July 29, 2010 – Ivaylo Ivanov of Georgia State University and colleagues used Jaguar, a Cray XT high-performance computing system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to elucidate the mechanism by which accessory proteins called sliding clamps are loaded onto DNA strands and coordinate enzymes that enable gene repair or replication. "This research has direct bearing on understanding the molecular basis of genetic integrity and the loss of this integrity in cancer and degenerative diseases," says Ivanov, whose work appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Although clamp loaders from the different kingdoms of life (bacteria, viruses, animals, etc.) share many architectural features, they differ mechanistically. Drugs targeted to the clamp loader could selectively inhibit replication of viral DNA in diseases such as chickenpox, herpes, and AIDS without interfering with DNA replication in normal human cells. Similarly, in processes with increased DNA replication, such as cancer, inhibiting clamp loading might produce therapeutic effects without unwanted side effects. https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2010/06/24/supercomputers-simulate-the-molecular-machines-that-replicate-and-repair-dna
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