Capturing hammerhead ribozyme structures in action by modulating general base catalysis.
Chi, Y.I., Martick, M., Lares, M., Kim, R., Scott, W.G., Kim, S.H.(2008) PLoS Biol 6: e234-e234
- PubMed: 18834200 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060234
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
2QUS, 2QUW - PubMed Abstract: 
We have obtained precatalytic (enzyme-substrate complex) and postcatalytic (enzyme-product complex) crystal structures of an active full-length hammerhead RNA that cleaves in the crystal. Using the natural satellite tobacco ringspot virus hammerhead RNA sequence, the self-cleavage reaction was modulated by substituting the general base of the ribozyme, G12, with A12, a purine variant with a much lower pKa that does not significantly perturb the ribozyme's atomic structure ...