In bioinformatics, a sequence motif is a widespread nucleotide or amino-acid sequence that is believed to have some sort of functional significance.
In program code, standard functional calls, such as printf(), are quite common.
Rules that define sequence motifs that can vary in structure are often created.
Rules are actually expressed as regular expressions, not unlike POSIX regex.
Probabilistic rules in the form of Markov Models are even created.
These regular expression rules are very similar to the way that binary analysis is performed to find simple vulnerable conditions.
For example, searching for strcpy() as the sign of a buffer overflow is done by searching for the sequence motif it generates in binary program code.
Many tools and IDA scripts automate this process and have even been quite effective in finding numerous security holes.