In the early 1990s, Jacqueline Barton, the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, discovered an unexpected property of DNA--that it can act like an electrical wire to ...

The cellular replicative DNA polymerases cannot initiate DNA synthesis without a priming 3′ OH. During DNA replication, this is supplied in the context of a short RNA primer molecule synthesized by ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 110, No. 40 (October 1, 2013), pp. 15961-15966 (6 pages) Initiation of DNA synthesis in genomic duplication ...

A protein called DNA primase (tan) begins to replicate DNA when an iron-sulfur cluster within it is oxidized, or loses an electron (blue and purple). Once this primase has made an RNA primer, a ...

The herpes simplex virus (HSV) causes cold sores and genital lesions and with the exception of acyclovir (an inhibitor of the viral DNA polymerase), there are currently no drug treatments available.

March 21, 2012 (San Diego, California) — A novel helicase-primase inhibitor with antiviral activity against the varicella zoster virus might provide an alternative as potent as current treatments for ...