Identification of over 200-fold more hairpin ribozymes than previously known in diverse circular RNAs.

ABSTRACT: Self-cleaving ribozymes are catalytic RNAs that cut themselves at a specific inter-nucleotide linkage. They serve as a model of RNA catalysis, and as an important tool in biotechnology. For most of the nine known structural classes of self-cleaving ribozymes, at least hundreds of examples are known, and some are present in multiple domains of life. By contrast, only four unique examples of the hairpin ribozyme class are known, despite its discovery in 1986. We bioinformatically predicted 941 unique hairpin ribozymes of a different permuted form from the four previously known hairpin ribozymes, and experimentally confirmed several diverse predictions. These results profoundly expand the number of natural hairpin ribozymes, enabling biochemical analysis based on natural sequences, and sugges

SUBMITTER: Weinberg CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8216279 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature