Polymerase

Structure of Taq DNA polymerase

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 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.

Other well-known polymerases include:

• Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase (TDT), which lends diversity to antibody heavy chains.
• Reverse Transcriptase, an enzyme used by RNA retroviruses like HIV, which is used to create a complementary strand to the preexisting strand of viral RNA before it can be integrated into the DNA of the host cell. It is also a major target for antiviral drugs.

See also

• DNA polymerase
  • DNA polymerase I
  • DNA polymerase II
  • DNA polymerase III holoenzyme
  • DNA polymerase IV (DinB) – SOS repair polymerase
  • DNA polymerase V (UmuD'2C) - SOS repair polymerase
• RNA polymerase
  • RNA polymerase I
  • RNA polymerase II
  • RNA polymerase III
  • T7 RNA polymerase