TY - JOUR
T1 - Mechanism of transcription initiation and promoter escape by RNA polymerase II
AU - Dvir, Arik
AU - Conaway, Joan Weliky
AU - Conaway, Ronald C.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank D Bushnell and R Kornberg for the model of Fig. 1 and B Coulombe for the model of Fig. 2 . Work in the authors’ laboratories is supported by National Institutes of Health Grant R37 GM41628 and funds provided to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation by the HA and Mary K Chapman Charitable Trust (JW Conaway and RC Conaway) and National Science Foundation Grant MCB-9817004 (A Dvir). JW Conaway is an Associate Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
PY - 2001/4/1
Y1 - 2001/4/1
N2 - Recently, key advances in biochemical and structural studies of RNA polymerase II (pol II) and the basal transcriptional machinery have shed considerable light on the basic mechanisms underlying the initiation stage of eukaryotic mRNA synthesis. The development of methods for obtaining crystal structures of pol II and its complexes has revolutionized transcriptional studies and holds promise that aspects of initiation will soon be understood at atomic resolution; crosslinking studies have revealed intriguing features of the topology of the pol II initiation complex and provided working models for dynamic steps of initiation; and mechanistic studies have identified promoter escape as a critical step during initiation and brought to light novel roles for the general initiation factors TFIIE, TFIIF, and TFIIH in this process.
AB - Recently, key advances in biochemical and structural studies of RNA polymerase II (pol II) and the basal transcriptional machinery have shed considerable light on the basic mechanisms underlying the initiation stage of eukaryotic mRNA synthesis. The development of methods for obtaining crystal structures of pol II and its complexes has revolutionized transcriptional studies and holds promise that aspects of initiation will soon be understood at atomic resolution; crosslinking studies have revealed intriguing features of the topology of the pol II initiation complex and provided working models for dynamic steps of initiation; and mechanistic studies have identified promoter escape as a critical step during initiation and brought to light novel roles for the general initiation factors TFIIE, TFIIF, and TFIIH in this process.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0959-437X(00)00181-7
DO - 10.1016/S0959-437X(00)00181-7
M3 - Review article
C2 - 11250146
AN - SCOPUS:0035313754
SN - 0959-437X
VL - 11
SP - 209
EP - 214
JO - Current Opinion in Genetics and Development
JF - Current Opinion in Genetics and Development
IS - 2
ER -