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Catalytic activities of hammerhead ribozymes with a triterpenoid linker instead of stem/loop II
Author(s) -
Sugiyama Hiroshi,
Hatano Ken,
Saito Isao,
Amontov Sergei,
Taira Kazunari
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/0014-5793(96)00814-9
Subject(s) - linker , ribozyme , chemistry , hammerhead ribozyme , stem loop , stereochemistry , oligonucleotide , cleavage (geology) , triterpenoid , rna , biochemistry , biology , gene , paleontology , fracture (geology) , computer science , operating system
A minizyme is a hammerhead ribozyme with short oligonucleotide linkers instead of stem/loop II. In a previous study we demonstrated that a minizyme with high‐level activity forms a dimeric structure with a common stem II (Amontov and Taira, J. Am. Chem. Soc ., 118 (1996) 1624–1628). As a continuation of this study, we recently examined whether a short oligonucleotide linker at stem/loop II could be replaced by a triterpenoid linker and whether the resulting minizymes with bulky hydrophobic groups would form dimeric structures. In contrast to the minizyme with high‐level activity that we characterized in the previous study, minizymes that contained a triterpenoid group had low cleavage activities. The nature of the dependence of the activity on the concentration of ribozyme revealed that these minizymes with a triterpenoid group do not form dimeric structures. Thus, the low activities of these structures can be attributed to their failure to form dimers.