Transcription Initiation region

Nakano MM, Xia L. Zuber P. The transcription initiation region of the sr/A operon which is controlled by the cumP-comA signal rransdiicrinn system in Bacillus. subtilis. J Bacteriol 1991 173 5487-5493. 

Sequences farther upstream from the start site determine how frequently the transcription event occurs. Mutations in these regions reduce the frequency of transcriptional starts tenfold to twentyfold. Typical of these DNA elements are the GC and CAAT boxes, so named because of the DNA sequences involved. As illustrated in Figure 37—7, each of these boxes binds a protein, Spl in the case of the GC box and CTF (or C/EPB,NF1,NFY) by the CAAT box both bind through their distinct DNA binding domains (DBDs). The frequency of transcription initiation is a consequence of these protein-DNA interactions and complex interactions between particular domains of the transcription factors (distinct from the DBD domains—so-called activation domains ADs) of these proteins and the rest of the transcription machinery (RNA polymerase II and the basal factors TFIIA, B, D, E, F). (See... 

The highly restricted tissue-specific transcription of c-mos poses an interesting problem in gene regulation during germ cell development. Moreover, c-mos is transcribed from different promoters in mouse spermatocytes and oocytes (Fig. 4) (Propst et al., 1987). In spermatocytes, transcription initiates approximately 280 nucleotides upstream of the c-mos ATG (Propst et al., 1987), whereas the transcription start site in oocytes has been mapped to 53 base pairs upstream of the ATG (Pal et al., 1991). Neither the spermatocyte nor oocyte promoter regions are... 

Two Regulatory Regions Located Downstream of the HIV-1 Transcription Initiation Site are Associated with DNase I-Hypersensitive Sites... 

Hsieh, C.L. (1997) Stability of patch methylation and its impact in regions of transcriptional initiation and elongation. Molecular and Cellular Biolc, 17, 5897-5904. 

Fig. 1.30. Structure of a typical eucaryotic transcription start site. Enhancer elements and UAS elements (UAS upstream activating sequences) are binding sites for positive and negative regulatory DNA-binding proteins. The TATA box is the binding site for the TATA box binding protein (TBP) and serves to position the RNA polymerase holoenzyme on the promoter. For promoters that do not possess a TATA box, this function is fulfilled by an initiator region.

Overall, histone acetylation and deacetylation represents an important tool with which transcription can be positively or negatively influenced. The nucleosomes and, in a further sense, chromatin structure assiune a central role in the regulation of transcription. Nucleosome structure and nucleosome position can decisively contribute to the accessibility of DNA elements for transcription factors. The nucleosomes function as a framework that determines the spatial arrangement of a region of the DNA. Tlie nucleosome constellation must be modified during transcription initiation, whereby the post-translational modification of histones in the form of acetylation or deacetylation plays a significant role. The participation of other non-histone proteins remains an open issue and it is also imclear how a constitutive and permanent inactivation of a section of DNA can be accomplished via the chromatin structure. 

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