Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Polymerase
Summary
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 DNA 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.
A polymerase may be template dependent or template independent. Poly-A-polymerase is an example of template independent polymerase. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase also known to have template independent and template dependent activities.
DNA polymerase (DNA-directed DNA polymerase, DdDP)
Family A: DNA polymerase I; Pol γ, θ, ν
Family B: DNA polymerase II; Pol α, δ, ε, ζ
Family C: DNA polymerase III holoenzyme
Family X: Pol β, λ, μ
Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TDT), which lends diversity to antibody heavy chains.
Family Y: DNA polymerase IV (DinB) and DNA polymerase V (UmuD'2C) - SOS repair polymerases; Pol η, ι, κ
Reverse transcriptase (RT; RNA-directed DNA polymerase; RdDP)
Telomerase
DNA-directed RNA polymerase (DdRP, RNAP)
Multi-subunit (msDdRP): RNA polymerase I, RNA polymerase II, RNA polymerase III
Single-subunit (ssDdRP): T7 RNA polymerase, POLRMT
Primase, PrimPol
RNA replicase (RNA-directed RNA polymerase, RdRP)
Viral (single-subunit)
Eukaryotic cellular (cRdRP; dual-subunit)
Template-less RNA elongation
Polyadenylation: PAP, PNPase
Polymerases are generally split into two superfamilies, the "right hand" fold () and the "double psi beta barrel" (often simply "double-barrel") fold. The former is seen in almost all DNA polymerases and almost all viral single-subunit polymerases; they are marked by a conserved "palm" domain. The latter is seen in all multi-subunit RNA polymerases, in cRdRP, and in "family D" DNA polymerases found in archaea. The "X" family represented by DNA polymerase beta has only a vague "palm" shape, and is sometimes considered a different superfamily ().
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related courses (8)
BIO-105: Cellular biology and biochemistry for engineers
Basic course in biochemistry as well as cellular and molecular biology for non-life science students enrolling at the Master or PhD thesis level from various engineering disciplines. It reviews essent
BIOENG-110: General Biology
Le but du cours est de fournir un aperçu général de la biologie des cellules et des organismes. Nous en discuterons dans le contexte de la vie des cellules et des organismes, en mettant l'accent sur l
CH-210: Biochemistry
Les constituants biochimiques de l'organisme, protéines, glucides, lipides, à la lumière de l'évolution des concepts et des progrès en biologie moléculaire et génétique, sont étudiés.