The route to transcription initiation determines the mode of transcriptional bursting in E. coli

Christoph Engl (), Goran Jovanovic, Rowan D. Brackston, Ioly Kotta-Loizou and Martin Buck ()
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Christoph Engl: Queen Mary University of London
Goran Jovanovic: Imperial College London
Rowan D. Brackston: Imperial College London
Ioly Kotta-Loizou: Imperial College London
Martin Buck: Imperial College London

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Transcription is fundamentally noisy, leading to significant heterogeneity across bacterial populations. Noise is often attributed to burstiness, but the underlying mechanisms and their dependence on the mode of promotor regulation remain unclear. Here, we measure E. coli single cell mRNA levels for two stress responses that depend on bacterial sigma factors with different mode of transcription initiation (σ70 and σ54). By fitting a stochastic model to the observed mRNA distributions, we show that the transition from low to high expression of the σ70-controlled stress response is regulated via the burst size, while that of the σ54-controlled stress response is regulated via the burst frequency. Therefore, transcription initiation involving σ54 differs from other bacterial systems, and yields bursting kinetics characteristic of eukaryotic systems.

Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16367-6

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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16367-6

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