What is the cause of discontinuous synthesis of DNA on one of the parental strands of DNA? What happens to these short stretches of synthesised DNA?

1) In DNA both the strands are anti-parallel and complementary.

2) Both the strand acts as template.

3)As DNA synthesis can only take place in 5’-3’ direction. From these two strands only one strand which is 3’-5’ can synthesise the complementary strand in 5’-3’ direction.

4) The left-out strand of the DNA which was 5’-3’ has to be synthesised in opposite direction as short stretches in discontinuous manner.

5) These stretches are also known as ‘Okazaki fragments’ which are later joined together by DNA ligase enzyme.