CONSTRUCTION OF A GENERALIZED CONSENSUS MATRIX FOR RECOGNITION OF VERTEBRATE PRE-MESSENGER-RNA 3'-TERMINAL PROCESSING SITES

Using a set of sequences of 63 cleavage/polyadenylation sites of verte brate pre-mRNA, a generalized consensus matrix was constructed. The el ements of the matrix were the absolute frequencies of oligonucleotides of length l at the ith position of sites. The cleavage point of each site was assigned the same position number. To recognize a polyadenyla tion site in a nucleotide sequence, a multiplicative measure was obtai ned using the elements of the generalized consensus matrix as weight f actors. For any omega-long fragment of a nucleotide sequence, the esti mated value of the functional mu was compared with the threshold value mu. Based on the results obtained, we determined whether ol not the given fragment is a processing site.