In this video, we're going to begin our introduction to DNA replication. It's important to keep in mind as we move forward in our course that there is much more information known about prokaryotic DNA replication than eukaryotic DNA replication. For that reason, we're mainly going to focus on prokaryotic DNA replication. However, it is also important to remember as we progress that scientists believe that most of the DNA replication process is fundamentally similar in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Even though we're mainly focusing on prokaryotic DNA replication, it's crucial to remember that most of the process is fundamentally similar in both groups. As we continue, we'll try to point out some of the key differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic DNA replication.
In both prokaryotic and eukaryotic DNA replication, DNA replication occurs via a semi-conservative process, which we introduced in our last lesson video. Semiconservative DNA replication suggests that the old parental strands in the original DNA molecule are going to separate from one another, and they will each act as templates in the synthesis of new DNA strands that are complementary to the old parental strands. If we take a look at our image below, we show you another image of semiconservative DNA replication. Notice on the far left, we start with just one DNA molecule, the original DNA molecule. By the end of this DNA replication process, we end up with two DNA molecules, one here and one here. The DNA strand and the old parental DNA molecule are going to separate from one another. You can see the beginning of this separation here. As these old original DNA strands separate from one another, they act as templates to build new DNA that is complementary to it. You can see the new DNA here depicted as this yellow strand being built using the old blue strand as a template. This process will continue and ultimately results in two DNA strands that are identical to each other and identical to the original since it's building via complementary base pairing. Again, we'll be able to talk more about the mechanism of this semiconservative DNA replication as we move forward in our course. We'll start off by introducing the DNA replication components. I'll see you all in our next lesson video to talk about that.