A three steps Approach to Pattern Discovery
Choose the language in which the patterns will be given (solution space);
Design the scoring function rating the patterns (from the solution space) with respect to the given data;
Develop an algorithm which given a set of sequences, returns patterns (from the solution space) rating relatively high according to the chosen scoring function.
Brazma, Jonassen, Eidhammer, Gilbert, J. Comp. Biol, 1998