Sabouri Nasim
Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Umeå University, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden.
Curr Genet. 2017 Aug;63(4):621-626. doi: 10.1007/s00294-016-0675-2. Epub 2017 Jan 4.
Approximately, 1% of the genes in eukaryotic genomes encode for helicases, which make the number of helicases expressed in the cell considerably high. Helicases are motor proteins that participate in many central aspects of the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes, and based on their helicase motif conservation, they are divided into different helicase families. The Pif1 family of helicases is an evolutionarily conserved helicase family that is associated with familial breast cancer in humans. The Schizosaccharomyces pombe Pfh1 helicase belongs to the Pif1 helicase family and is a multi-tasking helicase that is important for replication fork progression through natural fork barriers, for G-quadruplex unwinding, and for Okazaki fragment maturation, and these activities are potentially shared by the human Pif1 helicase. This review discusses the known functions of the Pfh1 helicase, the study of which has led to a better understanding of nucleic acid metabolism in eukaryotes.
真核生物基因组中约1%的基因编码解旋酶，这使得细胞中表达的解旋酶数量相当可观。解旋酶是一种马达蛋白，参与核基因组和线粒体基因组的许多核心过程，根据其解旋酶基序的保守性，它们被分为不同的解旋酶家族。解旋酶的Pif1家族是一个进化上保守的解旋酶家族，与人类家族性乳腺癌有关。粟酒裂殖酵母Pfh1解旋酶属于Pif1解旋酶家族，是一种多功能解旋酶，对于复制叉通过天然叉状屏障的进展、G-四链体解旋以及冈崎片段成熟很重要，这些活性可能为人类Pif1解旋酶所共有。本综述讨论了Pfh1解旋酶的已知功能，对其研究有助于更好地理解真核生物中的核酸代谢。
