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ATP and DNA Synthesis

I'm unsure of how this works:
"Radioactive ATP was then added to the cells for 4 hours. The amount of radioactive ATP incorporated into the genomic DNA was then measured."
How is ATP incorporated into DNA? At what stage does it happen, and why? I can't find a very clear explanation of ATP's role in DNA synthesis.
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yasminh3
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Original post by hi_imcatherine
I'm unsure of how this works:
"Radioactive ATP was then added to the cells for 4 hours. The amount of radioactive ATP incorporated into the genomic DNA was then measured."
How is ATP incorporated into DNA? At what stage does it happen, and why? I can't find a very clear explanation of ATP's role in DNA synthesis.

I've never seen a version of DNA synthesis with ATP, usually they talk about it using a nitrogen isotopes which are N14 and N15 so i'll just explain with that and assume it's the same thing which it probably is.
Essentially they just placed some DNA in a dish containing N15 and left to replicate.
The nitrogen is incorporated into the DNA because nitrogen is a key component of DNA so it is used up in order to replicate and make more DNA.
They then measured this by centrifuging (spinning) the DNA round and round quickly until there was a band of DNA floating in the liquid. so to measure it, you just centrifuge the DNA sample.
There's obviously more steps, if you want to know more i can go into more detail for you but those are the answers to your questions.

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