The transcription cycle can be roughly divided into three stages: initiation, elongation, and termination. Understanding the molecular events that regulate all these stages requires a dynamic view of the underlying processes. The development of techniques to visualize and quantify transcription in single living cells has been essential in revealing the transcription kinetics. They have revealed that (a) transcription is heterogeneous between cells and (b) transcription can be discontinuous within a cell. In this review, we discuss the progress in our quantitative understanding of transcription dynamics in living cells, focusing on all parts of the transcription cycle. We present the techniques allowing for single-cell transcription measurements, review evidence from different organisms, and discuss how these experiments have broadened our mechanistic understanding of transcription regulation.

中文翻译：

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活细胞中的转录动力学。

转录周期可以大致分为三个阶段：起始，延伸和终止。了解调节所有这些阶段的分子事件需要动态了解基本过程。可视化和量化单个活细胞中转录的技术的开发对于揭示转录动力学至关重要。他们发现，（a）转录在细胞之间是异质的，（b）转录在细胞内可以是不连续的。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了我们对活细胞中转录动力学的定量理解的进展，重点是转录周期的所有部分。我们介绍了可用于单细胞转录测量的技术，回顾了来自不同生物体的证据，