Correction to: Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-022-00474-x, published online 22 April 2022.

In the sentence, ‘During transcription, the nascent RNA very transiently anneals to the DNA template within the active site of the RNA polymerase…’, the word ‘transcription’ now replaces the erroneous ‘replication’. This mistake has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.