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Enhancement and inhibition of DNA transcriptional activity by spermine: a marked difference between linear and
François Luckel1, Koji Kubo, Kanta Tsumoto
1Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.
Abstract:
We compared the transcriptional activities of the circular and linear forms of short (4kbp) and giant (106kbp) DNA molecules in the presence of a polyamine, spermine (4+). With an increase in the spermine concentration, transcriptional activity was enhanced, followed by an inhibitory effect, and complete inhibition was observed in the sole case of long, linear templates. A difference between the transcriptional properties of circular and linear conformations is found for giant DNA molecules. These results are discussed in relation to DNA conformational transitions.
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