Differential minor groove interactions between DNA polymerase and sugar backbone of primer and template strands.

DNA polymerases are the key enzymes for DNA synthesis involved in DNA replication, recombination, and repair. These enzymes undergo manifold contacts with the primer-template-substrates reaching up to several nucleotide pairs beyond the catalytic centre. To evaluate these enzyme contacts with the DNA substrates we applied novel synthetic steric probes in functional studies. We found that through application of the these probes valuable insights into DNA polymerase function can be gained, which might be useful for the design of new DNA polymerase-based nucleotide variation detection strategies.