With both catalytic and genetic functions, ribonucleic acid (RNA) is perhaps the most
pluripotent chemical species in molecular biology, and its functions are intimately linked to …

This review aims at juxtaposing common versus distinct structural and functional strategies
that are applied by aptamers, riboswitches, and ribozymes/DNAzymes. Focusing on recently …

Ribozymes are catalytic RNAs with diverse functions including self-splicing and
polymerization. This work aims to discover natural ribozymes that behave as hydrolytic and …

Highlights•Small self-cleaving ribozymes are essential for rolling-circle-based replication of
satellite and pathogenic RNAs.•Structure–function research on active site alignments and …

Recent discoveries of new classes of self‐cleaving ribozymes in diverse organisms have
triggered renewed interest in the chemistry and biology of ribozymes. Functional analysis …

Atomic mutagenesis is the key to advance our understanding of RNA recognition and RNA
catalysis. To this end, deazanucleosides are utilized to evaluate the participation of specific …

A number of small, self-cleaving ribozyme classes have been identified including the
hammerhead, hairpin, hepatitis delta virus (HDV), Varkud satellite (VS), glmS, twister …

Twister is a small ribozyme present in almost all kingdoms of life that rapidly self-cleaves in
variety of divalent metal ions. We used activity assays, bulk FRET and single-molecule FRET …

Fourteen well-defined ribozyme classes have been identified to date, among which nine are
site-specific self-cleaving ribozymes. Very recently, small self-cleaving ribozymes have …

The twister ribozyme motif has been identified by bioinformatic means very recently.
Currently, four crystal structures with ordered active sites together with a series of chemical …