Self-powered RNA nanomachine driven by metastable structure.

ABSTRACT: Many non-coding and regulatory RNA elements have evolved to exploit transient or metastable structures that emerge during transcription to control complex folding pathways or to encode dynamic functions. However, efforts to engineer synthetic RNA devices have mostly focused on the thermodynamically stable structures. Consequently, significant challenges and opportunities exist in engineering functional RNAs that explicitly take advantage of cotranscriptionally generated transient or metastable structures. In this work, we designed a short RNA sequence that adopts a robust metastable structure when transcribed by an RNA polymerase. Although the metastable structure persists for hours at low temperature, it refolds almost completely into the thermodynamically stable structure upon heat denat

SUBMITTER: Kobori S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6582335 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature