RESEARCH ARTICLE Integrating bioinformatic r a

[4-9]. One approach is the detection of cis-38106 Braunschweig, Germany Full list of author information is available at the end of the articleBackground In recent years large numbers of novel cis-regulatory se-quences have been described that are conserved in stress-response genes, but the role of these elements and their binding transcription factors (TFs) remains un-known [1-3]. The identification of the binding TFs is therefore a major challenge for bioinformaticians and experimentalists. Using database-assisted analysis of cis-sequences it is possible to generate hypotheses on the nature of the binding TF [4], but the experimental valid-ation of these predictions is often missing. The current work investigates how efficient a database-assisted approach leads to the prediction of the correct TF or TF-families that bind to conserved cis-sequences in co-regulated genes. The identification of cis-regulatory sequences has been facilitated using bioinformatic and web-queryable re