English

Nucleotide insertion initiated by van der Waals interaction during polymerase beta DNA replication

Chemical Physics 2013-11-25 v5 Biological Physics

Abstract

We give unambiguous theoretical analyses and show that the exclusive biochemical reaction involved in a single nucleotide insertion into the DNA primer can be efficiently tracked using the renormalized van der Waals (vdW) interaction of a stronger type, the Hermansson blue-shifting hydrogen bond effect, and the Arunan composite hydrogen-vdW bond. We find that there are two biochemical steps involved to complete the insertion of a single base (cytosine) into the 3' end of a DNA primer. First, the O3' (from a DNA primer) initiates the nucleophilic attack on Pα_{\alpha} (from an incoming dCTP), in response, O3α_{\alpha} (bonded to Pα_{\alpha}) interacts with H' (bonded to O3'). These interactions are shown to be strongly interdependent and require the forming and breaking of P---O and H---O covalent bonds, which in turn imply that we do not need any external energy supply.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1109.1259,
  title  = {Nucleotide insertion initiated by van der Waals interaction during polymerase beta DNA replication},
  author = {Andrew Das Arulsamy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.1259},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

To be published in Journal of Chemical Sciences (Bangalore)