The lab’s work on the regulation of transcription in M. tuberculosis was presented at the TB summit in London. The talk focused on the regulation of open complex by the essential transcription factors: CarD and RbpA.
High school rising senior Vishal Shah currently attends Marquette High School in Chesterfield, Missouri. He is spending the summer in the lab working on the mechanism of start-site scanning during transcription initiation in S. cerevisiae.
Transcriptional regulation in mycobacteria tuberculosis is dependent on these two essential transcription factors. Here we show that open complex stabilization by RbpA displays a different kinetic signature than CarD. More importantly, the two interact with RNA polymerase initiation complexes cooperatively.… Read More »New Publication in NAR: Cooperative stabilization of mycobacterial open complexes by RbpA and CarD.
Rising sophomore Abheek Raviprasad is currently majoring in physics at Washington University in Saint Louis. He will be studying single-molecule techniques applied to transcription initiation.
The search for a downstream start site does not depend on transcription by RNAP II. Furthermore, the dsDNA translocase is able to utilize GTP in addition to ATP to drive the scanning mechanism. These observations further constrain models for transcription… Read More »New Publication in JBC: Transcription start site scanning and the requirement for ATP during Transcription Initiation by RNAP II.
Jayan Rammohan’s studies of the kinetics and thermodynamics of mycobacterial transcription initiation show that the essential transcription factor CarD from M. tuberculosis both slows bubble collapse and increases the rate of DNA unwinding. As CarD is found at promoters across… Read More »Publication in NAR: CarD stabilizes mycobacterial open complexes via a two-tiered kinetic mechanism.