You prepare bacterial cell extracts by lysing the cells and…
You prepare bacterial cell extracts by lysing the cells and removing insoluble debris via centrifugation. These extracts provide the proteins required for DNA replication. Your DNA template is a small, double-stranded circular piece of DNA (a plasmid) with a single origin of replication and a single replication termination site. The termination site is on the opposite side of the plasmid from the origin (figure below). You decide to use different bacterial strains (each having one protein of the replication machinery mutated) in order to examine the role of individual proteins in the normal process of DNA replication. What part of the DNA replication process would be most directly affected if a strain of bacteria lacking primase were used to make the cell extracts?
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