A mechanistic study of helicases with magnetic traps

Samar Hodeib; Saurabh Raj; Maria Manosas; Weiting Zhang; Debjani Bagchi; Bertrand Ducos; Francesca Fiorini; Joanne Kanaan; Hervé Le Hir; Jean-François Allemand; David Bensimon; Vincent Croquette

doi:10.1002/pro.3187

A mechanistic study of helicases with magnetic traps

Protein Sci. 2017 Jul;26(7):1314-1336. doi: 10.1002/pro.3187. Epub 2017 Jun 13.

Authors

Samar Hodeib^{1

2}, Saurabh Raj^{1

2}, Maria Manosas^{3

4}, Weiting Zhang^{1

2}, Debjani Bagchi^{1

2}, Bertrand Ducos^{1

2}, Francesca Fiorini⁵, Joanne Kanaan², Hervé Le Hir², Jean-François Allemand^{1

2}, David Bensimon^{1

2

6}, Vincent Croquette^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Laboratoire de physique statistique, Département de physique de l'ENS, École normale supérieure, PSL Research University, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ. Paris 06, CNRS, 75005, Paris, France.
² Institut de Biologie de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure (IBENS), Département de biologie, École normale supérieure, CNRS, INSERM, PSL Research University, 75005, Paris, France.
³ Departament de Física Fonamental, Facultat de Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, 08028, Spain.
⁴ CIBER-BBN de Bioingenieria, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina, Instituto de Sanidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain.
⁵ Univ Lyon, Molecular Microbiology and Structural Biochemistry, MMSB-IBCP UMR5086 CNRS/Lyon1, Lyon Cedex 7, 69367, France.
⁶ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, 90095.

Abstract

Helicases are a broad family of enzymes that separate nucleic acid double strand structures (DNA/DNA, DNA/RNA, or RNA/RNA) and thus are essential to DNA replication and the maintenance of nucleic acid integrity. We review the picture that has emerged from single molecule studies of the mechanisms of DNA and RNA helicases and their interactions with other proteins. Many features have been uncovered by these studies that were obscured by bulk studies, such as DNA strands switching, mechanical (rather than biochemical) coupling between helicases and polymerases, helicase-induced re-hybridization and stalled fork rescue.

Keywords: DNA unwinding; Holliday junction migration; active unwinding; ds-DNA fork; fork regression; helicase/polymerase coupling; helicases; magnetic traps; polymerase; primase; primosome; replisome; strand annealing.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

DNA Helicases* / chemistry
DNA Helicases* / metabolism
DNA Replication / physiology*
DNA* / chemistry
DNA* / metabolism
Nucleic Acid Heteroduplexes* / chemistry
Nucleic Acid Heteroduplexes* / metabolism
RNA Helicases* / chemistry
RNA Helicases* / metabolism
RNA, Double-Stranded* / chemistry
RNA, Double-Stranded* / metabolism

Substances

Nucleic Acid Heteroduplexes
RNA, Double-Stranded
DNA
DNA Helicases
RNA Helicases