The effects of rapid acute depletion of components of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) general transcription factors (GTFs) that are thought to be critical for formation of preinitiation complexes (PICs) and initiation in vitro were quantified in HAP1 cells using precision nuclear run-on sequencing (PRO-Seq). The average dependencies for each factor across >70 000 promoters varied widely even though levels of depletions were similar. Some of the effects could be attributed to the presence or absence of core promoter elements such as the upstream TBP-specificity motif or downstream G-rich sequences, but some dependencies anti-correlated with such sequences. While depletion of TBP had a large effect on most Pol III promoters only a small fraction of Pol II promoters were similarly affected. TFIIB depletion had the largest general effect on Pol II and also correlated with apparent termination defects downstream of genes. Our results demonstrate that promoter activity is combinatorially influenced by recruitment of TFIID and sequence-specific transcription factors. They also suggest that interaction of the preinitiation complex (PIC) with nucleosomes can affect activity and that recruitment of TFIID containing TBP only plays a positive role at a subset of promoters.
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.