| Title | A promiscuous ribozyme promotes nucleotide synthesis in addition to ribose chemistry. | | Author(s) | Lau MW, Unrau PJ | | Institution | Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. | | Source | Chem Biol 2009 Aug 28; 16(8):815-25. | | Abstract | Here we report the in vitro selection of an unusual ribozyme that efficiently performs nucleotide synthesis even though it was selected to perform a distinctly different sugar chemistry. This ribozyme, called pR1, when derivatized with ribose 5-phosphate (PR) at its 3' terminus and incubated with 6-thioguanine, produces two interconverting thiol-containing products corresponding to a Schiff base and its Amadori rearranged product. Consistent with this hypothesis, removing the 2-hydroxyl from the PR substrate results in only a single product. Surprisingly, as this was not selected for, switching the tethered PR substrate to 5-phosphoribosyl 1-pyrophosphate results in the synthesis of 6-thioguanosine 5'-monophosphate. The discovery that a ribozyme can promote such distinct reactions spontaneously demonstrates that an RNA-mediated metabolism early in evolution could have evolved important new functionalities via ribozyme promiscuity. | | Language | eng | | Pub Type(s) | Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
| | PubMed ID | 19716472 |
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