G4PromFinder: an algorithm for predicting transcription promoters in GC-rich bacterial genomes based on AT-rich elements and G-quadruplex motifs

Background Over the last few decades, computational genomics has tremendously contributed to decipher biology from genome sequences and related data. Considerable effort has been devoted to the prediction of transcription promoter and terminator sites that represent the essential “punctuation marks” for DNA transcription. Computational prediction of promoters in prokaryotes is a problem whose solution is far from being determined in computational genomics. The majority of published bacterial promoter prediction tools are based on a consensus-sequences search and they were designed specifically for vegetative σ70 promoters and, therefore, not suitable for promoter prediction in bacteria encoding a lot of σ factors, like actinomycetes.