de la Peña Marcos, García-Robles Inmaculada, Cervera Amelia
Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas (IBMCP) (CSIC-UPV), C/Ingeniero Fausto Elio s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain.
Department of Genetics, University of Valencia, C/Dr. Moliner 50, Burjassot, 46100 Valencia, Spain.
Molecules. 2017 Jan 4;22(1):78. doi: 10.3390/molecules22010078.
Small nucleolytic ribozymes are a family of naturally occurring RNA motifs that catalyse a self-transesterification reaction in a highly sequence-specific manner. The hammerhead ribozyme was the first reported and the most extensively studied member of this family. However, and despite intense biochemical and structural research for three decades since its discovery, the history of this model ribozyme seems to be far from finished. The hammerhead ribozyme has been regarded as a biological oddity typical of small circular RNA pathogens of plants. More recently, numerous and new variations of this ribozyme have been found to inhabit the genomes of organisms from all life kingdoms, although their precise biological functions are not yet well understood.
小核酶解核糖核酸酶是一类天然存在的RNA基序家族，它们以高度序列特异性的方式催化自酯交换反应。锤头状核糖核酸酶是该家族中第一个被报道且研究最为广泛的成员。然而，尽管自其发现以来的三十年里进行了深入的生化和结构研究，但这个典型的核酶的历史似乎远未结束。锤头状核糖核酸酶一直被视为植物小环状RNA病原体特有的生物学奇特现象。最近，人们发现这种核酶有许多新的变体存在于所有生命王国的生物体基因组中，尽管它们的确切生物学功能尚未完全了解。
