Replication–transcription conflicts in bacteria

DNA replication and transcription use the same template and occur concurrently in bacteria. The lack of temporal and spatial separation of these two processes leads to their conflict, and failure to deal with this conflict can result in genome alterations and reduced fitness. In recent years major a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Merrikh, Houra, Zhang, Yan, Wang, Jue D., Grossman, Alan Davis
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2013
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77912
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8235-7227
Description
Summary:DNA replication and transcription use the same template and occur concurrently in bacteria. The lack of temporal and spatial separation of these two processes leads to their conflict, and failure to deal with this conflict can result in genome alterations and reduced fitness. In recent years major advances have been made in understanding how cells avoid conflicts between replication and transcription and how such conflicts are resolved when they do occur. In this Review, we summarize these findings, which shed light on the significance of the problem and on how bacterial cells deal with unwanted encounters between the replication and transcription machineries.