DNA Shape Features Improve Transcription Factor Binding Site Predictions In Vivo.
Interactions of transcription factors (TFs) with DNA comprise a complex interplay between base specific amino acid contacts and readout of DNA structure. Recent studies have highlighted the complementarity of DNA sequence and shape in modeling TF binding in vitro. Here, we have provided a comprehensive evaluation of in vivo datasets to assess the predictive power obtained by augmenting various DNA sequence based models of TF binding sites (TFBSs) with DNA shape features (helix twist, minor groove width, propeller twist, and roll) Results from 400 human ChIP seq datasets for 76 TFs show that combining DNA shape features with position specific scoring matrix (PSSM) scores improves TFBS predictions. Improvement has also been observed using TF flexible models and a machine learning approach using a binary encoding of nucleotides in lieu of PSSMs. Incorporating DNA shape information is most beneficial for E2F and MADS domain TF families. Our findings indicate that incorporating DNA sequence and shape information benefits the modeling of TF binding under complex in vivo conditions.
Cell systems