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Transcriptional noise and the fidelity of initiation by RNA polymerase II

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 14, pages 103–105 (2007)Cite this article

Eukaryotes transcribe much of their genomes, but little is known about the fidelity of transcriptional initiation by RNA polymerase II in vivo. I suggest that ∼90% of Pol II initiation events in yeast represent transcriptional noise, and that the specificity of initiation is comparable to that of DNA-binding proteins and other biological processes. This emphasizes the need to develop criteria that distinguish transcriptional noise from transcription with a biological function.

In the classic view of the transcriptome, RNA polymerase initiates transcription from specific sites that are designed to produce functional RNA products. However, biological processes do not work perfectly, and the fidelity of a biological process is defined by the frequency of an 'incorrect' event as compared with the 'correct' event. For eukaryotic Pol II, 'correct' initiation events lead to discrete RNA species, most of which are messenger RNAs. However, very little is known about how often Pol II initiates transcription 'nonspecifically' from incorrect sites and generates 'transcriptional noise' of no biological significance. The concept of transcriptional noise used here is distinct from noise arising from stochastic variations in the expression level of a given gene in individual cells1.

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Acknowledgements

I thank R. Kornberg, Z. Moqtaderi, M. Oettinger, A. Sandelin, J.Svejstrup & J. Wade for helpful discussions and comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Kevin Struhl is in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. kevin@hms.harvard.edu,

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Struhl, K. Transcriptional noise and the fidelity of initiation by RNA polymerase II. Nat Struct Mol Biol 14, 103–105 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb0207-103

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