Primer
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Introduction
- A molecule, often a small polymer, that initiates synthesis of a larger molecule.
- In molecular biology:
- DNA polymerase is dependent upon a small oligonucleotides as a primer to initiate replication. These primers are complementary & hydrogen-bonded to to a sequence on the DNA strand to be replicated, resulting in a short segment of double-stranded DNA or DNA- RNA in the case of reverse transcriptase.
More General Terms
References
Stedman's Medical Dictionary 27th ed, Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore, 1999
