Rho and NusG suppress pervasive antisense transcription in Escherichia coli [tiling array].

Despite the prevalence of antisense transcripts in bacterial transcriptomes, little is known about how their synthesis is controlled. We report that a major function of the Escherichia coli termination factor Rho and its co-factor NusG is suppression of ubiquitous antisense transcription genome-wide. Rho binds C-rich unstructured nascent RNA (high C/G ratio) prior to its ATP-dependent dissociation of transcription complexes. NusG is required for efficient termination at minority subsets (~20%) of both antisense and sense Rho-dependent terminators with lower C/G ratio sequences. In contrast, a widely studied nusA deletion proposed to compromise Rho-dependent termination had no effect on antisense or sense Rho-dependent terminators in vivo. Global co-localization of the nucleoid-associated protein H-NS with Rho-dependent terminators and genetic interactions between hns and rho suggest that H-NS aids Rho in suppression of antisense transcription. The combined actions of Rho, NusG, and H-NS appear to be analogous to the Sen1-Nrd1-Nab3 and nucleosome systems that suppress antisense transcription in eukaryotes. Tiling expression microarray experiments were performed in cells treated with 20 ug/ml bicyclomycin or cells deleted for nusG, or a partial deletion of nusA. Labeled cDNAs were hybridized to an E. coli K-12 MG1655 tiling array with overlapping probes at ~12bp spacing across the entire genome. The series contains 14 datasets.