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Updated: Mar 19, 2026

Artificial RNA Polymerase II Elongation Complexes for Dissecting Co-transcriptional RNA Processing Events
Published on: May 13, 2019
Specialization versus conservation: How Pol I and Pol III use the conserved architecture of the pre-initiation
Niklas A Hoffmann1, Yashar Sadian1, Lucas Tafur1
1a European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) , Structural and Computational Biology Unit , Heidelberg , Germany.
Abstract:
Here, we discuss the overall architecture of the RNA polymerase I (Pol I) and III (Pol III) core enzymes and their associated general transcription factors in the context of models of the Pol I and Pol III pre-initiation complexes, thereby highlighting potential functional adaptations of the Pol I and Pol III enzymes to their respective transcription tasks. Several new insights demonstrate the great degree of specialization of each of the eukaryotic RNA polymerases that is only beginning to be revealed as the structural and functional characterization of all eukaryotic RNA polymerases and their pre-initiation complexes progresses.
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