Dna polymerases are processive, which means that they remain tightly associated with the template strand while moving rapidly and adding nucleotides to the growing daughter stand. which piece of the replication machinery accounts for this characteristic?

Components of the DNA replication machinery that serve to increase the processivity of their associated polymerases are DNA clamp proteins.

A DNA clamp protein or a sliding clamp, is a protein that binds DNA polymerase and prevents this enzyme from dissociating from the template DNA strand. It is a multimeric structure that completely encircles the DNA double helix as the polymerase adds nucleotides to the growing daughter strand. The clamp-polymerase interactions are very specific and those protein-protein interactios are stronger than the direct interactions between the polymerase and the template DNA strand. The presence of the DNA clamp protein increases the number of nucleotides that the polymerase can add to the growing daughter strand and it can increase the rate of DNA synthesis up to 1,000 nucleotides per second.