RNA polymerase II is a bulky enzyme that does not travel down DNA to transcribe like a train on a track. Instead, it transcribes by pulling DNA towards it (like a largely fixed train pulling tracks underneath it). Given this, one can fix one end of the DNA to measure how strong Pol II can pull DNA towards it. The paper I wish to find measures the pulling force. I believe that it was published in 1996 in Science. Does anyone know the volume and pages?
Dear Xuhua Xia,
Do you refer to one of these papers?
Yin, H., Wang, M. D., Svoboda, K., Landick, R., Block, S. M., & Gelles, J. (1995). Transcription against an applied force. Science, 270(5242), 1653-1657.
http://wanglab.lassp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1995_Science_270-1653_Yin-et-al.pdf
Wang, M. D., Schnitzer, M. J., Yin, H., Landick, R., Gelles, J., & Block, S. M. (1998). Force and velocity measured for single molecules of RNA polymerase. Science, 282(5390), 902-907.
http://www.phys.ens.fr/~vincent/smb/PDF/wang/document.pdf
Dear Rob Keller
Thank you so much. The first is the one I read before, but the second one is also highly relevant. Reading that first paper had a dramatic impact on me at that time when I switched from rodent ecology to evolutionary genetics (after having developed a strong allergic reaction to deer mice). The schematic models in molecular biology textbooks suddenly became concrete, real and touchable.
My switch of fields started in late 1993 when I tried to learn molecular biology and evolutionary genetics at Department of Genetics, University of Washington. The department has a small library with a copy of Mark Ptashne's book "A genetic switch" which also had a strong impact on me. These publications all contribute to the current consensus that 1) organisms are machines made of component devices, 2) organisms differ mainly at two levels: the device level and the control circuit level, and 3) Mutation creates new devices and to reroute control circuit, and selection purge and optimize them. Thus, the origin of species is reduced to the origin of new device and new control circuit.
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