Year
2012
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
School of Chemistry
Recommended Citation
Lo, Allen Tak Yiu, Protein dynamics on the lagging strand during DNA synthesis, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Chemistry, University of Wollongong, 2012. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3684
Abstract
DNA replication is one of the vital processes in the cell; it duplicates chromosomal DNA before a cell divides. In all organisms, DNA synthesis on the leading-strand template occurs continuously, whereas on the lagging strand a different mechanism is required. Due to the anti-parallel structure of double-stranded DNA, lagging-strand synthesis requires repeated RNA priming by a specialist primase and synthesis of short Okazaki fragments. How proteins carry out this dynamic process is still unknown. For Escherichia coli DNA replication, a lagging-strand three-point switch was proposed in 1999 to explain priming by DnaG primase while it is associated with the DnaB6 helicase, and its subsequent hand-off from the primer to the χ subunit of DNA polymerase III holenzyme to enable primer utilization for Okazaki fragment synthesis. The main aims of this project were to study the interactions involved in this switch to understand better how the proteins coordinate their roles during lagging-strand DNA synthesis.
FoR codes (2008)
060101 Analytical Biochemistry, 060106 Cellular Interactions (incl. Adhesion, Matrix, Cell Wall), 060107 Enzymes, 060112 Structural Biology (incl. Macromolecular Modelling)
Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Wollongong.