| Summary: | © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. Tight coupling of transcription and translation is considered a defining feature of bacterial gene expression1,2. The pioneering ribosome can both physically associate and kinetically coordinate with RNA polymerase (RNAP)3–11, forming a signal-integration hub for co-transcriptional regulation that includes translation-based attenuation12,13 and RNA quality control2. However, it remains unclear whether transcription–translation coupling—together with its broad functional consequences—is indeed a fundamental characteristic of bacteria other than Escherichia coli. Here we show that RNAPs outpace pioneering ribosomes in the Gram-positive model bacterium Bacillus subtilis, and that this ‘runaway transcription’ creates alternative rules for both global RNA surveillance and translational control of nascent RNA. In particular, uncoupled RNAPs in B. subtilis explain the diminished role of Rho-dependent transcription termination, as well as the prevalence of mRNA leaders that use riboswitches and RNA-binding proteins. More broadly, we identified widespread genomic signatures of runaway transcription in distinct phyla across the bacterial domain. Our results show that coupled RNAP–ribosome movement is not a general hallmark of bacteria. Instead, translation-coupled transcription and runaway transcription constitute two principal modes of gene expression that determine genome-specific regulatory mechanisms in prokaryotes.
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