The veil has finally been lifted on an enzyme that is critical to the process of DNA transcription and replication, and is a prime target of antibacterial and anticancer drugs. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley have produced the first three-dimensional structural images of a DNA-bound Type II topoisomerase (topo II) that is responsible for untangling coiled strands of the chromosome during cell division.
