Biochemistry 2280A Lecture : Restriction Enzymes
Document Summary
Key aspect of letting molecular bio start without it, we wouldn t have recombinant techniques. Restriction enzymes can be thought of as site specific dna scissors. They recognize specific sequences in dna and cut it. Dna is a very long (megabase pairs), relatively homogenous polymer. It is made up of same four base pairs its big and homogenous. To manipulate it, you need ways to cut dna into defined fragments. Restriction enzymes will allow dna to be broken up into defined workable units. Its easy to break dna into random unitsbut we want specific cuts out of dna so we re working with defined units r enzymes will do this. Restriction enzymes allow dna to be broken up into defined workable units. Def: site specific dna binding protein that recognize and cleave palindromic dna sequences of 4, 6, 8 base pairs. They are dna binding proteins just like trp repressor, lac repressor, cap all dna binding proteins.