Single-stranded-RNA binding proteins

Our knowledge of protein interactions with RNA molecules has been, so far, largely restricted to cases in which the RNA itself is folded into a secondary and/or tertiary structure stabilised by intramolecular base pairing and stacking. Until recently, only limited structural information has been available about protein interactions with single-stranded RNA. A breakthrough in our understanding of these interactions came in 1999, with the determination of four crystal structures of protein complexes with extended single-stranded RNA molecules. These structures revealed wonderfully satisfying patterns of the ability of proteins to accommodate RNA bases, with the sugar-phosphate backbone often adopting conformations that are different from the classical double helix.