Premium
Minimization and refinement of hepatitis delta virus (HDV)‐like ribozyme secondary structure descriptors
Author(s) -
Riccitelli Nathan James,
Luptak Andrej
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.24.1_supplement.882.4
Subject(s) - ribozyme , mammalian cpeb3 ribozyme , pseudoknot , vs ribozyme , hairpin ribozyme , nucleotide , biology , computational biology , protein secondary structure , sequence (biology) , rna , genetics , gene , biochemistry
Recently, a plethora of HDV‐like ribozymes have been uncovered in a wide range of species using secondary structure‐based searches in which the HDV ribozyme structure served as the model for the structure descriptors (Webb et al, Science, 2009). This methodology proved robust in identifying canonical HDV‐like ribozymes, but also identified a number of RNAs possessing non‐canonical structure. To identify new self‐cleaving sequences, improved structure descriptors are needed. A deletion/mutation study has been undertaken to determine a minimal, HDV‐like self‐cleaving sequence as well as the defining roles of the core nucleotides. The sea urchin ribozyme drz‐Spur‐3 was chosen as the starting point for this work, as it is the only confirmed HDV‐like ribozyme with a 6 base‐pair P1 helix. By removing peripheral and joining elements, a 47 nucleotide sequence has been created that exhibits efficient self‐cleavage. This is the smallest HDV‐like ribozyme to date.