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Updated: Aug 20, 2025

Application of Biolayer Interferometry BLI for Studying Protein-Protein Interactions in Transcription
Published on: July 26, 2019
Thermodynamic model of bacterial transcription
Jin Qian1, David Dunlap1, Laura Finzi1
1Physics Department, Emory University, 400 Dowman Dr., Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
Abstract:
Transcriptional pausing is highly regulated by the template DNA and nascent transcript sequences. Here, we propose a thermodynamic model of transcriptional pausing, based on the thermal energy of transcription bubbles and nascent RNA structures, to describe the kinetics of the reaction pathways between active translocation, elemental, backtracked, and hairpin-stabilized pauses. The model readily predicts experimentally detected pauses in high-resolution optical-tweezer measurements of transcription. Unlike other models, it also predicts the effect of tension and the GreA transcription factor on pausing.
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