PMC:1570465 / 7103-7921 JSONTXT

{"project":"2_test","denotations":[{"id":"16916460-7991589-1687074","span":{"begin":465,"end":467},"obj":"7991589"}],"text":"Given a motif discovered by any method, it is important to be able to assess its statistical significance, as even optimal solutions for their respective objective functions may result in very poor motifs. We demonstrate how to test the statistical significance of the motifs discovered via the graph pruning/mathematical programming approach by using the background frequencies for each base or amino acid and computing the motif scores' probability distribution [38]. We then assess the number of motifs of the same or better quality that are expected to occur in the data at random. In the few cases where the heuristic DEE procedure is applied, we are able to give a lower bound on the significance value of the optimal solution; this allows us to evaluate how much better an alternate undiscovered motif might be."}