Crystalized Proteins from Thermophile Reveal Transcription Insights

Abstract

The recently determined three-dimensional (3D) structure of a bacterial class II transcription complex helps to reveal how it binds to specific DNA sequences, thus driving transcription of downstream genes. This X-ray-based structural analysis provides the first atomic structure for such an intact class II transcription activation complex, according to Richard H. Ebright at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. He and his colleagues reported their findings on 10 June 2016 in Science (doi:10.1126/science.aaf4417).