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When DNA replication takes place weaker hydrogen bonds that join complementary bonds together become broken. The two different sides of the DNA ladder start to unravel. The parent strands, however, stay joined. The parent strands that remain become molds to nucleotides, that attach themselves to complementary bases. Polymerases fuse those free nucleotides into the DNA strand.

Step 1: A special enzyme (helicase) "unzips" the double helix that is the DNA and Single Strand Binding Proteins stabilise the structure.

Step 2: A primer with a short DNA sequence complementary to a region on the parental strand is added by a primase to allow replication to occur.

Step 3: Another enzyme (DNA polymerase) combines free-floating deoxyribonucleosides triphosphate to their corresponding nucleotides that are attached to the DNA strand, attaching the free nucleotide to the 3' OH tail of the previous section, forming a complementary strand of DNA from the 5' to 3' direction.

Really it's that easy. When it's finished, there are two identical strands of DNA, assuming no mutations occured.

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∙ 14y ago
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