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In Vitro Directed Evolution of a Restriction Endonuclease with More Stringent Specificity
Published on: March 25, 2020
In vitro selection of a 5'-purine ribonucleotide transferase ribozyme
1Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 153-8904 Tokyo, Japan.
Abstract:
Here we report in vitro selection of a novel ribozyme that catalyzes the 5'-nucleotidyl transfer reaction forming the 2'-5' phosphodiester bond. This ribozyme was retrieved as a sole sequence in the pool enriched for the 5'-triphosphate-dependent activities in incorporating ATP-gammaS. The originally selected ribozyme consisting of 109-nucleotide (nt) was miniaturized to 45-nt M4 ribozyme via a series of mutation studies, and based on this mini-ribozyme a trans-acting system was constructed. One of the most challenging tasks in our study was to determine the chemistry occurring at the 5'-ppp site. We utilized various analytical methods including MALDI-TOF analysis of the product generated by the trans-acting system and elucidated the chemistry to be 3'-->5' mononucleotide extension forming the 2'-5' phosphodiester bond. Interestingly, M4 ribozyme promiscuously accepts a variety of purine nucleotides bearing 5'-mono-, di- and triphosphates as substrates. This remarkable ability of M4 ribozyme would lead us to the development of a new tool for the 5'-modification of RNAs with unique chemical groups.
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