The problem of identifying meaningful patterns (i.e., motifs) from biological data has been studied extensively due to its paramount importance. Motifs are fundamental functional elements in proteins vital for understanding gene function, human disease, and identifying potential therapeutic drug targets. Several versions of the motif search problem have been identified in the literature. Numerous algorithms have been proposed for motif search as well. In this talk we survey some of these algorithms. We also summarize our recent contributions to motif search and related problems. Our approach is based on integer sorting and yields superior performance.