RNA polymerase II complexes in the very early phase of transcription are not susceptible to TFIIS-induced exonucleolytic cleavage

TFIIS is a transcription elongation factor for RNA polymerase II (pol II), which can suppress ribonucleotide misincorporation. We reconstituted transcription complexes in a highly purified pol II system on adenovirus Major-Late promoter constructs. We noted that these complexes have a high propensity for read-through upon GTP omission. Read-through occurred during the early stages at all registers analyzed. Addition of TFIIS reversed read-through of productive elongation complexes, which indicated that it was due to misincorporation. However, before register 13 transcription complexes were insensitive to TFIIS. These findings are discussed with respect to the structural models for pol II and we propose that TFIIS action is linked to the RNA:DNA hybrid.