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09/01/2022 1:10 pm
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What is the cause of discontinuous synthesis of DNA on one of the parental strands of DNA? What happens to these short stretches of synthesised DNA?
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09/01/2022 1:11 pm
The DNA-dependent DNA polymerases catalyse polymerisation only in one direction, that is 5′ → 3′. This creates some additional complications at the replicating fork. Consequently, on leading strand (the template with polarity 3′ → 5′), the replication is continuous, while on the lagging strain (the template with polarity 5′ → 3′), it is discontinuous. The discontinuously synthesised fragments are later joined by the enzyme DNA ligase.