DNA Is a Puzzle Enthusiast

This article presents a concise summary of research projects in which Roberto Grossi participated, yielding interesting results that were never previously published in research papers. At the time, these studies were deemed too limited and in need of further extensions and generalizations, which were never realized due to a lack of resources. The researches focused on methods for inferring possible three-dimensional DNA conformations based on nucleotide sequence characteristics. Specifically, two key approaches were investigated: the identification of structured motifs for detecting Transcription Factor Binding Sites (TFBS) and the study of nested permutations using PQ-trees. This article describes the obtained results in selected case studies, their potential implications, and the current state of the art in these research areas.