Okazaki fragments

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Okazaki fragments are short sequences of DNA nucleotides (approximately 150 to 200 base pairs long in eukaryotes) which are synthesized discontinuously and later linked together by the enzyme DNA ligase to create the lagging strand during DNA replication. They were discovered in the 1960s by husband and wife Reiji and Tsuneko Okazaki, along with the help of some of their colleagues. During DNA replication, the double helix is unwound and the complementary strands are separated by the enzyme DNA helicase, creating what is known as the DNA replication fork. Following this fork, DNA primase and DNA polymerase begin to act in order to create a new complementary strand. Because these enzymes can only work in the 5' to 3' direction, the two unwound template strands are replicated in different ways. One strand, the leading strand, undergoes a continuous replication process since its template strand has 3' to 5' directionality, allowing the polymerase assembling the leading strand to follow the...

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