Isolation and properties of an inhibitor of Escherichia coli RNA polymerase.

An inhibitor of the Escherichia coli RNA polymerase has been isolated from E. coli and has been partially characterized. The inhibitor, a polypeptide of molecular weight 70000, acts to shut off RNA synthesis at about the time that the first round of RNA synthesis is over, preventing any further RNA synthesis. The inhibitor apparently does not recognize specific termination sequences in the DNA template, since it works equally well with double-stranded DNA, single-stranded DNA and poly[d(A-T)] as templates for RNA synthesis, and because the RNA molecules synthesized from T7 DNA appear to be terminated at the same site either in the presence or absence of the inhibitor. Several experiments indirectly indicate that the inhibitor may reversibly bind to the RNA polymerase at the termination step, in a ratio of approximately one inhibitor molecule per polymerase molecule.