title: Regulation of ribozyme cleavage activity by oligonucleotides.
abstract: Here, we describe allosteric ribozymes, which are activated by the addition of a short regulator oligonucleotide. The allosteric hammerhead ribozyme, which contains a single-stranded loop instead of stem II, exhibited minimal cleavage of the target RNA; however, it becomes active by the addition of oligonucleotides that bind to the ribozyme. We have also carried out in vitro selection to obtain an allosteric hairpin ribozyme, which is activated with a short oligonucleotide. The ribozyme contains the characteristic hairpin loop with the structure that changes upon regulator oligonucleotide binding. Since both regulations are sequence-specific, ribozymes containing different sequences can be positively and independently controlled by a specific oligonucleotide. Furthermore, these allosteric hairpin loops have the ability to control the activities of other functional RNAs.
authors.affiliation: DNA Chip Research Inc., Yokohama, Japan.
authors.forename: Yasuo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Komatsu
authors.forename: Eiko
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ohtsuka
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D007700:Kinetics; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D009843:Oligoribonucleotides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D016337:RNA, Catalytic / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D013379:Substrate Specificity; D013698:Templates, Genetic; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D009843:Oligoribonucleotides; D016337:RNA, Catalytic; C427204:hammerhead ribozyme