Influence of Threose Nucleoside Units on the Catalytic Activity of a Hammerhead Ribozyme

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
TNA (a-L-threose nucleic acids) is potentially a natural nucleic acid, that might have acted as an evolutionary alternative of RNA. We determined the catalytic activity of hammerhead ribozymes containing a threofuranosyl-modified nucleoside at position U-4 and U-7, and compared these results with those obtained from HNA (hexitol nucleic acids) insertion into the same ribozyme. Our experiments showed that, although the threofuranosyl-modified ribozymes still cleave the substrate strand, cleavage activity is highly decreased. It, therefore, seems that TNA can play a functional role in the RNA world, but only to a limited extent.status: publishe

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: