Intrinsic termination is cued by signals directly encoded in the DNA and RNA. Signal appears in as a hairpin and is followed by 8 Uridines at the 3' end. This leads to a rapid dissociation of the elongation complex . Hairpin inactivates and destabilizes the TEC by weakening interactions in the RNA-DNA binding site and other sites that hold this complex together. The pausing induced by the stretch of uracils is important and provides time for hairpin formation. In absence of U-tract, hair pin formation does not result in efficient termination, indicating its importance in this process.
The elongation destabilization process occurs in four steps
# as RNA Polymerase transcribes the final nucleotides of the terminator U-tract, it pauses at end of U-tract, favoring the termination pathway in the kinetic competition between elongation and termination
# Terminator hairpin (Thp) Nucleation
#  hairpin completion and elongation complex inactivation
# elongation complex dissociation A complete mechanism is likely to involve specific interactions of the polymerase, the RNA terminator hairpin, and dT-rich template sequences.