The density of transcriptional elements in promoter and non-promoter sequences.

Using data currently available from transcriptional element (TE) databases, we have analyzed the density of these elements in both promoter and non-promoter sequences obtained from the GenBank sequence database. The density of putative TEs in non-promoter sequences was about 16% higher than that seen in pseudo-random DNA sequences. Promoter TE density from the transcription startsite to 100 basepairs upstream was found to be about 42% higher than in non-promoter sequences. However, the extensive overlap of putative TE densities between promoters and non-promoters confounds an attempt to use TE density as a simple discriminator.