = {10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.cbb.20200801.13},
      abstract = {The mechanism of prokaryotic gene expression remains incompletely understood. Promoters are regions in genome that locating upstream to genes and regulate of gene expressions. Despite more and more E. coli K-12 promoter sequences have been obtained experimentally, and some regions such as -10 region and -30 region have been described, the features in promoter sequences are far from explicitly characterized. Here, we address this challenge using an approach based on the deep convolutional neural network (CNN). We collected six classes of E. coli K-12 promoter sequences which are all annotated as with strong evidence and belong to only one promoter class in RegulonDB database. Then, we applied the CNN model to recognize the six classes of promoters. The CNN model achieved an accuracy of above 97% for all six classes of promoters. Next, we extracted the weight matrix of the last convolution layer in CNN with the Grad-Cam algorithm, and convert the weight matrix to an information content matrix. Finally, we visualized the information content matrix as promoter logos using the logomaker tool and discover the promoter features in six classes of promoters. Our approach could not only find the previous described promoter feature regions, but could also discover promoter features with better sensitivity and accuracy. We provide a novel computational approach to discover features in biological sequences.},
     year = {2020}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Discovering Escherichia coli K-12 Promoter Features Using Convolutional Neural Network
    AU  - Mengmeng Zhang
    AU  - Lu Wang
    AU  - Ping Wan
    Y1  - 2020/06/20
    PY  - 2020
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13
    DO  - 10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13
    T2  - Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
    JF  - Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
    JO  - Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
    SP  - 15
    EP  - 19
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2330-8281
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.cbb.20200801.13
    AB  - The mechanism of prokaryotic gene expression remains incompletely understood. Promoters are regions in genome that locating upstream to genes and regulate of gene expressions. Despite more and more E. coli K-12 promoter sequences have been obtained experimentally, and some regions such as -10 region and -30 region have been described, the features in promoter sequences are far from explicitly characterized. Here, we address this challenge using an approach based on the deep convolutional neural network (CNN). We collected six classes of E. coli K-12 promoter sequences which are all annotated as with strong evidence and belong to only one promoter class in RegulonDB database. Then, we applied the CNN model to recognize the six classes of promoters. The CNN model achieved an accuracy of above 97% for all six classes of promoters. Next, we extracted the weight matrix of the last convolution layer in CNN with the Grad-Cam algorithm, and convert the weight matrix to an information content matrix. Finally, we visualized the information content matrix as promoter logos using the logomaker tool and discover the promoter features in six classes of promoters. Our approach could not only find the previous described promoter feature regions, but could also discover promoter features with better sensitivity and accuracy. We provide a novel computational approach to discover features in biological sequences.
    VL  - 8
    IS  - 1
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China

  • College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China

  • College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China

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