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Localized Strand Separations within Deoxyribonucleic Acid during Selective Transcription

Nature volume 208, pages 894–896 (1965)Cite this article

Abstract

MOLECULES of deoxyribonucleic acid isolated under gentle conditions are found to possess a double-stranded helical structure, in which the bases of each DNA strand are exactly paired within the interior of the helix with complementary bases of the opposite strand1. During gene transcription in vivo or under gentle conditions in vitro, only one of the two DNA strands serves as a template for new RNA synthesis2. Furthermore, within a well-differentiated tissue, only a fraction of loci within the total genome are transcribed in vivo, each such selection of loci being characteristic of the particular tissue3. It has recently been demonstrated that stable localized strand separations are induced within the double-stranded DNA helix during selective gene transcription within higher organisms4,5. Within such localized separation loops, one DNA strand appears to function as a template for RNA synthesis5. The complementary DNA strand of each separation loop appears to function as a binding site for specific de-repressor RNA molecules5 in an epigenetic control mechanism which selectively restricts gene transcription to only such strand-separated portions of the genome5,6.

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  1. Laboratory of Cell Biology, Rockefeller Institute, New York

    JOHN H. FRENSTER

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FRENSTER, J. Localized Strand Separations within Deoxyribonucleic Acid during Selective Transcription. Nature 208, 894–896 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/208894b0

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