Life · life
DNA polymerase
Copier · Mg, P
- Numbers
- Around 1,000 bases a second in a bacterium, with a final error rate near one in a billion once repair has finished.
- Kind
- Copier
Function
Copies a DNA strand base by base, and — crucially — checks its own work, backing up to excise a wrong base before continuing. The proofreading is worth about a hundredfold in accuracy on its own.
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