title: When to believe what you see.
abstract: The recent X-ray crystal structure of a hammerhead ribozyme derived from Schistosoma mansoni containing the rate-enhancing peripheral domain has a catalytic core that is very different from the catalytic core present in the structure of the "minimal" hammerhead, which lacks a peripheral domain (Martick and Scott, 2006). The new structure reconciles many of the disagreements between the minimal hammerhead structure and the biochemical data on the cleavage properties of chemically modified hammerheads. The new structure also emphasizes the dynamic nature of small RNA domains and provides a cautionary tale for everyone who tries to use structure to understand function.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology, Northwestern University, 2205 Tech Drive, Hogan 2-100, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.forename: Olke C
authors.initials: OC
authors.lastname: Uhlenbeck
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D016337:RNA, Catalytic / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D012550:Schistosoma mansoni / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D016337:RNA, Catalytic; C427204:hammerhead ribozyme