title: Importance of short pseudoknot base pairs between two single-stranded regions of HDV ribozyme.
abstract: Human hepatitis delta virus (HDV) ribozyme can catalyze self-cleavage reaction in the presence of Mg2+ ions, yielding products with 2',3'-cyclic phosphate and 5'-OH termini as do hammerhead and hairpin ribozymes. Recently, the tertiary structure of 3'-cleaved product of genomic HDV ribozyme was solved by X-ray crystallographic analysis. In this structure three single-stranded regions (SSrA, -B and -C) interacts intricately with hydrogen bonds between bases, phosphate oxygens and 2'-OHs to form nested double pseudoknot structure. Especially two Watson-Crick base pairs, 726G-710C and 727G-709C, between SSrA and SSrC, seems to be important for compact folding. To characterize the necessity of the two base pairs, we performed in vitro selection of active ribozymes using random RNA pool which mutated at 709, 710, 726 and 727. The result indicates that basically one G-C base pair is necessary for the activity.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Bioscience and Human Technology, AIST, MITI, Tsukuba Science City, Ibaraki, Japan.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Nishikawa
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shirai
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nishikawa
mesh_terms: D020029:Base Pairing; D001483:Base Sequence; D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray; D003698:Hepatitis Delta Virus / Q000235:genetics*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D016337:RNA, Catalytic / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D016337:RNA, Catalytic