Ribozymes as diagnostics

Ribozymes as Tools in Gene Expression

Ribozymes as therapeutic tools for genetic disease.

The discovery that RNA can act as a biological catalyst, as well as a genetic molecule, indicated that there was a time when biological reactions were catalysed in the absence of protein-based enzymes. It also provided the platform to develop those catalytic RNA molecules, called ribozymes, as trans -acting tools for RNA manipulation. Viral diseases or diseases due to genetic lesions could be t...

Ribozymes

The discovery in 1982 that an intron of the protozoan Tetrahymena can excise itself from precursor ribosomal RNA in the absence of protein challenged the belief that only proteins can act as biological catalysts. The new field of RNA enzymology emerged to study such phenomena, and catalytic RNAs have now been shown to fold up to form complex three-dimensional surfaces that can bind specific sub...

Twister ribozymes as highly versatile expression platforms for artificial riboswitches

The utilization of ribozyme-based synthetic switches in biotechnology has many advantages such as an increased robustness due to in cis regulation, small coding space and a high degree of modularity. The report of small endonucleolytic twister ribozymes provides new opportunities for the development of advanced tools for engineering synthetic genetic switches. Here we show that the twister ribo...

Synthetic hammerhead ribozymes as therapeutic tools to control disease genes.

Ribozymes are RNA molecules that have the ability to catalyse the cleavage and formation of covalent bonds in RNA strands at specific sites. The "hammerhead" motif, approximately 30-nucleotide long, is the smallest endonucleolytic cis-acting ribozyme structure found in natural circular RNAs of some plant viroids. Hammerhead ribozymes became appealing when it was shown that it is possible to pro...