Quinone antibiotics, α-and β-rubromycin, were originally found as inhibitors of retroviral
reverse transcriptase. We investigated the effects of these agents on DNA metabolic
enzymes including DNA and RNA polymerases as retroviral reverse transcriptase is a kind
of the polymerase. As expected, we found that α-and β-rubromycin strongly inhibited not
only the retroviral reverse transcriptase activity, but the activities of the mammalian DNA
polymerases, telomerase and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase in vitro. These agents …