Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 25, 2026

Nanomanipulation of Single RNA Molecules by Optical Tweezers
Published on: August 20, 2014
Determination of kinetic parameters for hammerhead and hairpin ribozymes
1Department of Molecular Biology and the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, CA, USA.
Abstract:
The application of conventional enzymological methods to the study of hairpin and hammerhead ribozymes has led to valuable insights into the mechanisms by which these small RNAs catalyze phosphodiester cleavage and ligation reactions. Here, protocols are presented for measuring rate constants for simple cleavage and ligation reactions mediated by minimal hammerhead and hairpin ribozymes under standard experimental conditions. Information is also provided to help researchers recognize and interpret more complex reaction kinetics that can be observed for ribozyme-sequence variants under a variety of reaction conditions.
Related Concept Videos
Ribozymes
Ribozymes can be...
Ribozymes
Ribozymes can be...
Enzyme Kinetics
Scientists typically study enzyme kinetics with a fixed amount of enzyme in the controlled environment of a test tube. When more reactant, or substrate, is...
Introduction to Enzyme Kinetics
The experimenter can then plot the initial reaction rate or velocity (Vo) of a given trial against the substrate concentration ([S]) to obtain a graph of the reaction properties. For many enzymatic reactions involving a...
Determination of Michaelis Constant and Maximum Elimination Rate
These parameters can be estimated by analyzing plasma concentration data post-drug administration. A notable example of this application is phenytoin, a drug with capacity-limited kinetics. It's recommended that phenytoin should be administered at two...
Enzymes and Activation Energy

