RNA Electrostatics: How Ribozymes Engineer Active Sites to Enable Catalysis.

ABSTRACT: Electrostatic interactions are fundamental to RNA structure and function, and intimately influenced by solvation and the ion atmosphere. RNA enzymes, or ribozymes, are catalytic RNAs that are able to enhance reaction rates over a million-fold, despite having only a limited repertoire of building blocks and available set of chemical functional groups. Ribozyme active sites usually occur at junctions where negatively charged helices come together, and in many cases leverage this strained electrostatic environment to recruit metal ions in solution that can assist in catalysis. Similar strategies have been implicated in related artificially engineered DNA enzymes. Herein, we apply Poisson-Boltzmann, 3D-RISM, and molecular simulations to study a set of metal-dependent small self-cleaving ribozy

SUBMITTER: Ekesan S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9496635 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature