November 08, 2017 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Nucleases and Helicases
As I was saying last night there now exist
algorithms and software programs that when fed with genetic code, they would be
able to work out the probable sequential motif.
One such program goes by the name of
Multiple EM for Motif Elicitation.
This program is again one of those
fascinating places where the subtle differences between biology and digital
information instantly evaporates and life attains a total digital avatar.
Having tackled the issue of the motif, we
will now move on to the two enzymes mentioned in the paper and look at what
they do.
Both these two enzymes helicase and
nuclease are vital tools of cellular machinery of all living organisms including
plant cells.
Of these two enzymes, nuclease was
discovered first and shortly thereafter helicase.
In actual fact, one must not consider them as
something that is singular since each one is a class of enzymes and the proper
way to describe them would be nucleases and helicases.
Enzymes as you know are accelerators of
chemical reactions and act upon very specific molecules that become their substrates.
The methodology in naming them is very
simple.
The names usually are based on the
substrate the enzyme acts or the chemical reaction that it catalyzes followed
by a suffix –ase.
Having known this, one can accurately
conjecture what nucleases might be doing in our cells.
Well, even if you cannot guess that at
least we can say that the substrate of the nucleases must be the nucleic acids
and that is exactly so.
Nucleases, to be more specific and
accurate, cleave phosphodiester bonds between monomers of nucleic acids.
Nucleases can either be exonucleases or
endonucleases depending upon from where they attack the nucleic acids
If there is one bond that can be said to be
single handedly most responsible for the creation of life, it is this phosphodiester
bond.
This organic chemical bond (and not god) is
the key to all life on earth as it forms the backbone of nucleic acid
strands.
When two hydroxyl groups in phosphoric acid
react with two hydroxyl groups on other molecules – in the case of life, these
two are the 3’ carbon atom of one sugar molecule (deoxyribose in DNA or ribose
in RNA) and 5’ carbon atom of another sugar molecule – two ester bonds form.
I am very sure that when you were taught
about ester bonds in your high school organic chemistry, no one ever emphasized
how crucial this ordinary looking chemical bond is crucial to life.
As it often happens, the magic of chemistry
is lost the way it is taught in schools as the entire energy is devoted to
completion of syllabus before the term exam sets in.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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