nKN1KNNnN1

nKN1KNNnN1 is a short sequence motif used in computational biology as an illustrative example rather than a defined gene or protein. The string combines letters and digits: n K N 1 K N N n N 1. It is not presented as a real biological sequence, but rather as a construct used in tutorials and software demonstrations to show pattern-recognition concepts.

Notation and interpretation of nKN1KNNnN1 can vary by context. In many motif-notation schemes, N or n stands for a wildcard nucleotide (any of A, C, G, or T). K is the IUPAC code for G or T. The digits 1 are non-biological anchors or variant-site markers rather than actual bases; they function as placeholders to illustrate how positional information might be handled in pattern matching, sampling, or dataset annotation.

Applications and use in education. The motif is primarily employed to teach basic ideas in sequence analysis, such as wildcard handling, anchoring, and the logic of motif searches. It is also used in benchmarking exercises to compare regular-expression approaches, motif discovery algorithms, and HMM-based tools. Because the trailing digits are not standard biological characters, they are typically treated as separators or converted into real variant positions when used in practice.

Origins. The exact origin of the string in published educational materials is not tied to a single source; it appears across tutorials and example datasets as a representative, non-specific motif used to illustrate conceptually how pattern matching works on DNA or RNA sequences.

See also: pattern matching, IUPAC nucleotide code, motif discovery.