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The mechanism of the hammerhead ribozyme
P Hendry1, M J McCall, T J Lockett
1CSIRO, Division of Biomolecular Engineering, North Ryde, NSW, Australia.
Abstract:
The rate of cleavage of a 13-mer substrate by an all-RNA ribozyme with 2 10-mer hybridising arms (TAT RA), appears to be limited by a conformational change involving the longer than necessary arms. The same limitation does not apply to a similar ribozyme with DNA arms (TAT RB) or to an all-RNA ribozyme with only 6 hybridising bases on each arm (TAT RA 6x2). The limitation does not arise in the hybridisation step nor in the dissociation of products. An extra step involving a conformational change of the pre-formed ribozyme-substrate prior to cleavage is introduced to explain the observed kinetics.
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