It was once believed that only proteins could serve as biological catalysts, until the discovery of ribozymes. Catalysts composed of DNA were still thought impossible, until the first laboratory-selected catalytic DNA was reported by Breaker and Joyce in 1994. Now a wide array of deoxyribozymes (also known as DNAzymes or DNA enzymes) have been isolated by Systematic Evolution of Ligands for Exponential Enrichment (SELEX) and characterized. One of the most popular type of deoxyribozymes used today catalyzes cleavage of RNA using magnesium cation as a cofactor. However, their efficiency fails to compete with the efficiency of protein ribonucleases. At the same time, amino acid side chains in the active sites of ribonucleases greatly assist the cleavage. In case of deoxyribozymes, peptide cofactors can expand the repertoire of functional groups available for catalysis, as well as provide a scaffold necessary for the formation of the active site. This has a potential to improve the catalytic efficiency of RNA-cleaving deoxyribozymes and demonstrate an expanded utility of DNA as a biological catalyst. In this work we report the use of a peptide library as a cofactor to perform SELEX for isolation of  an RNA-cleaving deoxyribozyme.<br/>

Use of peptides as cofactors for RNA-cleaving deoxyribozymes

256th National Meeting (2018)

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