Hooghe Bart, Hulpiau Paco, van Roy Frans, De Bleser Pieter
Bioinformatics Core Facility, VIB, Department of Molecular Biology, Ghent University and Department for Molecular Biomedical Research, VIB, B-9052 Ghent, Belgium.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2008 Jul 1;36(Web Server issue):W128-32. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkn195. Epub 2008 May 3.
Transcription factors (TFs) are key components in signaling pathways, and the presence of their binding sites in the promoter regions of DNA is essential for their regulation of the expression of the corresponding genes. Orthologous promoter sequences are commonly used to increase the specificity with which potentially functional transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) are recognized and to detect possibly important similarities or differences between the different species. The ConTra (conserved TFBSs) web server provides the biologist at the bench with a user-friendly tool to interactively visualize TFBSs predicted using either TransFac (1) or JASPAR (2) position weight matrix libraries, on a promoter alignment of choice. The visualization can be preceded by a simple scoring analysis to explore which TFs are the most likely to bind to the promoter of interest. The ConTra web server is available at http://bioit.dmbr.ugent.be/ConTra/index.php.
转录因子（TFs）是信号通路中的关键组成部分，其结合位点在DNA启动子区域的存在对于它们调控相应基因的表达至关重要。直系同源启动子序列通常用于提高识别潜在功能性转录因子结合位点（TFBSs）的特异性，并检测不同物种之间可能存在的重要异同。ConTra（保守TFBSs）网络服务器为实验台上的生物学家提供了一个用户友好的工具，用于在所选的启动子比对上交互式可视化使用TransFac（1）或JASPAR（2）位置权重矩阵库预测的TFBSs。在进行可视化之前，可以先进行简单的评分分析，以探究哪些转录因子最有可能与感兴趣的启动子结合。ConTra网络服务器可在http://bioit.dmbr.ugent.be/ConTra/index.php上获取。
