Sugar non-specific endonucleases.

Sugar non-specific endonucleases are multifunctional enzymes and are widespread in distribution. Apart from nutrition, they have also been implicated in cellular functions like replication, recombination and repair. Their ability to recognize different DNA structures has also been exploited for the determination of nucleic acid structure. Although more than 30 non-specific endonucleases have been isolated to date, very little information is available regarding their structure-function correlations except that of staphylococcal and Serratia nucleases. However, during the past few years, the primary structure, nature of the active site based on sequence homology, and the probable mechanism of action have been postulated for some of the enzymes. This review describes the purification, characteristics, biological role and applications of sugar non-specific endonucleases.