Question

Describe the elongation process of transcription in bacteria.

Answer 1

In transcription, the process of elongation begins with the dissociation of the polymerase σ subunit and terminates with the help of the rho protein. Basically, the addition of nucleotides to the 3′ end of a RNA chain during transcription is known as elongation.

Complete answer:
As soon as the σ subunit from the polymerase gets removed, this allows the RNA polymerase enzyme to start work on DNA template. It starts forming mRNA in the 5’ to 3’end. As the elongation continues, the DNA keeps on unwinding continuously before the core enzyme and again wounds behind it. As we know that the DNA and RNA does not have a stable association with each other so that they can maintain the stability of mRNA synthesized components then here the RNA polymerase acts as a stable linker between the RNA strands and the DNA template in order to ensure that the elongation process is not interrupted at all.

Note: After elongation, once a gene is fully transcribed, the prokaryotic polymerase needs to be able to dissociate from the DNA template and the newly mRNA. Upon termination, the process of transcription in bacteria is complete. By this time when termination has occurred the transcript would have already begun synthesizing its copies as the transcription , translation occurs simultaneously in bacteria because the process occurs in the cytoplasm. One of the main reasons they occur simultaneously is also that they synthesize in the same direction so do not need any different compartments inside the cell.