Difference between TRANSFAC and JASPER database

[siddharthsameer]

Hello can someone tell me what is the main difference between TRANSFAC and JASPER database.

thanks for your reply in advance
regards

[mbblack]

Pretty much what JASPAR (not Jasper) says right on their web site. The really major difference being JASPAR is open source whereas TRANSFAC is a commercial for-fee access preduct owned by BioBase (which is owned by Qiagen).

JASPAR also claims they have superior quality of curation and less redundancy. I'm not sure how true that is, since TRANSFAC is also curated and one of its selling points is you are paying for the professional quality of their data and tools. It is also something I think is inherently speculative, since there is no way to compare the two as to which is "better" (and if so, in what sense of the word?).

Note that the free, limited version of TRANSFAC is definitely not comparable to JASPAR as it is out of date and very limited. However, I'd think that the for-fee TRANSFAC Pro release and tools is probably pretty much on a par with JASPAR.

[siddharthsameer]

Thanks for your reply. Could you please tell me what would be the convincing statment to ask my supervisor to give me the fund for the TRANSFAC license. Please tell me as I am student and very new in this field.
thanks

Pretty much what JASPAR (not Jasper) says right on their web site. The really major difference being JASPAR is open source whereas TRANSFAC is a commercial for-fee access preduct owned by BioBase (which is owned by Qiagen).

JASPAR also claims they have superior quality of curation and less redundancy. I'm not sure how true that is, since TRANSFAC is also curated and one of its selling points is you are paying for the professional quality of their data and tools. It is also something I think is inherently speculative, since there is no way to compare the two as to which is "better" (and if so, in what sense of the word?).

Note that the free, limited version of TRANSFAC is definitely not comparable to JASPAR as it is out of date and very limited. However, I'd think that the for-fee TRANSFAC Pro release and tools is probably pretty much on a par with JASPAR.

[mbblack]

Sorry, but I have no idea what to tell you to tell your supervisor as far as what to spend his or her research money on.

Have you tried using JASPAR yet? Are the results unsatisfactory in some way?

Have you tried the free trial for TRANSFAC and compared the results to JASPAR?

Does anybody else in your school use TRANSFAC so you could check out the full version?

As I already said, as far as I know, its pretty much a toss up as to which is "better" (and I'm not even clear on how you would define "better" in such a case anyway).

[neetu]

Genexplain recently uploaded a white paper explaining the difference between TRANSFAC and JASPAR. It seems when we use TRANSFAC there are chances that we don't miss important matrices that play a role in the regulation of genes of interest. The white paper link can be found here:

https://genexplain.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/TRANSFAC-revealed-IRF3-site-in-SNPs-associated-with-high-severity-of-Covid-19-missed-by-JASPAR.pdf

Old thread but maybe it is still useful to someone.