Consequences of Proofreading by DNA Polymerase

Medium Biochemistry Nucleic Acids And Dna Replication

During DNA replication, the enzyme DNA polymerase plays a crucial role in synthesizing new strands of DNA. It adds nucleotides to the growing DNA strand based on the template strand's sequence. In addition to synthesizing DNA, DNA polymerase also has proofreading ability, which ensures accuracy in DNA replication. However, what is the primary consequence of the proofreading mechanism performed by DNA polymerase?

It increases the overall rate of replication.

It prevents mutations by correcting mismatched nucleotides.

It allows DNA replication to occur in the absence of RNA primers.

It degrades misincorporated nucleotides post-replication.

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