during nucleotide excision repair in e. coli which proteins identify the damaged dna
Nucleotide excision repair The process of nucleotide excision repair is controlled in Escherichia coli by the UvrABC endonuclease enzyme complex, which consists of four Uvr proteins: UvrA, UvrB, UvrC, and DNA helicase II (sometimes also known as UvrD in this complex). First, a UvrA-UvrB complex scans the DNA, with the UvrA subunit recognizing distortions in the helix, caused for example by pyrimidine dimers. When the complex recognizes such a distortion, the UvrA subunit leaves and an UvrC protein comes in and binds to the UvrB monomer and, hence, forms a new UvrBC dimer. UvrB cleaves a phosphodiester bond 4 nucleotides downstream of the DNA damage, and the UvrC cleaves a phosphodiester bond 8 nucleotides upstream of the DNA damage and created 12 nucleotide excised segment. DNA helicase II (sometimes called UvrD) then comes in and removes the excised segment by actively breaking the hydrogen bonds between the complementary bases. The resultant gap is then filled in using DNA polymerase I and DNA ligase. The basic excision process is very similar in higher cells, but these cells usually involve many more proteins â€“ E.coli is a simple example.[5]
Origin of replication The genome of E. coli consists of a single circular DNA molecule of approximately 4.6 x 106 nucleotide pairs. DNA replication typically begins at a single origin of replication. In E. coli, the origin of replication—oriC—consists of three A–T rich 13-mer repeats and four 9-mer repeats. Ten to 20 monomers of the replication initiator protein DnaA bind to the 9-mer repeats, and the DNA coils around this protein complex forming a protein core. This coiling stimulates the AT rich region in the 13-mer sequence to unwind, allowing the helicase loader DnaC to load the replicative helicase DnaB to each of the two unwound DNA strands. The helicase DnaB forms the basis of the primosome, a complex of enzymes to which DNA polymerase III is recruited before replication can occur .[8]