"Frontmatter". In: Plant Genomics and Proteomics

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The ability to predict gene structure from genomic sequences would be
easier with knowledge of the important sequences surrounding the start of
translation. Therefore, the ability to identify plant promoters will aid gene
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annotation efforts as well as improving the understanding of the regulation
of gene expression. A knowledge of the features of promoter elements 
surrounding putative genes would aid in the prediction of the type of con-
ditions and/or tissues in which the putative gene might be expressed,
thereby directing the search for confirmation of the gene and its structure 
to the appropriate target tissue. The selection of the transcription start 
site, specificity, and rate is controlled by elements of the promoter that can 
be thousands of nucleotides from the actual transcription start site. A
number of databases that contain cis-acting sequences are available. A new
plant specific database, PlantPromDB, release 2001.01, contains 305 entries
including 71, 220, and 14 promoters for RNA polymerase II from monocot,
dicot, and other plants, respectively (Shahmuradov et al., 2003). A second
database, Plant CARE (Lescotet et al., 2002) contains plant cis-regulatory ele-
ments, enhancers, and repressors. This database currently contains 417 cis-
regulatory elements, 150 of which are from monocots, 263 from dicots, and
4 from conifers derived from 160 individual promoters from higher-plant
genes. 
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