The story of promoter specificity and control of transcription begins with the discovery of bacterial cr factors. The demonstration that different batteries of cellular and viral genes are selectively transcribed by a cascade of ~r factors in Bacillus subtilis established the paradigm for promoter recognition in prokaryotes (Losick and Stragier 1992). It was with this background that early investigators began to search for promoter-selective or gene-specific transcription factors in eu-karyotic cells. Although there was rapid progress in defining the basic requirements of all three classes of RNA polymerase, we primarily restrict the discussion here to experiments dealing with mRNA transcription by RNA pol II. After overcoming the initial technical difficulties of
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Tanese et al. (1993) studied this question.