Welcome to the latest version of the IMEter (v2.1). By assessing whether any individual sequence looks more like a promoter-proximal intron or a promoter-distal intron (for a given species of interest), the IMEter calculates if an intron is likely to enhance gene expression. Some introns that are closer to the transcription start site (TSS) are believed to contain signals that help increase gene expression. We therefore believe that higher IMEter scores likely indicate that an intron may enhance gene expression.
The IMEter has been trained using data from over 30 plant species from Phytozome (v9.0). See our IME GitHub page to download IMEter source code (Perl scripts) and to see more information.
Reference: Parra, G., Bradnam, K., Rose, A. and Korf, I. Comparative and functional analysis of intron-mediated enhancement signals reveals conserved features among plants Nucleic Acids Research, 2011