Reiji Okazaki

Reiji Okazaki was the scientist who explained how both strands of DNA were replicated when all DNA polymerases worked in the 5'-3' direction only. Okazaki found that the 3'-5' daughter strand was being synthesised in small fragments of around 1000 nucleotides in the 5'-3' direction. This was know as the lagging strand and the fragments called Okazaki fragments. It is the DNA ligase which joins the Okazaki fragments to give a complete strand of DNA.