The purpose function of intrinsic termination is to signal for the dissociation of the ternary elongation complex (TEC), ending the transcript. Intrinsic termination independent of the protein Rho, as opposed to Rho-dependent termination, where the bacterial Rho protein comes in and acts on the RNA polymerase, causing it to dissociate. Here, there is no extra protein and the transcript forms its own loop structure. Intrinsic termination thus regulates the level of transcription as well, determining how many Polymerase can transcribe a gene over a given period of time, and can help prevent interactions with neighboring chromosomes.