BIOLOGY 305 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Phosphodiester Bond, Tata Box, Alpha Cell
Document Summary
In order to start transcription in eukaryotes, its not enough to just have a promoter sequence. There are too many genes to tell rna polymerase where to go just by telling the promoter sequence or different sigma factors. General transcription factors are proteins that are found in front of many different eukaryotic genes. It turns out that the promoter sequence is not as well defined for eukaryotes. There does seem to be an at rich area about 30 bases upstream of where transcription is going to start. You can find many places in front of genes that seem to be binding sites for proteins. If you mutate bases on those protein binding sites, transcription goes down (similar to what happens if mutations occur in the tata box region) These regions are important but not because rna polymerase is binding there directly but because the proteins that help rna polymerase are failing to bind there.
