During transcription, RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) must select the correct nucleotide, catalyze its addition to the growing RNA transcript, and move stepwise along the DNA until a gene is fully transcribed. In all kingdoms of life, transcription must be finely tuned to ensure an appropriate balance between fidelity and speed. Here, we used an optical-trapping assay with high spatiotemporal resolution to probe directly the motion of individual RNAPII molecules as they pass through each of the enzymatic steps of transcript elongation. We report direct evidence that the RNAPII trigger loop, an evolutionarily conserved protein subdomain, serves as a master regulator of transcription, affecting each of the three main phases of elongation, namely: substrate selection, translocation, and catalysis. Global fits to the force-velocity relationships of RNAPII and its trigger loop mutants support a Brownian ratchet model for elongation, where the incoming NTP is able to bind in either the pre-or posttranslocated state, and movement between these two states is governed by the trigger loop. Comparison of the kinetics of pausing by WT and mutant RNAPII under conditions that promote base misincorporation indicate that the trigger loop governs fidelity in substrate selection and mismatch recognition, and thereby controls aspects of both transcriptional accuracy and rate.optical trap | optical tweezers | Pol II T he transcription of genetic information stably encoded in DNA into a transient RNA message occurs with remarkable fidelity. RNA polymerase (RNAP) incorporates nucleotides into nascent RNA chains at rates of 10-70 s −1 (1, 2), but only inserts the wrong nucleotide approximately once per 100,000 bases, on average (3). Although the energetics of base-pairing is fundamental to transcription fidelity, the discrimination for correctly matched nucleotide substrates is kinetically controlled, and accomplished by active site conformational changes centered on the trigger loop (TL) (4-7). The TL is an evolutionarily conserved mobile element that stabilizes substrate NTPs in the active site of a variety of multisubunit RNA polymerases, including eukaryotic RNAP I, II, and III, as well as bacterial and archaeal RNAP (8). In the case of RNAPII, alteration of the TL has important consequences for activity and fidelity. TL residue His1085, for example, interacts with the bound NTP substrate, and is fully conserved among multisubunit RNA polymerases. The importance of this residue is underscored by the lethality of the H1085A substitution in yeast (7) and catalytic defects resulting from substitutions at this position for both the yeast and bacterial enzymes (7, 9-11). Additionally, a substitution for residue Glu1103 of the TL has been found not only to promote nucleotide misincorporation (6, 7), but also to increase the elongation rate (6,7,12), properties that are jointly consistent with the notion of kinetic proofreading (13). To explore further the interplay between elongation rate and transcriptional fidelity, we determined the effec...