RNA polymerase backtracking in gene regulation and genome instability
1Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA. evgeny.nudler@nyumc.org
Cell
|June 26, 2012
Abstract:
RNA polymerase is a ratchet machine that oscillates between productive and backtracked states at numerous DNA positions. Since its first description 15 years ago, backtracking--the reversible sliding of RNA polymerase along DNA and RNA--has been implicated in many critical processes in bacteria and eukaryotes, including the control of transcription elongation, pausing, termination, fidelity, and genome instability.
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