• Question: Could you go into more depth with regard to transcription factors and promoter regions?

    Asked by snacks2 to Chris, Kay, Kerstin, Lorna, Liv on 23 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Kerstin Zechner

      Kerstin Zechner answered on 23 Mar 2010:

      Hey snacks2! Good question 🙂 At the moment, I’m looking more what happens at the end of transcription, so at the end of the gene rather than promoters. However, it would be interesting to see if how transcription terminates may be related to the structure of the promoter! You’ve just given me that idea, so thanks a lot 🙂

    • Photo: Kay Penicud

      Kay Penicud answered on 23 Mar 2010:

      A promoter region is like the ‘switch’ in front of a gene. It can turn the gene on and off. The way that happens is by transcription factors (which are proteins) bind to the DNA and recruit the enzyme that actually makes a copy of the gene sequence which gets taken to the ‘protein factory’ to be made.

      the really cool thing about transcription factors is they can recognise sequences of DNA and so only bind to the promoters of certain genes

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