A quantifiable phenotypic trait (e.g. glucose intake) is assessed in a quantitative manner after induction of the regulatory mechanism and used as a natural reporter.. The observable phenotypic trait should be described in the experimental notes.

A reporter assay based on the fusion of a promoter of interest with the cat gene, which produces chloramphenicol acetyltransferase, capable of being acetylated by acetyl CoA. The amount of acetylated chloramphenicol is directly proportional to the amount of CAT enzyme present.

ChIP-chip (and to a lesser degree ChIP-Seq) results are often validated with ChIP-PCR, in which a PCR with specific primers is performed on the pulled-down DNA. As in the case of RNASeq, there are many variations of these main techniques.

This is a weak form of in-silico search, in which the consensus sequence for the motif is compared to genomic positions and the number of mismatches (between candidate site and consensus) is used as a measure of site-quality.

Electro-mobility shift-assays (or gel retardation assays) are a standard way of assessing TF-binding. A fragment of DNA of interest is amplified and labeled with a fluorophore. The fragment is left to incubate in a solution containing abundant TF and non-specific DNA (e.g. randomly cleaved DNA from salmon sperm, of all things) and then a gel is run with the incubated sample and a control (sample that has not been in contact with the TF). If the TF has bound the sample, the complex will migrate more slowly than unbound DNA through the gel, and this retarded band can be used as evidence of binding. The unspecific DNA ensures that the binding is specific to the fragment of interest and that any non-specific DNA-binding proteins left-over in the TF purification will bind there, instead of on the fragment of interest. EMSAs are typically carried out in a bunch of fragments, shown as multiple double (control+experiment) lanes in a wide picture. Certain additional controls are run in at least one of the fragments to ascertain specificity. In the most basic of these, specific competitor (the fragment of interest or a known positive control, unlabelled) is added to the reaction. This should sequester the TF and hence make the retardation band disappear, proving that the binding is indeed specific