Polymerase
Structure of Taq DNA polymerase
A polymerase is an enzyme (EC 2.7.7.6/7/19/48/49) that synthesizes long chains of polymers or nucleic acids. DNA polymerase and RNA polymerase are used to assemble DNA and RNA molecules, respectively, by copying a DNA template strand using base-pairing interactions or RNA by half ladder replication.
A polymerase from the thermophilic bacterium, Thermus aquaticus (Taq) (PDB 1BGX, EC 2.7.7.7) is used in the polymerase chain reaction, an important technique of molecular biology.
Other well-known polymerases include:
- Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase (TDT), which lends diversity to antibody heavy chains.[1]
- Reverse Transcriptase, an enzyme used by RNA retroviruses like HIV, which is used to create a complementary strand to the preexisting strand of viral RNA before it can be integrated into the DNA of the host cell. It is also a major target for antiviral drugs.
See also
- DNA polymerase
- DNA polymerase I
- DNA polymerase II
- DNA polymerase III holoenzyme
- DNA polymerase IV (DinB) – SOS repair polymerase
- DNA polymerase V (UmuD'2C) - SOS repair polymerase
- RNA polymerase
References
- ↑ Loc'h, Jérôme. "Structural Basis for a New Templated Activity by Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase: Implications for V(D)J Recombination". Structure. 24: 1452–1463. doi:10.1016/j.str.2016.06.014. Retrieved 2017-06-24.
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