Back

SPT5 regulates Pol II pausing and elongation in different ways at early versus late embryonic stages

Dulja, A.; Mayer, M.; Engel, N.; Golov, A. K.; Forneris, M.; Kherdjemil, Y.; Feng, S.; Viales, R. R.; Furlong, E. E.

2025-09-06 genomics
10.1101/2025.09.06.674612 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Transcription involves a cycle of initiation, pausing, elongation, and termination. SPT5 regulates both promoter proximal pausing and elongation, but how it orchestrates both steps during dynamic changes in gene expression remains unclear. Here, using Drosophila embryogenesis, we show that pausing both precedes and follows gene expression, while active transcription is accompanied by pause release. Optogenetic rapid depletion of SPT5 from the nucleus uncovered different sensitivities at different developmental stages. In early embryogenesis, SPT5 depletion caused a downstream shift in Pol II pausing to the +1 nucleosome, resulting in defective elongation and early termination. In late embryogenesis, it led to both up- and downregulation of expression, depending on the genes transcriptional and pausing state - upregulation is caused by pause release while downregulation is due to defective elongation. These changes are intensified when genes are increasing or decreasing their transcriptional state, indicating that SPT5 contributes to fine-tuning dynamic changes in gene expression.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.