Helicase:
Helicase is a class of enzymes vital to all
living organisms. Their main function is to unzip an organism's genes.
Helicases are often used to separate strands of a DNA double helix or a
self-annealed RNA molecule
using the energy from ATP hydrolysis,
a process characterized by the breaking of hydrogen bonds between annealed nucleotide bases.
They also
function to remove nucleic acid-associated proteins and catalyse
homologous DNA recombination. Metabolic
processes of RNA such as translation, transcription, ribosome biogenesis, RNA splicing, RNA
transport, RNA editing, and RNA
degradation are all facilitated by helicases. Helicases move incrementally
along one nucleic acid strand of
the duplex with a directionality and processivity specific
to each particular enzyme.
DNA Polymerase III:
Being the
primary holoenzyme involved
in replication activity, the DNA Polymerase III has proofreading capabilities
that correct replication mistakes by means of exonuclease activity
working 3'→5'(read in this direction). DNA Polymerase III is a component of the replisome, which is
located at the replication fork.
DNA Polymerase I:
In the
replication process, DNA Polymerase I removes the RNA primer
(created by Primase) from the lagging strand and fills
in the necessary nucleotides between the Okazaki fragments in 5'
-> 3' direction, proofreading for mistakes as it goes.
It is a
template-dependent enzyme - it only adds nucleotides that correctly base pair with an
existing DNA strand acting as a template.
RNA Primase:
RNA Primase is a
type of RNA polymerase, which creates
an RNA primer. DNA polymerase
uses the RNA primer to replicate ssDNA.
Primase
catalyses the synthesis of a short RNA segment called a primer complementary
to a ssDNA template.
Primase is of key importance in DNA replication because no
known DNA polymerases can
initiate the synthesis of a DNA strand
without an initial RNA primer.
The RNA segments
are first elongated by DNA polymerase and then synthesized by primase.
Ligase:
Ligase is
an enzyme that can
catalyse the joining of two large molecules by forming a new chemical bond, usually with
accompanying hydrolysis of a small
chemical group dependent to one of the larger molecules or the enzyme
catalysing the linking together of two compounds, such as enzymes.
No comments:
Post a Comment