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Portraits of a Y‐family DNA polymerase
Author(s) -
Yang Wei
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2004.11.047
Subject(s) - dna polymerase , processivity , polymerase , genetics , dna clamp , biology , dna polymerase ii , dna , dna polymerase mu , primase , dna replication , microbiology and biotechnology , circular bacterial chromosome , polymerase chain reaction , reverse transcriptase , gene
Members of the Y‐family of DNA polymerases catalyze template‐dependent DNA synthesis but share no sequence homology with other known DNA polymerases. Y‐family polymerases exhibit high error rates and low processivity when copying normal DNA but are able to synthesize DNA opposite damaged templates. In the past three years, much has been learned about this family of polymerases including determination of more than a dozen crystal structures with various substrates. In this short review, I will summarize the biochemical properties and structural features of Y‐family DNA polymerases.