The Role of the Dam Methylase is To

Question

The role of the Dam methylase is to:
A) add a methyl group to uracil, converting it to thymine.
B) modify the template strand for recognition by repair systems.
C) remove a methyl group from thymine.
D) remove a mismatched nucleotide from the template strand.
E) replace a mismatched nucleotide with the correct one.

Accepted Answer

The Dam methylase adds a methyl group to the adenine residue in the GATC sequence in the template DNA strand. This modification is recognized by various cellular processes, such as DNA mismatch repair systems, to differentiate the newly synthesized strand from the template strand. This allows the repair systems to distinguish between newly synthesized and old template strands, ensuring that errors are corrected only on the new strand.