Figure 5.

Linker length in DLD enzymes correlates with step size. Linker length in amino acids of the DLD-type processive enzymes (Table 1) is plotted as a function of the unit (step) size in the given substrate. The unit size is the size of the elementary unit (e.g., cellobiose in cellulose, nucleotides in RNA and DNA cf. Table S4) derived from the geometry of the substrate, which is the first approximation of the size of elementary steps the enzyme may take along the given substrate. The linear fit shows the correlation between the two (R² = 0.4998), whereas horizontal dashed lines show the shortest and longest linker that occurs in DLD processive enzymes (Figure 4A).