Minimal Hammerhead Ribozymes with Uncompromised Catalytic Activity

Minimal Hammerhead Ribozymes with Uncompromised Catalytic Activity.

We report here that a single additional trans-Hoogsteen base-pairing interaction in the minimal hammerhead ribozyme transforms an RNA sequence possessing typically modest catalytic activity into one possessing greatly enhanced catalytic activity that is instead typical of full-length natural hammerhead RNAs that have additional extensive tertiary contact interactions. Formation of this addition...

Pyrene modification leads to increased catalytic activity in minimal hammerhead ribozymes.

Highly active variants of minimal hammerhead ribozymes are generated by the replacement of substantial parts of stem-loop structures with pyrene building blocks.

The influence of imperfectly paired helices I and III on the catalytic activity of hammerhead ribozymes.

Several catalytic antisense RNAs directed against different regions of the genomic or antigenomic RNA of Sendai virus were constructed. All RNAs contained the same catalytic domain based on hammerhead ribozymes but some had deletions or mutations resulting in imperfect helices I and III. Pre-annealed substrate/ribozyme complexes were used to determine the rates of the cleavage process for the d...

The Minimal and Full-Length Hammerhead Ribozymes: Reconciling Structure with Biochemistry

Intronic hammerhead ribozymes in mRNA biogenesis

Small self-cleaving ribozymes are a group of natural RNAs that are capable of catalyzing their own and sequence-specific endonucleolytic cleavage. One of the most studied members is the hammerhead ribozyme (HHR), a catalytic RNA originally discovered in subviral plant pathogens but recently shown to reside in a myriad of genomes along the tree of life. In eukaryotes, most of the genomic HHRs se...