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DNA polymerase

American  

noun

  1. any of a class of enzymes involved in the synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid from its deoxyribonucleoside triphosphate precursors.


DNA polymerase Scientific  
  1. Any of various enzymes that function in the replication and repair of DNA by catalyzing the linking of nucleotides in a specific order, using single-stranded DNA as a template.


DNA polymerase Cultural  
  1. An enzyme that assembles new DNA by copying an existing strand.


Etymology

Origin of DNA polymerase

First recorded in 1960–65; polymer + -ase

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Subsequent work suggested that the backsliding and repair machinery had to work quickly and dissipate, or it might collide with DNA polymerase to cause cell-death-inducing breaks in DNA chains.

From Science Daily

To do so, a molecular machine called DNA polymerase ticks down the DNA chain, reading and making a copy of each gene one by one.

From Science Daily

This technique, developed in the 1980s, uses the ability of DNA polymerase chains to synthesize new strands and make billions of copies of the sequences that are unique to the virus.

From Washington Post

Using ϕ29 DNA polymerase proved to be much more efficient: the technique was called multiple displacement amplification.

From Nature

The difficult task was to make the mirror-image enzyme that coordinates the copying process, called DNA polymerase.

From Nature