The regulatory roles and mechanism of transcriptional pausing

Abstract

The multisubunit RNAPs (RNA polymerases) found in all cellular life forms are remarkably conserved in fundamental structure, in mechanism and in their susceptibility to sequence-dependent pausing during transcription of DNA in the absence of elongation regulators. Recent studies of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic transcription have yielded an increasing appreciation of the extent to which gene regulation is accomplished during the elongation phase of transcription. Transcriptional pausing is a fundamental enzymatic mechanism that underlies many of these regulatory schemes. In some cases, pausing functions by halting RNAP for times or at positions required for regulatory interactions. In other cases, pauses function by making RNAP susceptible to premature termination of transcription unless the enzyme is modified by elongation regulators that programme efficient gene expression. Pausing appears to occur by a two-tiered mechanism in which an initial rearrangement of the enzyme's active site interrupts active elongation and puts RNAP in an elemental pause state from which additional rearrangements or regulator interactions can create long-lived pauses. Recent findings from biochemical and single-molecule transcription experiments, coupled with the invaluable availability of RNAP crystal structures, have produced attractive hypotheses to explain the fundamental mechanism of pausing.