But could you imagine if we brought the wilderness into the lab and just hoped for everything to go as intended? Everything is left to chance and rarely goes right. Chances of successful plasmid mutation and infiltration are at an all-time low. However, in nature, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Plasmids are actually naturally found in bacteria and enhance their survival. Now that there’s a gap in the DNA, researchers can insert a gene into that gap and form a recombinant plasmid. Each restriction enzyme has its own unique restriction site. Once found, they go *hiyah* and form a double-stranded break at that site. Wielding their molecular katana swords, they search the genome for a specific complementary 4–8 bp sequence called a restriction site. You can think of restriction enzymes as DNA ninjas with one sole mission.
Restriction Sites and Restriction Enzymes Watch this video if you want to learn more about DNA replication. Primase takes the replicated plasmid from 0 → 1, DNA Polymerase takes it from 1 → 100(00…). The primer is like a pull tab for a zipper, enabling DNA Polymerase to bind and synthesize the rest of the nucleotides by zipping down the DNA. The DNA is unzipped by helicases (a protein) and primase (another protein) attaches a short RNA-chain called a primer. The origin of replication or ori is a specific region within the plasmid’s DNA sequence that tells the host cell’s replication machinery to “bind here!” and replicate the entire plasmid. Plasmids need to reproduce - make copies of themselves - to survive and live on.
In real life, they’re not colour-coded or labelled, and cells can still identify everything perfectly. Let’s break them all down.įor clarification, everything above is all just DNA (A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s). Every plasmid has 8 main elements: the origin of replication, restriction sites, a promoter, terminator, inserted gene, antibiotic resistance gene (prokaryotic) or auxotrophic selection marker (eukaryotic) and start & stop sequences for translation.
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