DNA is fundamentally important for all cellular organisms due to its role as a store of hereditary genetic information. The precise and accurate regulation of gene transcription depends primarily on promoters, which vary significantly within and between genomes. Some promoters are rich in specific types of bases, while others have more varied, complex sequence characteristics. However, it is not only base sequence but also epigenetic modifications and altered DNA structure that regulate promoter activity. Significantly, many promoters across all organisms contain sequences that can form intrastrand hairpins (cruciforms) or four-stranded structures (G-quadruplex or i-motif). In this review we integrate recent studies on promoter regulation that highlight the importance of DNA structure in the evolutionary adaptation of promoter sequences.

Department of Biology and Ecology Institute of Environmental Technologies Faculty of Science University of Ostrava 710 00 Ostrava Czech Republic

Institute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences Královopolská 135 612 65 Brno Czech Republic

School of Biological Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich Research Park Norwich NR4 7TJ UK

References provided by Crossref.org

Non-canonical DNA in human and other ape telomere-to-telomere genomes

Non-canonical DNA in human and other ape telomere-to-telomere genomes

The presence of a G-quadruplex prone sequence upstream of a minimal promoter increases transcriptional activity in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

G-quadruplex ligands as potent regulators of lysosomes

Impacts of Molecular Structure on Nucleic Acid-Protein Interactions

Searching for New Z-DNA/Z-RNA Binding Proteins Based on Structural Similarity to Experimentally Validated Zα Domain