Biogenesis, Structures, and Sites of Encoding of the 5′ Termini of Adenovirus-2 mRNAs (original) (raw)

1. C. C. Baker and
2. E. B. Ziff
3. Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10021

Excerpt

It is now apparent that the synthesis of many eukaryotic mRNAs proceeds through larger nuclear RNA precursors, which are processed by capping (Shatkin 1976), methylation (Derosiers et al. 1974), polyadenylation (for review, see Brawerman 1976), and splicing (Berget et al. 1977; Chow et al. 1977a; Klessig 1977) to yield the mature species that appear in the cytoplasm (for review of eukaryotic mRNA synthesis, see Darnell 1979). A presumed first step in this pathway is the synthesis of a primary RNA transcript, or an “original” copy of the DNA. The DNA that encodes the 5′ terminus of the primary transcript is of interest because it is expected to correspond to an RNA-polymerase-II initiation site or promoter.

Promoters were first defined genetically, in prokaryotes, as the loci of mutations that block or enhance transcription (Jacob et al. 1964). Prokaryotic promoters have also been identified as DNA sequences protected from DNase digestion or...