Characterization of the trans Watson-Crick GU base pair located in the catalytic core of the antigenomic HDV ribozyme.

ABSTRACT: The HDV ribozyme's folding pathway is, by far, the most complex folding pathway elucidated to date for a small ribozyme. It includes 6 different steps that have been shown to occur before the chemical cleavage. It is likely that other steps remain to be discovered. One of the most critical of these unknown steps is the formation of the trans Watson-Crick GU base pair within loop III. The U(23) and G(28) nucleotides that form this base pair are perfectly conserved in all natural variants of the HDV ribozyme, and therefore are considered as being part of the signature of HDV-like ribozymes. Both the formation and the transformation of this base pair have been studied mainly by crystal structure and by molecular dynamic simulations. In order to obtain physical support for the formation of thi

SUBMITTER: Levesque D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3386971 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature