Subcellular partitioning of transcription factors in Bacillus subtilis.

RNA polymerase (RNAP) requires the interaction of various transcription elongation factors to efficiently transcribe RNA. During transcription of rRNA operons, RNAP forms highly processive antitermination complexes by interacting with NusA, NusB, NusG, NusE, and possibly several unidentified factors to increase elongation rates to around twice those observed for mRNA. In previous work we used cytological assays with Bacillus subtilis to identify the major sites of rRNA synthesis within the cell, which are called transcription foci.