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Bacterial transcription terminators: the RNA 3'-end chronicles.

ABSTRACT: The process of transcription termination is essential to proper expression of bacterial genes and, in many cases, to the regulation of bacterial gene expression. Two types of bacterial transcriptional terminators are known to control gene expression. Intrinsic terminators dissociate transcription complexes without the assistance of auxiliary factors. Rho-dependent terminators are sites of dissociation mediated by an RNA helicase called Rho. Despite decades of study, the molecular mechanisms of both intrinsic and Rho-dependent termination remain uncertain in key details. Most knowledge is based on the study of a small number of model terminators. The extent of sequence diversity among functional terminators and the extent of mechanistic variation as a function of sequence diversity are largely unknown. In this review, we consider the current state of knowledge about bacterial termination mechanisms and the relationship between terminator sequence and steps in the termination mechanism.

SUBMITTER: Peters JM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3622210 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Bacterial transcription terminators: the RNA 3'-end chronicles.

Peters Jason M JM Vangeloff Abbey D AD Landick Robert R

Journal of molecular biology 20110323 5

The process of transcription termination is essential to proper expression of bacterial genes and, in many cases, to the regulation of bacterial gene expression. Two types of bacterial transcriptional terminators are known to control gene expression. Intrinsic terminators dissociate transcription complexes without the assistance of auxiliary factors. Rho-dependent terminators are sites of dissociation mediated by an RNA helicase called Rho. Despite decades of study, the molecular mechanisms of b ...[more]

PMID: 21439297

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Project description:Intrinsic terminators, which encode GC-rich RNA hairpins followed immediately by a 7-to-9-nucleotide (nt) U-rich "U-tract," play principal roles of punctuating and regulating transcription in most bacteria. However, canonical intrinsic terminators with strong U-tracts are underrepresented in some bacterial lineages, notably mycobacteria, leading to proposals that their RNA polymerases stop at noncanonical intrinsic terminators encoding various RNA structures lacking U-tracts. We generated recombinant forms of mycobacterial RNA polymerase and its major elongation factors NusA and NusG to characterize mycobacterial intrinsic termination. Using in vitro transcription assays devoid of possible mycobacterial contaminants, we established that mycobacterial RNA polymerase terminates more efficiently than Escherichia coli RNA polymerase at canonical terminators with imperfect U-tracts but does not terminate at putative terminators lacking U-tracts even in the presence of mycobacterial NusA and NusG. However, mycobacterial NusG exhibits a novel termination-stimulating activity that may allow intrinsic terminators with suboptimal U-tracts to function efficiently. IMPORTANCE Bacteria rely on transcription termination to define and regulate units of gene expression. In most bacteria, precise termination and much regulation by attenuation are accomplished by intrinsic terminators that encode GC-rich hairpins and U-tracts necessary to disrupt stable transcription elongation complexes. Thus, the apparent dearth of canonical intrinsic terminators with recognizable U-tracts in mycobacteria is of significant interest both because noncanonical intrinsic terminators could reveal novel routes to destabilize transcription complexes and because accurate understanding of termination is crucial for strategies to combat mycobacterial diseases and for computational bioinformatics generally. Our finding that mycobacterial RNA polymerase requires U-tracts for intrinsic termination, which can be aided by NusG, will guide future study of mycobacterial transcription and aid improvement of predictive algorithms to annotate bacterial genome sequences.

Dataset Information

Bacterial transcription terminators: the RNA 3'-end chronicles.

Publications

Bacterial transcription terminators: the RNA 3'-end chronicles.

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