Please Help me! - DNA stuff.?

Question

What type of chemical reaction is responsible for the polymerization of DNA?
What type of chemical reaction is responsible for the breakdown of a nucleic acid polymer?

I can't seem to find these anywhere, please Help! Thanks = )

Answer 1

iirc, both are hydrolytic reactions

Answer 2

DNA replication is more accurately described as polymerization. The enzyme which catalyzes this polymerization is called, not surprisingly, DNA polymerase. So, it is a reaction that is catalyzed by an enzyme.

There are a number of ways that lead to the breakdown of nucleic acid polymer. Some are chemical, some require a reaction catalyzed by an enzyme, and some are just forms of high-energy waves (like ultraviolet rays or microwave). So the question is a bit vague and can be answered many ways.

Answer 3

DNA is structurally a double helix, so it has 2 strands. on your answer, line a million is the 1st strand, and line 2 is the 2d strand. %. a sort of strains and circle it. next, ribosomes will "examine" the DNA strand and create mRNA from it. it quite is carried out in a similar way as your answer to the 1st question, different than that RNA has "U" instead of "T" (so the 4 nucleotides are A U C G). So your answer would be the two: G G G T T C G A A C C C A A G C U U or C C C A A G C T T G G G U U C G A A

Answer 4

There is a site called ASK -formerly ask jeeves- you can ask questions not just word search This is what I got If you need more go to ASK


Inhibition of DNA polymerization and DNA transcription to RNA by seminal plasma peptides.


An oligopeptide fraction purified from the extracellular compartment of bull semen and strongly interacting with DNA was shown to hinder mononucleotide polymerizations to DNA and RNA in vitro. The fraction, collectively called seminal plasma inhibitor, was active in the endogenous DNA and RNA polymerase reactions of the nuclei from rat hepatocytes and in the analogous nucleotide polymerizations catalyzed by purified enzymes of bacterial origin. The type of the induced inhibition was studied using the RNA polymerase from Escherichia coli as a representative nucleotidyl transferase. In the enzymatic polycondensation of mononucleotides, the seminal plasma inhibitor appeared to exert its effect mainly by a competitive inhibition for the utilization of DNA templates without specificity with respect to the source and the base sequence of DNA. Concavities of the plots of V0/Vi versus the amounts of inhibitor in the nucleotide polymerizing reactions and of the Dixon plots in the assays of RNA polymerase from E. coli suggested that the isolated oligopeptide fraction contained more than one active molecular species with differential effects at low and high doses. Preliminary results on the microheterogeneity of the seminal plasma inhibitor supported this contention.

http://homepages.ius.edu/GKIRCHNE/biomolec.htm

Answer 5

Hi. Search for 'PCR' or 'polymerase chain reaction'. Good luck.