(Phys.org) —A key feature of certain chemicals is their ability to bind to other molecules – a property that emerged through evolution – but current chemical theory lacks the ability to design binders from first principles. ...
In a new Nature Communications study, researchers have explored the construction of genetic circuits on single DNA molecules, demonstrating localized protein synthesis as a guiding principle for dissipative nanodevices, offering ...
An international team of scientists has recently developed a novel type of nano engine made of DNA. It is driven by a clever mechanism and can perform pulsing movements. The researchers are now planning to fit it with a coupling ...
Bio & Medicine
Oct 19, 2023
0
793
Modern medicine depends on antibiotics to treat infections by disabling targets inside bacterial cells. Once inside these cells, antibiotics bind to certain sites on specific enzyme targets to stop bacterial growth. Randomly ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 30, 2023
0
47
Cambridge researchers have developed a new test that "fishes" for multiple respiratory viruses at once using single strands of DNA as bait and gives highly accurate results in under an hour.
Bio & Medicine
Jan 16, 2023
0
67
Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Jun 11, 2021
39
12351
New research has identified and described a cellular process that, despite what textbooks say, has remained elusive to scientists until now—precisely how the copying of genetic material that, once started, is properly turned ...
Cell & Microbiology
Nov 26, 2020
8
1789
On the evolutionary tree, humans diverged from yeast roughly 1 billion years ago. By comparison, two seemingly similar species of bacteria, Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis, have been evolving apart for roughly twice ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Sep 3, 2020
1
75
Researchers at the University of Toronto have shown that an enzyme called RNA polymerase (Pol) II drives generation of the building blocks of ribosomes, the molecular machines that manufacture all proteins in cells based ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Jul 15, 2020
0
309
If you had to copy billions of letters from one sheet of paper to another, you'd probably make a few mistakes. So it might not come as a surprise that when DNA makes a copy of its three-billion-base genetic code, it can slip ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 31, 2018
0
506
A polymerase (EC 2.7.7.6/7/19/48/49) is an enzyme whose central function is associated with polymers of nucleic acids such as RNA and DNA. The primary function of a polymerase is the polymerization of new DNA or RNA against an existing DNA or RNA template in the processes of replication and transcription. In association with a cluster of other enzymes and proteins, they take nucleotides from solvent, and catalyse the synthesis of a polynucleotide sequence against a nucleotide template strand using base-pairing interactions.
It is an accident of history that the enzymes responsible for the catalytic production of other biopolymers are not also referred to as polymerases.
One particular polymerase, from the thermophilic bacterium, Thermus aquaticus (Taq) (PDB 1BGX, EC 2.7.7.7) is of vital commercial importance due to its use in the polymerase chain reaction, a widely used technique of molecular biology.
Other well-known polymerases include:
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
