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Commentary

Nature Cell Biology 8, 1313–1316 (1 December 2006) | doi:10.1038/ncb1206-1313

DNA replication timing: random thoughts about origin firing

Nicholas Rhind

Models for the organization of eukaryotic DNA replication have to account for two diametrically opposed conceptions of replication. On one side of the spectrum is the replicon paradigm, exemplified by the mechanism of bacterial replication, in which origins are well-defined sites that fire once in each cell cycle, leading to uniform replication that is identical in every cell.