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Updated: Jul 10, 2026
Highly Efficient Ligation of Small RNA Molecules for MicroRNA Quantitation by High-Throughput Sequencing
Published on: November 18, 2014
General deoxyribozyme-catalyzed synthesis of native 3'-5' RNA linkages
Whitney E Purtha1, Rebecca L Coppins, Mary K Smalley
1Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Abstract:
An elusive goal for nucleic acid enzymology has been deoxyribozymes that ligate RNA rapidly, sequence-generally, with formation of native 3'-5' linkages, and in preparatively useful yield. Using in vitro selection, we have identified Mg2+- and Zn2+-dependent deoxyribozymes that simultaneously fulfill all four of these criteria. The new deoxyribozymes operate under practical incubation conditions and have modest RNA substrate sequence requirements, specifically D downward arrowRA for 9DB1 and A downward arrowR for 7DE5 (D = A, G, or U; R = A or G). These requirements are comparable to those of deoxyribozymes such as 10-23 and 8-17, which are already widely used as biochemical tools for RNA cleavage. We anticipate that the 9DB1 and 7DE5 deoxyribozymes will find immediate practical application for RNA ligation.
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