Eukaryotic replicases are highly conserved from man to yeast and share a limited similarity with b-acterial replicases (Johnson and O’Donnel, 2005). Although 29 genes encoding DNA polymerases (pols) have been identified in the human genome (Loeb and Monnat, Jr. 2008), only three are re-plicases, located at the eukaryotic replication fork: Pol α, Pol δ, and Pol ε. All three replicases are multiple-subunit DNA pols with the pol activity located in the largest subunit. All three pols belong to the B family which includes bacteriophage RB69 DNA polymerase (RB69 pol) whose structures has been extensively studied at Yale University (Wang et al., 1997; Franklin et al., 2001).

References

• Loeb, LA & mONNAT jR., RJ (2008) DNA polymerases and human disease. Nature Reviews. 9, 594-604.
• Johnson, A & O'Donnell, M (2005) Cellular DNA Replicase: Components and Dynamics at the rep-lication fork. Ann. Rev. Biochem. 74, 283-315.
• Wang, J et al. (1997) Crystal structure of a pol alpha family replication DNA polymerase from ba-cteriophage RB69 pol. Cell 89, 1087-1099.
• Franklin, MC et al. (2001) Structure of the replicating complex of a pol alpha family DNA polymer-ase. Cell 105,657-667