Related topics: cancer cells · chromosomes · dna damage

How does a bacterium know it's time to split apart?

Bacterial cells do not wake up one morning and decide to become parents. But there is a point in their cell cycle—after growing sufficiently and replicating their genomes—when they split in two, creating new cells that ...

What makes a pathogen antibiotic-resistant?

Antimicrobial resistance is a story of constantly moving parts and players. With every new or tweaked antibiotic or antimicrobial drug, the targeted pathogens begin the evolutionary dance of acquiring resistance, prompting ...

New insights in the regulation of genetic information exchange

Within every cell in our body, our DNA is tightly bundled with proteins to form structures known as chromosomes. The commonly known shape of a chromosome relates to an X-shaped appearance in many organisms. The formation ...

New tool reveals gene behavior in bacteria

Bacterial infections cause millions of deaths each year, with the global threat made worse by the increasing resistance of the microbes to antibiotic treatments. This is due in part to the ability of bacteria to switch genes ...

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DNA replication

DNA replication, the basis for biological inheritance, is a fundamental process occurring in all living organisms to copy their DNA. This process is "semiconservative" in that each strand of the original double-stranded DNA molecule serves as template for the reproduction of the complementary strand. Hence, following DNA replication, two identical DNA molecules have been produced from a single double-stranded DNA molecule. Cellular proofreading and error-checking mechanisms ensure near perfect fidelity for DNA replication.

In a cell, DNA replication begins at specific locations in the genome, called "origins". Unwinding of DNA at the origin, and synthesis of new strands, forms a replication fork. In addition to DNA polymerase, the enzyme that synthesizes the new DNA by adding nucleotides matched to the template strand, a number of other proteins are associated with the fork and assist in the initiation and continuation of DNA synthesis.

DNA replication can also be performed in vitro (outside a cell). DNA polymerases, isolated from cells, and artificial DNA primers are used to initiate DNA synthesis at known sequences in a template molecule. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a common laboratory technique, employs such artificial synthesis in a cyclic manner to amplify a specific target DNA fragment from a pool of DNA.

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