Transcription factory

The type of proteins present include: ribonucleoproteins, co-activators, transcription factors, RNA helicase and splicing and processing enzymes.

In these studies heat shock was used to turn off transcription which resulted in no change in the number of polymerases detected.

[8] Upon further analysis of western blot data it was suggested that there was in fact a slight decrease over time of transcription factories.

GFP polymerase fluorescence experiments have shown that the inducement of transcription in Drosophila polytene nuclei leads to the formation of a factory which contradicts the notion of a stable and secure structure.

[10] It was previously thought that it was the relatively small RNA polymerase that moves along the comparatively larger DNA template during transcription.

However, increasing evidence supports the notion that due to the tethering of a transcription factory to the nuclear matrix, it is in fact the large DNA template that is moved to accommodate RNA polymerisation.

[6] Chromosome Conformation Capture (3C) also supports the idea of the DNA template diffusing towards a stationary RNA polymerase.

It has been proposed that the factories are responsible for nuclear organisation; they have been suggested to promote chromatin loop formation by two potential mechanisms: The first mechanism suggests that loops form because 2 genes on the same chromosome require the same transcription machinery that would be found in a specific transcription factory.

Gene translocation events, like point mutations, generally are detrimental to the organism and so therefore could lead to the possibility of disease.