Sequential pattern mining is one of the important issues in the research of data mining (Agrawal & Srikant, 1995; Ayres, Gehrke, & Yiu, 2002; Han, Pei, & Yan, 2004; Lin & Lee, 2004; Lin & Lee, 2005b; Roddick & Spiliopoulou, 2002). A typical example is a retail database where each record corresponds to a customer’s purchasing sequence, called data sequence. A data sequence is composed of all the...

During vulval development in Caenorhabditis elegans, six precursor cells acquire a spatial pattern of distinct cell fates. This process is guided by a gradient in the soluble factor, LIN-3, and by direct interactions between neighboring cells mediated by the Notch-like receptor, LIN-12. Genetic evidence has revealed that these two extracellular signals are coupled: lateral cell-cell interaction...

We report that a stage-specific developmental program, dauer larva formation, is temporally regulated by four heterochronic genes, lin-4, lin-14, lin-28, and lin-29. The effects of mutations in these four genes on dauer larva formation have revealed that they regulate two different processes of dauer larva formation: (1) a decision specifying the larval stage at which dauer larva development in...

LIN-42, the Caenorhabditis elegans homolog of the Period (Per) family of circadian rhythm proteins, functions as a member of the heterochronic pathway, regulating temporal cell identities. We demonstrate that lin-42 acts broadly, timing developmental events in the gonad, vulva, and sex myoblasts, in addition to its well-established role in timing terminal differentiation of the hypodermis. In t...