Species Distribution
| Hammerhead ribozyme HH9 | |
|---|---|
| Predicted secondary structure and sequence conservation of the HH9 ribozyme found conserved from lizard to human genomes | |
| Identifiers | |
| Symbol | HH9 |
| Rfam | RF02275 |
| Other data | |
| RNA type | Gene; ribozyme |
| Domain(s) | Eukaryota |
| SO | 0000380 |
In 1986, the first hammerhead ribozymes were found in some RNA plant pathogens like viroids and viral satellites. One year later, a hammerhead ribozyme was also reported in the satellite DNA of newt genomes. New examples of this ribozyme were then found in the genomes of unrelated organisms like schistosomes, cave crickets, Arabidopsis thaliana plant and a few mammals like rodents and platypus. In 2010, it was found that the hammerhead ribozyme actually occurs widespread from bacterial to eukaryal genomes including humans. Similar reports confirmed and extended these observations, unveiling the hammerhead ribozyme as an ubiquitous catalytic RNA in all life kingdoms.
In eukaryotic genomes, many of the detected hammerhead ribozymes seem to be related to short interspersed retroelements (SINEs), with the exception of a family of strikingly conserved hammerheads found in the genomes of all amniotes. These hammerhead ribozymes (the so-called HH9 and HH10) occur in the introns of a few specific genes and point to a preserved biological role during pre-mRNA biosynthesis
Read more about this topic: Hammerhead Ribozyme
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