Cellular stress triggers degradation and global redistribution of RNAPII

Transcription is essential for cellular stress response. However, how RNAPII respond to and are regulated during stress are poorly understood. We show that RNAPII is degraded during many types of cellular stresses. In osmotic stressed cells, the TNFα-p38 pathway was activated and promoted the neddylation of the CUL1 E3 ligase complex, which interacted with RPB1 through FBXO11 to ubiquitylate and degrade RNAPII. This caused genome wide RNAPII binding reduction, but prevented RNAPII binding loss from genes with low promoter GC content. This redistribution protected the RNAPII loss from stress response genes in the cell adhesion, MAPK and GPCR pathways. RNAPII redistribution is vital for cell survival, as degradation blockage resulted in the loss of RNAPII from low GC promoters and compromised stress response from disrupted cell adhesion to increased apoptosis. Thus, rapid RNAPII degradation and RNAPII redistribution are components of the cellular stress response to benefit cell survival.