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The bacterial RNA polymerase (RNAP) elongation complex (EC) is highly stable and is able to extend an RNA chain for thousands of nucleotides. Understanding the processive mechanism of nucleotide addition requires detailed structural and temporal data for the EC reaction. Here, a time-resolved Raman spectroscopic analysis is combined with polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) to monitor nucleotide addition in single crystals of the Thermus thermophilus EC (TthEC) RNAP. When the cognate base GTP, labeled with (13)C and (15)N (*GTP), is soaked into crystals of the TthEC, changes in the Raman spectra show evidence of nucleotide incorporation and product formation. The major change is the reduction of *GTP's triphosphate intensity. Nucleotide incorporation is confirmed by PAGE assays. Both Raman and PAGE methods have a time resolution of minutes. There is also Raman spectroscopic evidence of a second population of *GTP in the crystal that does not become covalently linked to the nascent RNA chain. When this population is removed by "soaking out" (placing the crystal in a solution that contains no NTP), there are no perturbations to the Raman difference spectra, indicating that conformational changes are not detected in the EC. In contrast, the misincorporation of the noncognate base, (13)C- and (15)N-labeled UTP (*UTP), gives rise to large spectroscopic changes. As in the GTP experiment, reduction of the triphosphate relative intensity in the Raman soak-in data shows that the incorporation reaction occurs during the first few minutes of our instrumental dead time. This is also confirmed by PAGE analysis. Whereas PAGE data show *GTP converts 100% of the nascent RNA 14mer to 15mer, the noncognate *UTP converts only ∼50%. During *UTP soak-in, there is a slow, reversible formation of an α-helical amide I band in the Raman difference spectra peaking at 40 min. Similar to *GTP soak-in, *UTP soak-in shows Raman spectoscopic evidence of a second noncovalently bound *UTP population in the crystal. Moreover, the second population has a marked effect on the complex's conformational states because removing it by "soaking-out" unreacted *UTP causes large changes in protein and nucleic acid Raman marker bands in the time range of 10-100 min. The conformational changes observed for noncognate *UTP may indicate that the enzyme is preparing for proofreading to excise the misincorporated base. This idea is supported by the PAGE results for *UTP soak-out that show endonuclease activity is occurring.

biochemistry

Time-Resolved Raman and Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis Observations of Nucleotide Incorporation and Misincorporation in RNA within a Bacterial RNA Polymerase Crystal