Dr. Matthew Ferguson, assistant professor of physics, has published an article in the EMBO Journal called “Live-cell imaging reveals the interplay between transcription factors, nucleosomes and bursting”.
Transcription factors show rapid and reversible binding to chromatin in living cells, and transcription occurs in sporadic bursts, but how these phenomena are related is unknown. Using a novel imaging platform called orbital tracking, we simultaneously tracked transcription factor binding and transcription at one locus, revealing the timing and correlation between Gal4 binding and transcription. Collectively, our data supports a model in which multiple RNA polymerases initiate transcription during one burst as long as the transcription factor is bound to DNA, and bursts terminate upon transcription factor dissociation.