Illuminating a critical step in initiating DNA replication in eukaryotes
The research teams of Brandt Eichman, Professor and Chair of Biological Sciences and Professor of Biochemistry, and Walter Chazin, Professor of Biochemistry, worked together to understand how DNA replication is initiated in eukaryotes. Using Vanderbilt’s state-of-the-art instrumentation in the Center for Structural Biology’s Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility, Eichman, Chazin, and their colleagues provided detailed visualizations of DNA polymerase α–primase, the multifunctional protein responsible for synthesis of RNA-DNA primers needed for genome duplication humans, in action.
Eichman and Chazin’s reflections on this research can be found here.
The paper “A mechanistic model of primer synthesis from catalytic structures of DNA polymerase α–primase” was published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology on March 15, 2024.