Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 107, Issue 23, Pages 10418-10423Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1000967107
Keywords
bottleneck step; transcription regulation; burst experiment; protein nucleic acid interactions
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [GM23467, NIH 5 T32 GM08349]
- William R. and Dorothy E. Sullivan Distinguished Graduate Fellowship
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Though opening of the start site (+1) region of promoter DNA is required for transcription by RNA polymerase ( RNAP), surprisingly little is known about how and when this occurs in the mechanism. Early events at the lambda P-R promoter load this region of duplex DNA into the active site cleft of Escherichia coli RNAP, forming the closed, permanganate-unreactive intermediate I-1. Conversion to the subsequent intermediate I-2 overcomes a large enthalpic barrier. Is I-2 open? Herewecreate a burst of I-2 by rapidly destabilizing opencomplexes (RPo) with 1.1MNaCl. Fast footprinting reveals that thymines at positions from -11 to+2 inI(2) arepermanganate-reactive, demonstrating that RNAP opens the entire initiation bubble in the cleft in a single step. Rates of decay of all observed thymine reactivities are the same as the I-2 to I-1 conversion rate determined by filter binding. In I-2, permanganatereactivity of the +1 thymine on the template(t) strand is the same as the RPo control, whereas nontemplate (nt) thymines are significantly less reactive than in RPo. We propose that: (i) the +1(t) thymine is in the active site in I-2; (ii) conversion of I-2 to RPo repositions the nt strand in the cleft; and (iii) movements of the nt strand are coupled to the assembly and DNA binding of the downstream clamp and jaw that occurs after DNA opening and stabilizes RPo. We hypothesize that unstable open intermediates at the.PR promoter resemble the unstable, transcriptionally competent open complexes formed at ribosomal promoters.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available