Cleavage of the highly conserved hairpin-loop region of HIV-1 by synthetic ribozymes.
Hammerhead ribozymes can be considered as molecular scissors for suppressing AIDS virus. It is attractive to target single-stranded region of HIV-1 RNA because single-stranded RNA interactions or "kissing" induce hybridization. We, therefore, chose a highly conserved hairpin-loop structure, that is located in the 5' long terminal repeat region and just downstream of the TAR regulatory sequence. As a model system, we synthesized the corresponding hairpin-loop structure (21-mer RNA) and several types of ribozyme that are different in sizes in the hybridizing arms. These ribozymes successfully cleaved the 21-mer hairpin-structured substrate after CUU sequence but with different efficiencies.
Shimayama
T
T
National Institute of Bioscience and Human Technology, Agency of Industrial Science & Technology, MITI, Tsukuba Science City, Japan.
Nishikawa
S
S
Taira
K
K
D001483:Base Sequence; D016325:HIV Long Terminal Repeat; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000378:metabolism*; D006868:Hydrolysis; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D016337:RNA, Catalytic / Q000378:metabolism*; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000378:metabolism*
D016337:RNA, Catalytic; D012367:RNA, Viral