Mechanisms of transcription fidelity in prokaryotes and eukaryotes

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Mechanisms controlling transcription fidelity were addressed by site directed mutagenesis based on the structural data. It has been recently reported that substitutions of His1085 in the Rpb1 subunit of yeast Pol II, which is a part of a mobile element involved in a direct contact with beta and gamma phosphates of the incoming NTP, strongly inhibit incorporation of the matched NTP, but have lesser effect on incorporation of the mismatched and 2-dNTPs. Holmes et al. targeted the Arg678 and Asp814 residues in the beta subunit of EcRNAP that were predicted to be crucial for the coordination of the NTP-associated metal ion in the active site. However, mutation of these residues did not affect transcription. Evidently, the complexity of the Pol II/EcRNAP structure appears to limit the capacity of the structure-driven site-directed mutagenesis for identification of functionally meaningful mutations. Therefore, alternatives to the structure-driven site-directed mutagenesis might be informative.