Journal
NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH
Volume 43, Issue 4, Pages 2232-2241Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkv059
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health (NIH) [GM102362]
- Kimmel Scholar Award from the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research
- Research Grant Council of Hong Kong [GRF 16302214]
- NIH
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Variations in the sugar component (ribose or deoxyribose) and the nature of the phosphodiester linkage (3'-5' or 2'-5' orientation) have been a challenge for genetic information transfer from the very beginning of evolution. RNA polymerase II (pol II) governs the transcription of DNA into precursor mRNA in all eukaryotic cells. How pol II recognizes DNA template backbone (phosphodiester linkage and sugar) and whether it tolerates the backbone heterogeneity remain elusive. Such knowledge is not only important for elucidating the chemical basis of transcriptional fidelity but also provides new insights into molecular evolution. In this study, we systematically and quantitatively investigated pol II transcriptional behaviors through different template backbone variants. We revealed that pol II can well tolerate and bypass sugar heterogeneity sites at the template but stalls at phosphodiester linkage heterogeneity sites. The distinct impacts of these two backbone components on pol II transcription reveal the molecular basis of template recognition during pol II transcription and provide the evolutionary insight from the RNA world to the contemporary 'imperfect' DNA world. In addition, our results also reveal the transcriptional consequences from ribose-containing genomic DNA.
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