Abstract
We propose a new method to find sequence motifs for tissue specific gene expression that are commonly observed among different tissue specific genes. We define "a tissue specific gene" as a gene which has strong expression in at least one type of tissue and weakly expressed in other tissues. We applied this method to human gene expression data by iAFLP, and classified genes into "tissue specific" and "ubiquitous" genes. Then, we extracted motifs overrepresented in the promoter regions of the "tissue specific" genes. As a result, we could extract binding sites of Sp1 and ETS that are well known in the promoter regions of ubiquitous genes, as well as TATA-box and Initiator-like motifs in those of tissue specific genes. Additionally, we found novel motifs that we assume to be associated with gene expression regulation.