Discovery of Okazaki fragments
Descubrimiento de los fragmentos de Okazaki
- Date
- 1968 · confidence medium
- Place
- Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
- Credited to
- Reiji Okazaki and Tsuneko Okazaki
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
The Okazakis showed, using E. coli, that one of the two DNA strands is replicated discontinuously, in short fragments later joined by DNA ligase, rather than continuously as previously assumed.
The exact year is given with medium confidence: the Okazakis published their first results in 1966-1967 and the reference PNAS paper in 1968.
What it led to
- Complete model of the replication fork (leading and lagging strand)
- Identification of primase and other fragment-maturation enzymes (ligase I, FEN1)
- Understanding of replication errors linked to genetic disease