Question

Compare reverse transcriptase, telomerase, and RdRPin terms of chemistry, substrate, product, and information source.

This is literally copied and pasted from the homework assignment so I cannot make it any clearer.

Answer 1

Telomerase is an enzyme of ribonucleoprotein which is essential for maintaining the chromosome end of the eukaryotes. It is a cellular reverse transcriptase. The enzyme maintain a low activity in the normal somatic cell and relatively high activity in the progenitor and cancer cell. The telomerase holoenzyme complex is actively involved in elongation of the telomeres which acts as reverse transcriptase and adds simple repeated sequences to the chromosome ends.

Reverse transcriptase is an enzyme which can generate the complementary DNA from the RNA template and this process is known as the reverse transcription. This enzyme is used by the retroviruses for replicating their genome.

The reverse transcriptase enzyme in the retro viruses is also called as the RNA- directed DNA polymerase (RdDP). This enzyme catalyzes the transcription of RNA into DNA which is the reverse of the normal cellular transcription process. So this enzyme is named as the reverse transcriptase and virus called retrovirus.