期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1998
卷号:95
期号:2
页码:520-524
DOI:10.1073/pnas.95.2.520
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:The advent of thermostable enzymes has led to great advances in molecular biology, such as the development of PCR and ligase chain reaction. However, isolation of naturally thermostable enzymes has been restricted to those existing in thermophylic bacteria. Here, we show that the disaccharide trehalose enables enzymes to maintain their normal activity (thermostabilization) or even to increase activity at high temperatures (thermoactivation) at which they are normally inactive. We also demonstrate how enzyme thermoactivation can improve the reverse transcriptase reaction. In fact, thermoactivated reverse transcriptase, which displays full activity even at 60{degrees}C, was powerful enough to synthesize full length cDNA without the early termination usually induced by stable secondary structures of mRNA.