Correcting a trick of the light brings molecules into view

Conventional wisdom holds that optical microscopy can't be used to "see" something as small as an individual molecule. But as it is wont, clever science has once again overturned conventional wisdom. Secretary of Energy, ...

How RNA polymerase II gets the go-ahead for gene transcription

All cells perform certain basic functions. Each must selectively transcribe parts of the DNA that makes up its genome into RNAs that specify the structure of proteins. The set of proteins synthesized by a cell in turn determines ...

Stop and go: How the cell deals with transcriptional roadblocks

Gene transcription is central to cell function, as it converts the information stored in the DNA into RNA molecules of defined sequence, which then program protein synthesis. The enzyme RNA polymerase II (Pol II) is responsible ...

How the wrong genes are repressed

The mechanism by which 'polycomb' proteins critical for embyronic stem cell function and fate are targeted to DNA has been identified by UCL scientists.

Transcriptional elongation control takes on new dimensions

Life is complicated enough, so you can forgive the pioneers of DNA biology for glossing over transcriptional elongation control by RNA polymerase II, the quick and seemingly bulletproof penultimate step in the process that ...

Designer of protein factories exposed

For 10 years, Patrick Cramer and his colleagues at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have probed the structure of RNA polymerase I, a crucial cog in the machinery of all cells. Now they unveil the full three-dimensional ...

page 2 from 3