Salt concentration and pH have dramatic effects on enzymatic catalysis. A quantitative description on these effects is important to elucidate the energetics and mechanisms of catalysis. Here, the effects of salt concentration and pH on binding and catalysis are analyzed with Ribonuclease A (RNase A) as a model system. 11 The effects of pH and mutagenesis on the stability of RNase A-nucleic acid...

Theiler's virus is a neurotropic picornavirus responsible for chronic infections of the central nervous system. The establishment of a persistent infection and the subsequent demyelinating disease triggered by the virus depend on the expression of L*, a viral accessory protein encoded by an alternative open reading frame of the virus. We discovered that L* potently inhibits the interferon-induc...

RNase M, an enzyme previously purified to homogeneity from Escherichia coli, was suggested to be the RNase responsible for mRNA degradation in this bacterium. Although related to the endoribonuclease, RNase I, its distinct properties led to the conclusion that RNase M was a second, low molecular mass, broad specificity endoribonuclease present in E. coli. However, based on sequence analysis, so...

RNase H1 from Halobacterium sp. NRC-1 (Halo-RNase H1) is characterized by the abundance of acidic residues on the surface, including bi/quad-aspartate site residues. Halo-RNase H1 exists in partially folded (I) and native (N) states in low-salt and high-salt conditions respectively. Its folding is also induced by divalent metal ions. To understand this unique folding mechanism of Halo-RNase H1,...

Bovine seminal ribonuclease (BS-RNase) is a homologue of bovine pancreatic ribonuclease (RNase A). Unlike RNase A, BS-RNase has notable toxicity for human tumor cells. Wild-type BS-RNase is a homodimer linked by two intermolecular disulfide bonds. This quaternary structure endows BS-RNase with resistance to inhibition by the cytosolic ribonuclease inhibitor protein (RI), which binds tightly to ...

Ribonuclease P (RNase P) is an essential endonuclease that acts early in the tRNA biogenesis pathway. This enzyme catalyzes cleavage of the leader sequence of precursor tRNAs (pre-tRNAs), generating the mature 5' end of tRNAs. RNase P activities have been identified in Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya, as well as organelles. Most forms of RNase P are ribonucleoproteins, i.e., they consist of an e...

Tertiary models of ribonuclease H (RNase H) domains in reverse transcriptases (RTs) from Moloney murine leukemia virus (MuLV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) were built based upon the X-ray structure of RNase H from Escherichia coli (E. coli RNase H). In two models of RT-RNase H domains, not only active site residues but also residues, which construct a hydrophobic core and hydrogen bo...

the relationships between RNase activity and cancer, and a review concerning these relationships has been published (14). An understanding of the role of RNase in growth processes has been complicated by dernonstra tions that there is a multiplicity of RNases (14) and of intracellular inhibitors for RNase (9, 11) in animal tissues. Furthermore, the recent discovery that some samples of RNA cont...

RNase H plays an essential role in the replication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). Therefore, it is a promising target for drug development. However, the identification of HIV-1 RNase H inhibitors (RHIs) has been hampered by the open morphology of its active site, the limited number of available RNase H crystal structures in complex with inhibitors, and the fact that, due to the...