Harvard Medical School researchers have uncovered crucial insights into how an emerging class of antiviral drugs works.

The cellular replicative DNA polymerases cannot initiate DNA synthesis without a priming 3′ OH. During DNA replication, this is supplied in the context of a short RNA primer molecule synthesized by ...

DNA replication is a complicated affair: Proteins must identify where on DNA to start replicating, unwind the double helix, synthesize a primer, and then elongate the DNA strand from the end of that ...

In the early 1990s, Jacqueline Barton, the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, discovered an unexpected property of DNA--that it can act like an electrical wire to ...

Primases are essential components of the DNA replication apparatus in every organism. They catalyze the synthesis of oligoribonucleotides on single-stranded DNA, which subsequently serve as primers ...

March 21, 2012 (San Diego, California) — A novel helicase-primase inhibitor with antiviral activity against the varicella zoster virus might provide an alternative as potent as current treatments for ...

– Data from both ABI-5366 and ABI-1179, novel long-acting helicase-primase inhibitor candidates for recurrent genital herpes, to be presented – – Poster presentation highlights key preclinical data ...

Undergraduate biology students could be forgiven for thinking that scientists have DNA replication all figured out. After all, textbooks present the models of replication so matter-of-factly that it's ...

The herpes simplex virus (HSV) causes cold sores and genital lesions and with the exception of acyclovir (an inhibitor of the viral DNA polymerase), there are currently no drug treatments available.