Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Polymerase

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Polymerase

A polymerase is an enzyme (EC 2.7.7.6/7/19/48/49) that synthesizes long chains or polymers of nucleic acids. DNA polymerase and RNA polymerase are used to assemble DNA and RNA molecules, respectively, by copying a DNA or RNA template strand using base-pairing interactions.

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
  • 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.

    • References

    Polymerase Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA