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. 1998 Feb 15;26(4):1051–1055. doi: 10.1093/nar/26.4.1051

Nucleosomes are not necessary for promoter-proximal pausing in vitro on the Drosophila hsp70 promoter.

L R Benjamin 1, D S Gilmour 1
PMCID: PMC147342  PMID: 9461467

Abstract

RNA polymerase II has been found to pause stably on several metazoan genes in a promoter-proximal region located 20-40 nt downstream from the start site of transcription. Escape of polymerase from this paused state has been proposed to be a rate limiting step in transcription of some genes. A study of the human hsp70 promoter showed that a nucleosome positioned downstream from the transcription start was a key component in establishing a stably paused polymerase in one cell-free system. We tested whether these results could be extended to the Drosophila hsp70 promoter in a Drosophila cell-free system and found that polymerase paused stably on the promoter even when the length of DNA downstream from the transcription start was not sufficient for assembly of a nucleosome. Our results indicate that a downstream nucleosome is not a universal requirement for stably pausing RNA polymerase in the promoter-proximal region.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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