Question

What is the advantage of semiconservative replication?

Answer 1

DNA is a double helix structure made up of nitrogen base, a sugar deoxyribose and phosphate group. DNA replication is nothing but duplication of two strands to result in production of 4 strands of DNA. DNA replication was believed to be happening in one of the three hypothesised ways;

1)dispersive ; where the fragments of New and old DNA jumbled up to result in a DNA strand as present as before.

2) Conservative ; out of 4 strands 2 old strands stay together and 2 newly synthesised strands stay together  

3) semi-Conservative; where the 2 strands seperate and the new strand is synthesised using that particular blueprint.

This method of replication was proved by meselson and stahl experiment

The advantages of this mode of replication are ;

There is 99% surity of getting same sequence as that of parent strand.

As the template strand guides the synthesis it requires less amount of energy to complete replication reaction

Whereas in Conservative and dispersive the cell must have spent more energy to memorise the sequence and then do replication

As thus most of replication is regulated with enzymes and strictly under control for mutation. The DNA polymerase plays an important role where it synthesis as well as proof reads the strand for any kind of defect.