Pervasive transcription in yeast: from biochemistry to genomics

In the last ten years or so it has become clear that transcription occurs largely outside of annotated regions, which produces a wealth of non-coding RNAs, some of which are rapidly degraded. The pervasive occurrence of transcription in most genomes underscores the notion that DNA is a crowded environment where many different machineries coordinate to read, replicate and repair the information stored. Interferences between transcription and other DNA associated processes, or between concomitant transcription events are potentially disruptive. Transcription termination is also one of the main strategies that the cell employs to control pervasive/hidden transcription. I will present our work on the mechanisms of transcription termination and on the function of the latter in the maintenance of the stability of the transcriptome.