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The lagging strand is the strand of new DNA whose direction of synthesis is opposite to the direction of the growing replication fork. Because of its orientation, replication of the lagging strand is more complicated as compared to that of the leading strand.
This means that nucleotide synthesis on the leading strand naturally occurs in the 5' to 3' direction. However, the lagging strand runs in the opposite direction and this presents quite a challenge since no known replicative polymerases can synthesise DNA in the 3' to 5' direction.
After around 20 nucleotides, elongation is taken over by Pol ε on the leading strand and Pol δ on the lagging strand. [103] Polymerase δ (Pol δ): Highly processive and has proofreading, 3'->5' exonuclease activity. In vivo, it is the main polymerase involved in both lagging strand and leading strand synthesis. [104]
It is suspected that, in eukaryotes, newly synthesized lagging-strand DNA transiently contains nicks (before being sealed by DNA ligase) and provides a signal that directs mismatch proofreading systems to the appropriate strand. This implies that these nicks must be present in the leading strand, and evidence for this has recently been found. [3]
This asymmetry is due to the formation of the replication fork and its division into nascent leading and lagging strands. The leading strand is synthesized continuously and in juxtapose to the leading strand; the lagging strand is replicated through short fragments of polynucleotide (Okazaki fragments) in a 5' to 3' direction. [6]
One strand, the leading strand, undergoes a continuous replication process since its template strand has 3’ to 5’ directionality, allowing the polymerase assembling the leading strand to follow the replication fork without interruption. The lagging strand, however, cannot be created in a continuous fashion because its template strand has 5 ...
A DNA polymerase is a member of a family of enzymes that catalyze the synthesis of DNA molecules from nucleoside triphosphates, the molecular precursors of DNA.These enzymes are essential for DNA replication and usually work in groups to create two identical DNA duplexes from a single original DNA duplex.
In DNA, the 5' carbon is located at the top of the leading strand, and the 3' carbon is located at the lower section of the lagging strand.The nucleic acid sequences are complementary and parallel, but they go in opposite directions, hence the antiparallel designation. [3]