Co-transcriptional formation of DNA:RNA hybrid G-quadruplex and potential function as constitutional cis element for transcription control

G-quadruplex formation in genomic DNA is considered to regulate transcription. Previous investigations almost exclusively focused on intramolecular G-quadruplexes formed by DNA carrying four or more G-tracts, and structure formation has rarely been studied in physiologically relevant processes. Here, we report an almost entirely neglected, but actually much more prevalent form of G-quadruplexes, DNA:RNA hybrid G-quadruplexes (HQ) that forms in transcription. HQ formation requires as few as two G-tracts instead of four on a non-template DNA strand. Potential HQ sequences (PHQS) are present in >97% of human genes, with an average of 73 PHQSs per gene. HQ modulates transcription under both in vitro and in vivo conditions. Transcriptomal analysis of human tissues implies that maximal gene expression may be limited by the number of PHQS in genes. These features suggest that HQs may play fundamental roles in transcription regulation and other transcription-mediated processes.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  Nucleic Acids Research

• Publication date

  2013-04-12

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1093/nar/gkt264PMID 23585281PMCID 3664831
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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