David Auble
The beautiful work that led to the elucidation of the structures of Pol II shown here earned Roger Kornberg the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006.
These structures may take a moment to load. Here you can see different forms of the 10 subunit RNA polymerase II from yeast. The structural organization is unfortunately too complicated to depict in any simple way. You can identify different subunits by hovering over a region of interest to reveal the label, then clicking the RCSB link to determine which subunit the chain ID refers to. In the elongation complex you can see the DNA template and growing RNA chain buried deep within the catalytic cleft. In the Pol II-TFIIB structure notice that a segment of TFIIB also reaches into the catalytic cleft, suggesting a mechanism by which TFIIB regulates transcription initiation and start site selection. The yeast enzyme has two additional subunits. The structure of the free-form of the 12 subunit enzyme has also been solved (1wcm) but is not presented here.
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1i3q: RNA polymerase II ("form I") |
1r5u: Pol II-TFIIB complex |
1i6h: Elongation complex (RNA, DNA) |
Index of Macromolecular Structures