Applied Force Reveals Mechanistic and Energetic Details of Transcription Termination

davidd submitted, created time 8 months 4 weeks (www.cell.com)

Transcription termination by bacterial RNA polymerase (RNAP) occurs at sequences coding for a GC-rich RNA hairpin followed by a U-rich tract. They used single-molecule techniques to investigate the mechanism by which three representative terminators (his, t500, and tR2) destabilize the elongation complex (EC). And they propose a quantitative, energetic model that predicts the behavior for these terminators and mutant variants.

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: RNA hairpins secondary structure transcription single-molecule techniques GC-rich RNA RNA polymerase