TATA box
The TATA box was the first eukaryotic core promoter motif to be identified in 1978 by American biochemist David Hogness while he and his graduate student, Michael Goldberg were on sabbatical at the University of Basel in Switzerland. They first discovered the TATA sequence while analyzing 5' DNA promoter sequences in "Drosophila," mammalian, and viral genes. The TATA box was found in protein coding genes transcribed by RNA polymerase II.