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The replication fork is a structure that forms within the long helical DNA during DNA replication. It is produced by enzymes called helicases that break the hydrogen bonds that hold the DNA strands together in a helix. The resulting structure has two branching "prongs", each one made up of a single strand of DNA.
A DNA polymerase is a member of a family of enzymes that catalyze the synthesis of DNA molecules from nucleoside triphosphates, the molecular precursors of DNA. These enzymes are essential for DNA replication and usually work in groups to create two identical DNA duplexes from a single original DNA duplex. During this process, DNA polymerase ...
DNA is a duplex formed by two anti-parallel strands. Following Meselson-Stahl, the process of DNA replication is semi-conservative, whereby during replication the original DNA duplex is separated into two daughter strands (referred to as the leading and lagging strand templates). Each daughter strand becomes part of a new DNA duplex.
The major enzymatic functions carried out at the replication fork are well conserved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, but the replication machinery in eukaryotic DNA replication is a much larger complex, coordinating many proteins at the site of replication, forming the replisome.
In both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, replication is accomplished by unwinding the DNA by an enzyme called the DNA helicase. New strands are created by enzymes called DNA polymerases. Both of these follow a similar pattern, called semi-conservative replication, in which individual strands of DNA are produced in different directions, which makes a ...
In technology, these sequence-specific nucleases are used in molecular cloning and DNA fingerprinting. Enzymes called DNA ligases can rejoin cut or broken DNA strands. [130] Ligases are particularly important in lagging strand DNA replication, as they join the short segments of DNA produced at the replication fork into a complete copy of the ...
Because the binding of the polymerase to the template is the rate-limiting step in DNA synthesis [citation needed], the overall rate of DNA replication during S phase of the cell cycle is dependent on the processivity of the DNA polymerases performing the replication. DNA clamp proteins are integral components of the DNA replication machinery ...
A distinct group of DNA-binding proteins are the DNA-binding proteins that specifically bind single-stranded DNA. In humans, replication protein A is the best-understood member of this family and is used in processes where the double helix is separated, including DNA replication, recombination and DNA repair. [18]