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- *************************************
- * DNA polymerase family X signature *
- *************************************
-
- DNA polymerases (EC 2.7.7.7) can be classified, on the basis of sequence
- similarity [1], into at least four different groups: A, B, C and X. DNA
- polymerases that belong to family X are listed below [2]:
-
- - Vertebrate polymerase beta, involved in DNA repair.
- - Yeast polymerase IV (POL4) [3], an enzyme with similar characteristics to
- that of the mammalian polymerase beta.
- - Terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase (TdT) (EC 2.7.7.31). TdT catalyzes
- the elongation of polydeoxynucleotide chains by terminal addition. One of
- the functions of this enzyme is the addition of nucleotides at the junction
- of rearranged Ig heavy chain and T cell receptor gene segments during the
- maturation of B and T cells.
-
- These enzymes are small (about 40 Kd) compared with other polymerases and
- their reaction mechanism operates via a distributive mode, i.e. they
- dissociate from the template-primer after addition of each nucleotide.
-
- As a signature pattern for this family of DNA polymerases, we selected a
- highly conserved region that contains two conserved arginines and two
- conserved aspartic acid residues. The latter together with the second arginine
- have been shown [4] to be involved in primer binding in polymerase beta.
-
- -Consensus pattern: G-[SG]-[FY]-x-R-G-x(3)-[SGC]-x-D-[LIVM]-D-[LIVMFY](3)-
- x(2)-P
- -Sequences known to belong to this class detected by the pattern: ALL.
- -Other sequence(s) detected in SWISS-PROT: NONE.
- -Last update: June 1994 / Text revised.
-
- [ 1] Ito J., Braithwaite D.K.
- Nucleic Acids Res. 19:4045-4057(1991).
- [ 2] Matsukage A., Nishikawa K., Ooi T., Seto Y., Yamaguchi M.
- J. Biol. Chem. 262:8960-8962(1987).
- [ 3] Prasad R., Widen S.G., Singhal R.K., Watkins J., Prakash L., Wilson S.H.
- Nucleic Acids Res. 21:5301-5307(1993).
- [ 4] Date T., Yamamoto S., Tanihara K., Nishimoto Y., Matsukage A.
- Biochemistry 30:5286-5292(1991).
-