A DNA Motif Lexicon: cataloguing and annotating sequences.

The rapid proliferation of genomic DNA sequences has created a significant need for software that can both focus on relatively small areas (such as within genes or promoters) and provide wide-zoom views of patterns across entire genomes. We present our DNA Motif Lexicon that enables users to perform genome-wide searches for motifs of interest and create customizable results pages, where results differ in the degree and extent of annotation. Searching for a particular motif is akin to a word search in a natural language; our motif lexicon speaks to this new time when we will increasingly rely upon DNA dictionaries that offer rich types of annotation.