Simple database to select promoters for plant transgenesis

The experiments with transgenic plants frequently demand selection of promoters providing appropriate transcription patterns. The set of promoters commonly used in vectors and genetic constructs is very limited, and these promoters provide only a few variants of gene expression patterns. Moreover, identical promoters in a complex construct can induce transgene silencing. This problem can be solved using a variety of plant gene promoters with experimentally verified characteristics. However, this requires a time-consuming analysis of literature data. Here, we describe a database of plant promoters (TransGene Promoters, TGP; http://wwwmgs.bionet.nsc.ru/mgs/dbases/tgp/home.html ). TGP contains the information on genomic DNA segments providing certain expression patterns of reporter genes in experiments with transgenic plants. TGP was constructed on the SRS platform, and its interface allows users to search for the promoters with particular characteristics.