The promoter site and the terminator site for transcription are located at: (a) 3' (downstream) end and 5' (up

NCERT Exemplar · Q6

Q. The promoter site and the terminator site for transcription are located at:

(a) 3' (downstream) end and 5' (upstream) end, respectively of the transcription unit

(b) 5' (upstream) end and 3' (downstream) end, respectively of the transcription unit

(d) the 3' (downstream) end

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Concept understanding — Template Strand Transcription

Template Strand Transcription: A First Look

Imagine you have a master recipe book written in a language only the head chef can read. To share a recipe with the kitchen staff, you don't hand them the original book — you make a working copy on a separate sheet, using the original as your guide. That original page you read from is the template. The copy you produce is the transcript.

In a cell, the master recipe book is DNA. It holds all the instructions for making proteins, which do almost everything in your body. But DNA never leaves the nucleus — it's too precious and too large. So the cell makes a temporary, portable copy of a specific instruction. That copy is called messenger RNA (mRNA).

The process of making this mRNA copy is transcription. And the strand of DNA that is actually read to make the copy is called the template strand.

The Precise Meaning

DNA is a double helix — two strands twisted together. During transcription, the cell unzips a small section of this helix. Only one of the two strands serves as the blueprint. That strand is the template strand. The other strand, called the coding strand (or non-template strand), is not read — it just sits there, matching the sequence of the mRNA that gets made (with one chemical difference: DNA uses T, RNA uses U).

So the template strand is the actual DNA sequence that RNA polymerase (the enzyme that does the copying) reads and uses to build a complementary mRNA molecule.

Note

Think of the template strand as the negative of a photograph. The mRNA is the print made from that negative. The coding strand is like a second print that happens to look almost identical to the final photo — but it wasn't used to make it.

Why It Matters

Accuracy: The cell must read the correct strand. If it read the wrong one, the mRNA would be nonsense and the protein would be wrong or non-functional.
Direction: RNA polymerase reads the template strand in the 3' to 5' direction, and builds mRNA in the 5' to 3' direction. This is a fixed rule — like reading a sentence left to right.
Gene regulation: Which strand is the template for a given gene is fixed. But different genes on the same DNA molecule may use different strands as their template. So a single stretch of DNA can contain genes pointing in opposite directions.

A Simple Example

Suppose a short stretch of DNA has these two strands:

Strand A: ATGCGT
Strand B: TACGCA

If Strand A is the template, the mRNA made will be complementary to it: UACGCA (remember, U replaces T in RNA).

If Strand B is the template, the mRNA will be complementary to B: AUGCGU.

The two mRNAs are completely different. So the cell must know, for each gene, which strand is the template. That information is encoded in the DNA sequence itself — in the promoter region that tells RNA polymerase where to start and which way to go.

Important

The template strand is not the same as the coding strand. The mRNA sequence is identical to the coding strand (with U instead of T), but it is complementary to the template strand. This is a common confusion — the mRNA looks like the coding strand, but it was built from the template strand.

What NCERT Says …

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In a transcription unit, the promoter is at the 5' (upstream) end and the terminator is at the 3' (downstream) end, relative to the direction of transcription.

To understand this, you need to picture the DNA strand that actually gets copied into RNA — the template strand. Transcription always proceeds in the 5' → 3' direction along the growing RNA chain, which means the RNA polymerase moves along the template strand from its 3' end toward its 5' end. But the positions of the promoter and terminator are defined relative to the start and end of the transcription unit on the DNA.

The promoter is the binding site for RNA polymerase. It lies just before the gene that will be transcribed — that is, on the 5' side of the transcription unit when you look at the coding strand (the non-template strand). In terms of the template strand, the promoter is located upstream of the transcription start site. "Upstream" means toward the 5' end of the coding strand, which corresponds to the 3' end of the template strand. But the NCERT convention is simpler: the promoter is at the 5' (upstream) end of the transcription unit.

The terminator is the signal that tells RNA polymerase to stop. It lies just after the gene — on the 3' side of the transcription unit. So it is at the 3' (downstream) end of the transcription unit.

Important

The NCERT textbook clearly states: "The promoter is located towards the 5' end (upstream) of the structural gene... The terminator is located at the 3' end (downstream) of the structural gene." This is a direct, exam-relevant fact. …

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Q.The promoter site and the terminator site for transcription are located at:

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