Promoters

The regsitry symbol for a promoter is shown above a typical sequence for a bacterial promoter. The lavender shaded boxes indicate the two most conserved regions of a bacterial promoter and are located at -10 and -35 bases from the transcriptional start site (shaded in green).

A promoter is a DNA sequence that tends to recruit transcriptional machinery and lead to transcription of the downstream DNA sequence. The specific sequence of the promoter determines the binding affinity of the transcriptional machinery for the promoter and how likely the transcriptional machinery is to initiate transcription after being recruited to the DNA. A "strong" promoter is one that leads to a high rate of transcription initiation, while a "weak" promoter leads to a low rate of transcription initiation.

In addition to sequences that "promote" transcription, a promoter may include additional sequences known as operators that control the strength of the promoter. For example, a promoter may include a binding site for a protein that either attracts or obstructs the transcriptional machinery from binding to the promoter. Such a promoter is known as a regulated promoter.

The registry has a large collection of promoters both unregulated and regulated. Most of our promoters are designed to be recognized by E. coli RNA polymerase but we also have several promtoers that are recognized by T7 RNA polymerase and other RNA polymerase holoenzymes.