Journal
METHODS
Volume 204, Issue -, Pages 160-171Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2021.11.001
Keywords
DNA replication; MCM helicase; Translocation; Unwinding; Polarity; Orientation
Funding
- NSF-MCB [1613534, 2105167]
- NIH [GM13791]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Div Of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience [1613534] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Div Of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience
- Direct For Biological Sciences [2105167] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Helicase enzymes play crucial roles in genome maintenance, and mutations in helicases are associated with various diseases. Previous studies have focused on the biochemical characterization and structural analysis of helicases, but the understanding of their active translocation orientations still requires the combination of structure and kinetics. This review explores different methods to map the binding orientations of helicases to DNA or RNA substrates and provides insights into defining the active leading and trailing faces of these enzymes.
Helicase enzymes translocate along an RNA or DNA template with a defined polarity to unwind, separate, or remodel duplex strands for a variety of genome maintenance processes. Helicase mutations are commonly associated with a variety of diseases including aging, cancer, and neurodegeneration. Biochemical characterization of these enzymes has provided a wealth of information on the kinetics of unwinding and substrate preferences, and several high-resolution structures of helicases alone and bound to oligonucleotides have been solved. Together, they provide mechanistic insights into the structural translocation and unwinding orientations of helicases. However, these insights rely on structural inferences derived from static snapshots. Instead, continued efforts should be made to combine structure and kinetics to better define active translocation orientations of helicases. This review explores many of the biochemical and biophysical methods utilized to map helicase binding orientation to DNA or RNA substrates and includes several time-dependent methods to unequivocally map the active translocation orientation of these enzymes to better define the active leading and trailing faces.
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