title: Fishing the best pool for novel ribozymes.
abstract: Novel RNA enzymes, or ribozymes, are sought in large pools of random RNA sequences. Because of the large number of random positions in an individual pool molecule, only a vanishingly small fraction of the possible sequences are actually present. Even so, increasing the length of the individual pool molecules significantly increases the probability of finding a particular complex ribozyme. Because ribozymes are typically composed of conserved sequences interleaved with regions that can vary in sequence and length, a longer molecule allows a greater number of possible arrangements of a given ribozyme motif, increasing the likelihood that it will be present in the pool. Once a ribozyme motif has been found, rational and irrational optimization techniques can be used to identify related ribozyme sequences with greater activity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz 95064, USA. wedel@darwin.ucsc.edu
authors.forename: A B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Wedel
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D001709:Biotechnology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D015394:Molecular Structure; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D016337:RNA, Catalytic / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D016337:RNA, Catalytic