The bypass polymerases or translation polymerases differ from the main replicative polymerases in several ways, which makes it ideal for its role in translesion synthesis.
1. The bypass polymerases can accommodate large adducts on the bases because they have larger pockets. It can bypass many Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) lesions as the name itself indicates.
2. The bypass polymerases do not have the 3'-5' proof reading activity in some cases, so there may be higher error rate.
3. The bypass polymerases are distributive, can only add a few nucleotides before falling off. The attractive feature is that it functions to circumvent the blocked replication fork. The bypass polymerases do not to synthesize long stretches of DNA that can have numerous mismatches.