The tfbs perl modules comprise a set of routines to interact with the transfac and jaspar databases that describe a special family of proteins, the transcription factors. these bind to genomic dna to initiate (or prevent) the readout of a gene. once multiple binding sites are known for a transcription factor, these are gathered in a single file and are aligned in order to find position-specific characteristica that might be used to predict such binding events in novel dna sequences.

if you use tfbs in your work, please cite "lenhard b., wasserman w.w. (2002) tfbs: computational framework for transcription factor binding site analysis. bioinformatics 18:1135-1136".