Bacterial transcription articles from across Nature Portfolio

Discovery of uncharacterized atypical response regulators (SecRs) lacking phosphorylation domains that directly activate the essential serine cycle, enabling microbial methylamine metabolism in widespread terrestrial and marine methylotrophs.

Specialized σ factors interact with nuclease-dead, CRISPR–Cas12f proteins to form potent, RNA-guided gene activation systems that function independently of fixed promoter motifs.

Pseudouridines are RNA modifications occurring in all organisms. Here, Sharma et al. identify and quantify pseudouridines in E. coli bacteria, where this modification is associated with mRNA stability, and map pseudouridines in human oral microbiome samples.

Pausing during early transcription by bacterial RNA polymerase is not fully understood. Here, the authors determine the structures of the paused initiation complex in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, revealing how RNA and polymerase interactions create a transcription checkpoint.

The bacterial protein H-NS prevents costly expression of horizontally acquired genes such as those in Salmonella pathogenicity islands (SPIs), which are essential for infection. Here, Kortebi et al. show that the expression of SPI-1 is associated with Salmonella chromatin remodelling and with the repositioning of this region toward the nucleoid periphery.

This study reports how fluid flow is linked to changes in gene expression in bacterial pathogens.

Two recent studies report the structural basis of transcription–translation coupling in Escherichia coli, and a further study reports functionally uncoupled transcription–translation in Bacillus subtilis.

Acquisition of RNA into CRISPR arrays allows the recording of transcriptional dynamics in cells.

Bacterial specialized metabolites are bioactive molecules with antibacterial or other activities that are of tremendous clinical use. New work has revealed that transcript elongation is a distinct and widespread point of secondary metabolic gene regulation, which has implications for expanding drug discovery.