Hepatitis delta virus ribozyme

The hepatitis delta virus (HDV) ribozyme is a non-coding RNA that is necessary for viral replication and is thought to be the only catalytic RNA known to be required for viability of a human pathogen. The ribozyme acts to process the RNA transcripts to unit lengths in a self-cleavage reaction. The ribozyme is found to be active in vivo in the absence of any protein factors and is the fastest known naturally occurring self-cleaving RNA. [cite journal | last = Kuo | first = MY | coauthors = Sharmeen L, Dinter-Gottlieb G, Taylor J | year = 1988 | title = Characterization of self-cleaving RNA sequences on the genome and antigenome of human hepatitis delta virus | journal = J Virol | volume = 62 | pages = 4439–4444 | pmid = 3184270]

The crystal structure of this ribozyme has been solved using X-ray crystallography and shows five helical segments connected by a double pseudoknot.cite journal | author = Ferré-D'Amaré AR, Zhou K, Doudna JA | title = Crystal structure of a hepatitis delta virus ribozyme | journal = Nature | volume = 395 | issue = 6702 | pages = 567–74 | year = 1998 | pmid = 9783582 | doi = 10.1038/26912 | issn = ]

In additon to the sense (genomic version), all HDV viruses also have an anti-genomic version of the HDV ribozyme. cite journal |author=Chen PJ, Kalpana G, Goldberg J, "et al" |title=Structure and replication of the genome of the hepatitis delta virus |journal=Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. |volume=83 |issue=22 |pages=8774–8 |year=1986 |month=November |pmid=2430299 |pmc=387014 |doi= |url=http://www.pnas.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=2430299] This version is not the exact complementary sequence but adopts the same structure as the sense (genomic) strand. The only "significant" differences between the two are a small bulge in P4 stem and a shorter J4/2 junction.

References

External links

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* [http://subviral.med.uottawa.ca/cgi-bin/species.cgi?fkLongueur=2 Subviral RNA database entry for HDV ribozyme]