Go to the abstract in the NAR 2002 Database Issue.
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1Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung mbH (GBF), Mascheroder Weg 1, D-38124 Braunschweig, Germany
2BIOBASE GmbH, Halchtersche Straße 33, D-38304 Wolfenbüttel, Germany
Contact ili@gbf.de
Scaffold/matrix attached regions (S/MARs) are DNA sequences that mediate the tight contact of the chromatin with the proteinaceous scaffold within the nucleus. They have been implicated in a variety of important functions such as genome organization and gene expression [1-3]. In this context S/MARs were also attributed a fundamental role in carcinogenesis [4]. S/MARt DB is a database on experimentally verified S/MARs and nuclear matrix proteins which are involved in the interaction of these elements with the nuclear scaffold [5]. The database equipped with tools for searching and browsing is freely accessible through WWW [http://transfac.gbf.de/SMARtDB/] for non-profit research. The content of S/MARt DB has been quantitatively extended. Since the database became publicly available in October 1999, the number of S/MAR entries, for example, has more than doubled. The data that come primarily from animal and plant species were extracted mainly from original publications. Moreover, the description of S/MAR localization has been revised such that a graphical representation of the localization can be offered for most S/MAR elements.
This work was supported by grants of the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBF, project no. 0311640 and 01SF9988/4).
1. Hart,C.M. and Laemmli,U.K. (1998) Facilitation of chromatin dynamics by SARs. Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 8, 519-525.
2. Allen GC, Spiker S, Thompson WF. (2000) Use of matrix attachment regions (MARs) to minimize transgene silencing. Plant Mol. Biol. 43, 361-376.
3. Mielke,C., Christensen,M.O., Westergaard,O., Bode,J., Benham,C.J. and Breindl,M.(2002) Multiple collagen I gene regulatory elements have sites of stress-induced DNA duplex destabilization and nuclear scaffold/matrix association potential. J. Cell. Biochem. 84, 484-496.
4. Will,K., Warnecke,G., Albrechtsen,N., Boulikas,T. and Deppert,W. (1998) High affinity MAR-DNA binding is a common property of murine and human mutant p53. J. Cell. Biochem. 69, 260-270.
5. Liebich,I. Bode,J., Frisch,M. and Wingender,E. (2002) S/MARt DB: a database on scaffold/matrix attached regions. Nucleic Acids Res. 30, 372-374.
Category Protein Databases
Go to the abstract in the NAR 2002 Database Issue.