The mechanism of DNA replication primer synthesis by RNA polymerase

Nikolay Zenkin (), Tatyana Naryshkina, Konstantin Kuznedelov and Konstantin Severinov ()
Additional contact information
Nikolay Zenkin: Waksman Institute
Tatyana Naryshkina: Waksman Institute
Konstantin Kuznedelov: Waksman Institute
Konstantin Severinov: Waksman Institute

Nature, 2006, vol. 439, issue 7076, 617-620

Abstract: DNA branches out Accurate DNA replication is vital to reproduction in all living organisms. Three papers in this issue and a new Web Focus ( http://tinyurl.com/e3ecg ) present answers to long-standing questions about what goes on at DNA replication forks to ensure this accuracy. Heller and Marians throw light on the fact that even heavily damaged DNA is replicated at high speed. They find that bacterial replication restart systems can prime both leading and lagging DNA strands via DnaG primase. This contradicts the accepted view that leading-strand synthesis is necessarily continuous, and may force a re-evaluation of models for initiation of chromosome replication. Zenkin et al. tackled the mystery of how a short transcript synthesized by RNA polymerase can serve as a primer for DNA replication. The answer lies in a previously unknown transcription elongation complex that may also link DNA replication and transcription machineries. And Lee et al. tackled the matter of how the very different processes taking place on leading and lagging DNA strands are synchronized. As primer synthesis proceeds, DNA primase acts as a molecular brake on the leading-strand polymerase during slow enzymatic steps on the lagging strand.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04337 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:439:y:2006:i:7076:d:10.1038_nature04337

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature04337

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().