Transcriptional Terminator Efficiency Calculator (TTEC)

We studied the rho-independent transcription terminators which regulate gene expression using both theoretical modeland experimentmethod.

We first developed a theoretical model. This model calculated the free energy of RNA folding and could predict the secondary structure of terminators. From the secondary structure, we proposed an algorithm that can predict terminator efficiency.

To validate our theoretical prediction, we also perform wetlab experiments. We construct 100 terminators. We measure the the terminator efficiency by measuring the GFP and RFP which are placed before and after terminators.

We also developed a software and a web server for people to calculate their terminators and built a database of terminator efficiency which we believe to be the largest database of such kind. Our work is by far the most comprehensive study on terminator efficiency.