Studies of Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase in Normal and Neoplastic Human Cells

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Abstract
Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase, TdT, is an unusual DNA polymerase that does not require a template and catalyzes the random addition of deoxynucleotidyl units to the 3’-OH ends of single DNA chains and of oligodeoxynucleotides. The enzyme was first identified as a distinct entity by Krakow et al. (1962), but it was purified from calf thymus and extensively characterized in the laboratory of F.J. Bollum (Yoneda and Bollum, 1965; Kato et al., 1967; Chang and Bollum, 1971a). For several years TdT was considered almost exclusively as a convenient tool for synthesizing DNA-like molecules (Bollum, 1966; Ratliff et al., 1967; Chang and Bollum, 1971b) and also we made large use of it in our Euratom program of preparing tailored polydeoxynucleotide substrates for the enzymes of DNA repair (Campagnari et al., 1973).