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Letter

Nature Genetics 39, 1512–1516 (1 December 2007) | doi:10.1038/ng.2007.26

RNA polymerase stalling at developmental control genes in the Drosophila melanogaster embryo

Julia Zeitlinger , Alexander Stark , Manolis Kellis , Joung-Woo Hong , Sergei Nechaev , Karen Adelman , Michael Levine & Richard A Young

It is widely assumed that the key rate-limiting step in gene activation is the recruitment of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) to the core promoter. Although there are well-documented examples in which Pol II is recruited to a gene but stalls, a general role for Pol II stalling in development has not been established.