This paper introduces a novel transductive support vector machine (TSVM) model and compares it with the traditional inductive SVM on a key problem in bioinformatics - promoter recognition. While inductive reasoning is concerned with the development of a model (a function) to approximate data from the whole problem space (induction), and consecutively using this model to predict output values for a new input vector (deduction), in the transductive inference systems a model is developed for every new input vector based on some closest to the new vector data from an existing database and this model is used to predict only the output for this vector. The TSVM outperforms by far the inductive SVM models applied on the same problems. Analysis is given on the advantages and disadvantages of the TSVM. Hybrid TSVM-evolving connections systems are discussed as directions for future research.