RIBOZYME DESIGN
D.H. Burke et al., "Allosteric Hammerhead Ribozyme TRAPs," Biochemistry, 41:6588-94, May 28, 2002.
"Hammerhead ribozyme activity has been upregulated allosterically more than 250-fold with "activator" DNA oligonucleotides that bind not to the ribozyme core, but to an "attenuator" region appended to the ribozyme. The upregulation of single-turnover activity could be increased even further by inclusion of 'antiattenuator' sequence on the activating oligo. Several features of the work offer interesting potential for more general application: (1) The assembly order of the ribozyme, substrate, and activating oligonucleotide affects the final activity level; (2) Neither the activator nor the attenuator sequences need to interact directly with the ribozyme core nucleotides; (3) Substantial knowledge of ribozyme structure or chemistry should not be needed to apply this to other systems."
--Scott K. Silverman,
University of Illinois, US
MITOCHONDRIAL INDEPENDENCE T.J. Collins et al., "Mitochondria are morphologically and functionally heterogeneous within cells," EMBO Journal, ...
