What action do nucleases perform on nucleic acid molecules?

Nucleases are enzymes that specifically target nucleic acid molecules, such as DNA and RNA, and their primary function is to break phosphodiester bonds. These bonds are the linkages that connect nucleotides in a nucleic acid strand, thus enabling nucleases to either degrade nucleic acids into smaller fragments or to remove damaged or unnecessary portions of nucleic acid.

When nucleases act on nucleic acids, they can be classified into two main types: exonucleases and endonucleases. Exonucleases remove nucleotide units from the ends of nucleic acid chains, while endonucleases cleave the phosphodiester bonds within the nucleic acid chains, leading to more comprehensive fragmentation. This ability to break phosphodiester bonds is crucial for various biological processes, including DNA replication, repair, and degradation.

The other choices pertain to different functions that do not align with the primary role of nucleases. For example, joining DNA fragments together is typically carried out by ligases, not nucleases. Catalyzing transcription events is a function of RNA polymerases, which synthesize RNA from a DNA template, while inducing endonuclease activity refers to a mechanism how certain enzymes may activate endonuclease function but does