Promoters are DNA regulatory elements located directly upstream or at the 5' end of the transcription initiation site (TSS), which are in charge of gene transcription initiation. With the completion of a large number of microorganism genomics, it is urgent to predict promoters accurately in bacteria by using the computational method. In this work, a sequence-based predictor named "iPro70-PseZNC" was designed for identifying sigma70 promoters in prokaryote. In the predictor, the samples of DNA sequences are formulated by a novel pseudo nucleotide composition, called PseZNC, into which the multi-window Z-curve composition and six local DNA structural properties are incorporated. In the 5-fold cross-validation, the area under the curve of receiver operating characteristic of 0.909 was obtained on our benchmark dataset, indicating that the proposed predictor is promising and will provide an important guide in this area. Further studies showed that the performance of PseZNC is better than it of multi-window Z-curve composition. For the sake of convenience for researchers, a user-friendly online service was established and can be freely accessible at http://lin.uestc.edu.cn/server/iPro70-PseZNC. The PseZNC approach can be also extended to other DNA-related problems.

Summary: In prokaryotes, the σ54 promoters are unique regulatory elements and have attracted much attention because they are in charge of the transcription of carbon and nitrogen-related genes and participate in numerous ancillary processes and environmental responses. All findings on σ54 promoters are favorable for a better understanding of their regulatory mechanisms in gene transcription and an accurate discovery of genes missed by the wet experimental evidences. In order to provide an up-to-date, interactive and extensible database for σ54 promoter, a free and easy accessed database called Pro54DB (σ54 promoter database) was built to collect information of σ54 promoter. In the current version, it has stored 210 experimental-confirmed σ54 promoters with 297 regulated genes in 43 species manually extracted from 133 publications, which is helpful for researchers in fields of bioinformatics and molecular biology. Availability and Implementation: Pro54DB is freely available on the web at http://lin.uestc.edu.cn/database/pro54db with all major browsers supported. Contacts: [email protected] or [email protected]