Answer to Question #65462 in Molecular Biology for Sanjukta Ghosh

Question

What are the similarities between rho dependent and rho independent terminations in prokaryotes?

Answer 1

Well, both types actually depend on RNA stem-loop structures. But the role of these stem-loop structures is quite different. It is well-known that stem-loop structure, rich in C-G pairs is involved in rho-dependent mechanism. But these structures also plays quite a significant role in rho-independent mechanism since the movement speed of Rho-factor is lower than the movement speed of RNA polymerase. So these stem-loop structures force the polymerase to temporarily stop, thus they help Rho-factor to overtake the polymerase.