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Rita Przybilski, Christian Hammann

Idiosyncratic cleavage and ligation activity of individual hammerhead ribozymes and core sequence variants thereof

Keywords: catalytic RNA, divalent metal ions, RNA structure, satellite DNA, viroid

The hammerhead ribozyme is a small RNA endonuclease found in sub-viral plant pathogens, in transcripts from certain animal satellite DNAs and encoded at distinct loci of Arabidopsis thaliana. Kinetic analyses of tertiary stabilised ribozymes from peach latent mosaic viroid (PLMVd), Schistosoma mansoni and A. thaliana revealed a ten-fold difference in cleavage rates. Core nucleotide variations affected cleavage reactions least in the A. thaliana ribozyme, and most in the S. mansoni ribozyme. The reverse ligation reaction was catalysed efficiently by the PLMVd and A. thaliana ribozymes. The different behaviour of the individual hammerhead ribozymes is discussed in terms of structure and function.

Biological Chemistry, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 1431-6730
Volume: 388, 07/2007
Pages: 737 - 741

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