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. 1985 Dec 20;13(24):9031–9042. doi: 10.1093/nar/13.24.9031

Correlation between the rate of productive transcription initiation and the strand-melting property of Escherichia coli promoters.

H Tachibana, A Ishihama
PMCID: PMC318969  PMID: 2417199

Abstract

"Opening potential"s of DNA segments of about ten base pairs in length were calculated for eleven promoters of Escherichia coli using the thermodynamic parameter values [Gotoh and Tagashira (1981) Biopolymers 20, 1043-1058] for the stabilities of ten kinds of nearest neighbor base pair doublets in a melting reaction. They were compared with the strength of each promoter determined experimentally with a "mixed transcription" system [Kajitani and Ishihama (1983) Nucleic Acids Res. 11, 3873-3888]. A positive correlation was found between the calculated opening potential in the -9 to +3 region (+1 denotes the nucleotide position at which the transcription starts) and the rate of open complex formation.

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Selected References

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