What helps to hold DNA strands apart while they are being replicated?
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Replication occurs differently on antiparallel strands of DNA. The process starts with a short strand of DNA that binds by pairing its nucleotide bases to those in the DNA strand to be replicated. This "primer" has an exposed sugar molecule at its end. From there on, DNA polymerase can continuously synthesize the growing complementary strand. This strand of DNA is called the leading strand. A nice little animation of DNA synthesis on the leading strand can be seen at the Nobel Prize e-museum site athttp://www.nobel.se/medicine/educational/dna/a/replication/replication_ani.html. On the complementary side of the DNA molecule, the primer would have a phosphate not a sugar at its exposed end; new nucleotides can only join to a sugar end. To get around this problem, this strand is synthesized in small pieces backward from the overall direction of replication. This strand is called the lagging strand. The short segments of newly assembled DNA from which the lagging strand is built are called Okazaki fragments. As replication proceeds and nucleotides are added to the sugar end of the Okazaki fragments, they come to meet each other. The whole thing is then stitched together by another enzyme called DNA ligase. The Nobel e-museum also has an animation of this process at http://www.nobel.se/medicine/educational/dna/a/replication/lagging_ani.html . Figure 2 Replication occurs simultaneously at multiple places along a DNA strand. Because human DNA is so very long (with up to 80 million base pairs in a chromosome) it unzips at multiple places along its length so that the replication process is going on simultaneously at hundreds of places along the length of the chain. Eventually these areas run together to form a complete chain. In humans, DNA is copied at about50base pairs per second. The process would take a month (rather than the hour it actually does) without these multiple places on the chromosome where replication can begin. DNA replication is extraordinarily accurate. DNA polymerase makes very few errors, and most of those that are made are quickly corrected by DNA polymerase and other enzymes that "proofread" the nucleotides added into the new DNA strand. If a newly added nucleotide is not complementary to the one on the template strand, these enzymes remove the nucleotide and replace it with the correct one. With this system, a cell's DNA iscopied with less than one mistake in a billion nucleotides. This is equal to a person copying 100 large (1000 page) dictionaries word for word, and symbol for symbol, with only one error for the whole process! Figure 1)
http://www.genome.gov/Pages/Hyperion//DIR/VIP/Glossary/Illustration/dna_replication.shtml What keeps the strands separate during replication?First, a so-called initiator protein unwinds a short stretch of the DNA double helix. Then, a protein known as helicase attaches to and breaks apart the hydrogen bonds between the bases on the DNA strands, thereby pulling apart the two strands.
What holds open in DNA replication?Single-strand binding proteins bind to the single-stranded DNA near the replication fork to keep the fork open.
Which enzyme keeps the strands apart?So, the correct answer is 'Helicase'.
What holds the two new strands of DNA apart at the replication fork?Helicases are enzymes that bind and may even remodel nucleic acid or nucleic acid protein complexes. There are DNA and RNA helicases. DNA helicases are essential during DNA replication because they separate double-stranded DNA into single strands allowing each strand to be copied.
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