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Under the hood of the replisome: A single‐molecule view of DNA replication
Author(s) -
Van Oijen Antoine M
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.22.1_supplement.261.1
Subject(s) - replisome , dna , context (archaeology) , dna replication , biophysics , computational biology , replication (statistics) , eukaryotic dna replication , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , nanotechnology , genetics , materials science , paleontology , virology
Advances in optical imaging and molecular manipulation techniques have made it possible to observe individual enzymes and record molecular movies that provide new insight into their dynamics and reaction mechanisms. In a biological context, most of these enzymes function in concert with other enzymes in multiprotein complexes, so an important future direction will be the utilization of single‐molecule techniques to unravel the orchestration of large macromolecular assemblies. I will discuss results of single‐molecule experiments on the replisome, the molecular machinery that is responsible for replication of DNA. We stretch individual DNA molecules and use their elastic properties to obtain dynamic information on the proteins that unwind the double helix and copy its genetic information. Furthermore, we use fluorescence microscopy to obtain detailed information about the spatial distribution of eukaryotic replication origins along DNA.