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EntityQ408483· pop 30· linked from 226 articles

DNA ligase

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Also known as DNA ligases

class of enzymes

Key facts

Ec no
6.5.1.1
Cas no
9015-85-4
Intenz
IntEnz view
Brenda
BRENDA entry
Expasy
NiceZyme view
Kegg
KEGG entry
Metacyc
metabolic pathway
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profile
Pdb structures
RCSB PDB PDBe PDBsum
Gene ontology
AmiGO / QuickGO
Pmc
articles
Pubmed
articles
Ncbi
proteins

via Wikipedia infobox

~14 min read

Encyclopedic overview

DNA ligase is a type of enzyme that facilitates the joining of DNA strands together by catalyzing the formation of a phosphodiester bond. It plays a role in repairing single-strand breaks in duplex DNA in living organisms, but some forms (such as DNA ligase IV) may specifically repair double-strand breaks (i.e. a break in both complementary strands of DNA). Single-strand breaks are repaired by DNA ligase using the complementary strand of the double helix as a template, with DNA ligase creating the final phosphodiester bond to fully repair the DNA.

DNA ligase is used in both DNA repair and DNA replication (see Mammalian ligases). In addition, DNA ligase has extensive use in molecular biology laboratories for recombinant DNA experiments (see Research applications). Purified DNA ligase is used in gene cloning to join DNA molecules together to form recombinant DNA.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “DNA ligase” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.