Promoters serve a critical role in establishing baseline transcriptional capacity through the recruitment of proteins, including transcription factors (TFs). Previously, a paucity of data for cis-regulatory elements in plants meant that it was challenging to determine which sequence elements in plant promoter sequences contributed to transcriptional function. In this study, we have identified functional elements in the promoters of plant genes and plant pathogens that utilise plant transcriptional machinery for gene expression. We have established a quantitative experimental system to investigate transcriptional function, investigating how identity, density and position contribute to regulatory function. We then identified permissive architectures for minimal synthetic plant promoters enabling computational design of a suite of synthetic promoters of different strengths. These have been used to regulate the relative expression of output genes in simple genetic devices.

中文翻译：

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植物最小合成启动子的合理设计

启动子通过募集蛋白质（包括转录因子（TFs））在建立基线转录能力中起关键作用。以前，缺乏植物中顺式调控元件的数据意味着确定植物启动子序列中哪些序列元件有助于转录功能具有挑战性。在这项研究中，我们已经确定了利用植物转录机制进行基因表达的植物基因和植物病原体启动子中的功能元件。我们已经建立了一个定量实验系统来研究转录功能，研究身份，密度和位置如何影响调节功能。然后，我们为最小的合成植物启动子确定了允许的体系结构，以实现一组不同强度的合成启动子的计算设计。这些已被用于调节简单遗传装置中输出基因的相对表达。