Stopping a Runaway Train - How Bacteria Avoid Making Unwanted RNA

Cryo-EM structures showing the Rho protein on path to terminating a transcription complex. Image Credit: Markus Wahl, Freie Universität Berlin - Publication in Science by biochemists from Freie Universität Berlin and international colleagues No 235/2020 from Dec 03, 2020 An important gene expression process in bacteria seems to proceed differently than described in textbooks. This is the result of an international team of scientists headed by the Structural Biochemistry group at Freie Universität Berlin. Their work deals with, among other things, the question of why pathogenic bacteria turn out to be harmful to us without harming themselves. The findings were published in the journal Science  ( https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abd1673 ). All life on Earth uses RNA molecules as copies of the genetic instructions in DNA to produce proteins that mediate cellular processes. These RNA molecules are synthesized by RNA polymerases, which are complex and powerful molecular machines, in a process called transcription.