Talk:Transcription factor

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Regarding the need for revision and use of Template:Confusing

I think this article needs a greater level of detail devoted to framing transcription and transcription factors in their relevant context.

I'm going to annotate the first sentence in order to clarify what sort of information seems missing.

"In molecular biology, a transcription factor is a protein that regulates* the activation** of transcription*** in the eukaryotic nucleus****."

* The word regulates is either ambiguous or inconsistent with the word activation. In this context, does it mean triggers? or maybe schedules?

** Be careful about making references to concepts that have not yet been treated in this article. A stickler would never do it. And a pragmatist would almost never do it, and make sure that exceptions to the rule are at least linked to a wiki article that does explain the concept.

*** When I found this article, I was actually (apparently) looking for an article that defined transcription; this is another good reason to try hard to frame Transcription factor in the context of Transcription. Put another way, it seems like transcription is a process with an end goal (duping dna subsequences out into new proteins?), and like transcription factor is a catalyst or an agent in that effort. I think readers would benefit from seeing some info about the nature of the end goal and what exact role transcription factors play in the pursuit.

**** eh, what? this bullet is redundant with the second one. however, its more critical to address. when I read the word activation, I thought hmmm, hope that gets cleared up... and when I read eukaryotic nucleus, I was ambushed by garbled high school memories of eukaryotes vs prokaryotes vs mitochondria, and my head fell off.

Kierah 23:00, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, first off, regulates is a good word, especially since it is the typical term used in the field to describe the actions of transcription factors. It does regulate the "activation" of transcription. TFs are not truly associated with transcription itself as that is accomplished primarily by the RNA polymerase enzyme. They rather act to control the level of transcription of a particular gene...ie regulating the activation of the gene to produce its protein or other end product. Trigger and schedule are both too narrow as TFs can promote transcription or suppress it. I'll add links in the text to appropriate articles for activation and eukaryotic nuclei as those seem to be unmarked and are better explained in their own articles since this one should focus on how TFs work.Cquan 23:11, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Confusing

The bit about the "transcription factor being a protein that regulates the activation of transcription in the eukaryotic nucleus" is very accurate, though a little abstract. I added a few sentences to try to explain specifically where TFs attach and how they interact with RNA pol and the promoter. There is room for a lot more though. For example, we haven't discussed interactions between TFs and the more distal control elements. Some activators promote transcription by attracting proteins that acetylate the surrounding histones (and some repressors vis-versa). That isn't part of the initiation complex. Cheers Doub1etap 22:33, 1 December 2006 (UTC)