Pausing and termination of human RNA polymerase II transcription at a procaryotic terminator.

Kinetic analyses of runoff transcription in a cell-free eucaryotic transcription system revealed that the bacteriophage lambda 4S RNA terminator caused human RNA polymerase II to pause on the template and partially terminate transcription of transcripts initiated by the adenovirus 2 major late promoter. Analogous to the procaryotic RNA polymerase, the eucaryotic enzyme terminated just beyond the guanine-plus-cytosine-rich region of dyad symmetry in the terminator sequence. These results suggest that the eucaryotic RNA polymerase II may respond to transcription termination sequences similar to those used by the procaryotic enzyme. However, similar templates containing lambda tint or lambda tR1 terminators did not elicit pausing or termination, suggesting that other features, such as sequence specificity, may also be involved.