Premium
Studying transcription initiation by RNA polymerase with diffusion‐based single‐molecule fluorescence
Author(s) -
Alhadid Yazan,
Chung SangYoon,
Lerner Eitan,
Taatjes Dylan J.,
Borukhov Sergei,
Weiss Shimon
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
protein science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.353
H-Index - 175
eISSN - 1469-896X
pISSN - 0961-8368
DOI - 10.1002/pro.3160
Subject(s) - transcription (linguistics) , rna polymerase ii , transcription factor ii d , transcription bubble , polymerase , general transcription factor , rna polymerase , rna polymerase ii holoenzyme , biology , transcription factor ii b , single molecule experiment , transcription factor ii f , computational biology , dna , rna , chemistry , genetics , microbiology and biotechnology , rna dependent rna polymerase , promoter , molecule , gene , gene expression , philosophy , linguistics , organic chemistry
Over the past decade, fluorescence‐based single‐molecule studies significantly contributed to characterizing the mechanism of RNA polymerase at different steps in transcription, especially in transcription initiation. Transcription by bacterial DNA‐dependent RNA polymerase is a multistep process that uses genomic DNA to synthesize complementary RNA molecules. Transcription initiation is a highly regulated step in E. coli , but it has been challenging to study its mechanism because of its stochasticity and complexity. In this review, we describe how single‐molecule approaches have contributed to our understanding of transcription and have uncovered mechanistic details that were not observed in conventional assays because of ensemble averaging.