In: Anatomy and Physiology
The E. coli chromosome contains 4,639,221 bp.
(a) How many turns of the double helix must be unwound during
replication of the E. coli chromosome?
(b) From the data in this chapter, how long would it take to
replicate the E. coli chromosome at 37 °C if two replication forks
proceeded from the origin? Assume replication occurs at a rate of
1,000 bp/s. Under some conditions E. coli cells can divide every 20
min. How might this be possible?
(c) In the replication of the E. coli chromosome, about how many
Okazaki fragments would be formed? What factors guarantee that the
numerous Okazaki fragments are assembled in the correct order in
the new DNA?
(a)One turn of the Double-stranded chromosome is generally composed of 10 Base pairs. Now, for 46,39,221 base pairs, the total number of turns of the DNA is found to be 463922.1. Hence the total number of 4,63,922 turns will get unwound during DNA replication.
(b)Different directions that time that they will take would be somewhere around 500 nucleotides per second in the opposite direction because this is a kind of replication in which Escherichia coli cell divide in every 20 minutes.
(c)In the replication of the E.coli chromosome, the Okazaki fragments would be formed with the help of DNA replication. These are short sequences of DNA nucleotide in which synthesis of the lagging strand during DNA replication is observed. The purpose of Okazaki fragment is building block for DNA synthesis.The factors that guarantee about Okazaki fragment which are assembled in the correct sequence of DNA is important because they are based in the eukaryotes. This process takes place while Sampling and Okazaki's fragment are combined to form the new DNA segment with the help of DNA ligase.