  Transcription is one of the essential processes for cells to read genetic
information encoded in genes, which is initiated by the binding of RNA
polymerase to related promoter. Experiments have found that the nucleotide
sequence of promoter has great influence on gene expression strength, or
promoter activity. In synthetic biology, one interesting question is how we can
synthesize a promoter with given activity, and which positions of promoter
sequence are important for determining its activity. In this study, based on
recent experimental data, correlations between promoter activity and its
sequence positions are analyzed by various methods. Our results show that,
except nucleotides in the two highly conserved regions, $-35$ box and $-10$
box, influences of nucleotides in other positions are also not neglectable. For
example, modifications of nucleotides around position $-19$ in spacing region
may change promoter activity in a large scale. The results of this study might
be helpful to our understanding of biophysical mechanism of gene transcription,
and may also be helpful to the design of synthetic cell factory.
