Transition State Features in the Hepatitis Delta Virus Ribozyme Reaction Revealed by Atomic Perturbations.

ABSTRACT: Endonucleolytic ribozymes constitute a class of non-coding RNAs that catalyze single-strand RNA scission. With crystal structures available for all of the known ribozymes, a major challenge involves relating functional data to the physically observed RNA architecture. In the case of the hepatitis delta virus (HDV) ribozyme, there are three high-resolution crystal structures, the product state of the reaction and two precursor variants, with distinct mechanistic implications. Here, we develop new strategies to probe the structure and catalytic mechanism of a ribozyme. First, we use double-mutant cycles to distinguish differences in functional group proximity implicated by the crystal structures. Second, we use a corrected form of the Brønsted equation to assess the functional significance o

SUBMITTER: Koo SC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4758122 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature