Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is the prototype for negative sense non segmented (NNS) RNA viruses which include potent human and animal pathogens such as Rabies, Ebola and measles. The polymerases of NNS RNA viruses only initiate transcription at or near the 3' end of their genome template. We measured the dissociation constant of VSV polymerases from their whole genome template to be 20 pM....

Transcription complexes of simian virus 40 can be isolated from cells late in infection in a form that retains the ability to continue transcription in vitro. These complexes have been investigated previously to gain information about the nucleoprotein structure of a transcribing gene. However, several studies have reported that the RNA polymerase molecules in such complexes are located almost ...

In certain supergravity backgrounds, D0 branes tend to polarize into higher dimensional Dp branes. We study this phenomenon in some generality from the perspective of a local inertial observer and explore polarization effects resulting from tidal-like forces. We find classically stable D2 brane droplets made of D0 branes and we are led to a local formulation of the UV-IR correspondence. A geome...

Transcribing " silent " DNA resilences it T ranscription of hete-rochromatin during S phase is the key to the faithful inheritance of silenced DNA at the cen-tromere, according to and colleagues. Histone methylation keeps heterochromatin condensed and the genes within silent. Yet the same methylation patterns are passed on to daughter cells. This inheritence requires RNA interference—and thus t...