Sunday, November 27, 2011

DNA Polymerase and its Conformational Transitions

The abstract of this article explains the conformation transitions in DNA polymerase. DNA polymerase is an enzyme that catalyzes the polymerization of deoxyribonucleotides into a DNA strand. DNA polymerases are best-known for their role in DNA replication, in which the polymerase "reads" an intact DNA strand as a template and uses it to synthesize the new strand. DNA polymerases depend on a series of early steps in the reaction pathway. This allows the selection of the correct nucleotide substrate before the enzyme carries out the chemical step of nucleotide incorporation. The conformational transitions that are involved in these early steps are easily detectable with a variety of fluorescence analysis, which include the fingers-closing transition that has been characterized in structural studies. Scientists have developed a FRET-based assay for the fingers-closing conformational transition that occurs when a binary complex of DNA polymerase I (Klenow fragment) with a primer-template binds a complementary dNTP; they have used this and other fluorescence assays to place the fingers-closing step within the reaction pathway.

Article:

No comments:

Post a Comment