“…The RNA polymerase complex is too large to follow the individual helical turns of DNA. Its movement along the template strand, therefore, transiently generates domains of positive and negative supercoiling, respectively, ahead and behind the transcriptional bubble [Wu et al, 1988;Rahmouni and Wells, 1992;Moulin et al, 2005]. These topological changes are significantly stabilized if the transcript encodes a membrane protein [Liu and Wang, 1987;Lodge et al, 1989;Lynch and Wang, 1993], because transcription and co-transcriptional translation are coupled with the insertion of nascent polypeptides into the membrane in bacteria, thereby tethering RNA polymerase to the site of protein translocation [Binenbaum et al, 1999].…”