Finding and decrypting of promoters contributes to the elucidation of gene function

The combination of full-scale genomic sequencing with high throughput expression analysis provides a new and largely unexploited basis for in silico functional genomics. Recent break through developments in locating and analyzing promoters now allow extending functional genomics in silico far beyond identification of protein sequences into the complex regulatory structures and mechanisms of the genome. However, only first examples of this new type of approach are emerging at present and intensive further developments of bioinformatics tools will be required before such analysis can become large-scale routine in genomic sequence analysis. Nevertheless, the door to a new dimension of functional analysis of the genomic sequence is open. Finally, only the tight integration of the enormous amount of knowledge gained from proteins sequence analysis with the complementary information about gene regulation will afford us with a more complete picture of the networks than constitute life.