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. 1984 Jan 25;12(2):1265–1276. doi: 10.1093/nar/12.2.1265

DNA unwinding ability of Xenopus transcription factor A.

J S Hanas, D F Bogenhagen, C W Wu
PMCID: PMC318571  PMID: 6320121

Abstract

The duplex DNA unwinding ability of Xenopus transcription factor A was examined by treatment of plasmid-protein complexes with calf thymus topoisomerase I and resolution of the topoisomer distributions by agarose gel electrophoresis. Factor A binding to plasmids does result in a small degree of unwinding as evidenced by a shift in topoisomer distributions upon relaxation. Slightly more unwinding by factor A was observed on a specific plasmid, containing four tandemly repeated 5S RNA genes, when compared to a non-specific plasmid of nearly identical size containing no 5S specific sequences. The amount of unwinding observed on the specific plasmid, about one base-pair per gene, suggests that unwinding of the DNA duplex is not an important aspect of binding of factor A to the 5S RNA gene.

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Selected References

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