A discontinuous hammerhead ribozyme embedded in a mammalian messenger RNA.

ABSTRACT: Structured RNAs embedded in the untranslated regions (UTRs) of messenger RNAs can regulate gene expression. In bacteria, control of a metabolite gene is mediated by the self-cleaving activity of a ribozyme embedded in its 5' UTR. This discovery has raised the question of whether gene-regulating ribozymes also exist in eukaryotic mRNAs. Here we show that highly active hammerhead ribozymes are present in the 3' UTRs of rodent C-type lectin type II (Clec2) genes. Using a hammerhead RNA motif search with relaxed delimitation of the non-conserved regions, we detected ribozyme sequences in which the invariant regions, in contrast to the previously identified continuous hammerheads, occur as two fragments separated by hundreds of nucleotides. Notably, a fragment pair can assemble to form an activ

SUBMITTER: Martick M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2612532 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature