Hammerhead Ribozyme - Structure and Catalysis

Structure and Catalysis

The tertiary interactions in the full-length hammerhead ribozyme stabilize what strongly appears to be the active conformation. The nucleophile, the 2'-oxygen of the cleavage-site nucleotide, C17, is aligned almost perfectly for an in-line attack (the S_N2(P) reaction). G12 is positioned within hydrogen bonding distance of this nucleophile, and therefore would be able to abstract a proton from the 2'-oxygen if G12 itself becomes deprotonated. The 2'-OH of G8 forms a hydrogen bond to the 5'-leaving group oxygen, and therefore potentially may supply a proton as negative charge accumulates on the 5'-oxygen of the ribose of A1.1.

The most likely explanation is then that G12, in the deprotonated form, is the general base, and the ribose of G8 is the general acid. The apparent kinetic pKa of the hammerhead ribozyme is 8.5, whereas the pKa of guanosine is about 9.5. It is possible that the pKa of G12 is perturbed from 9.5 to 8.5 in the hammerhead catalytic core; this hypothesis is currently the subject of intense investigation.

If the invariant G8 is changed to C8, hammerhead catalysis is abolished. However, a G8C + C3G double-mutant that maintains the G8-C3 base pair found in the full-length hammerhead restores most of the catalytic activity. The 2'-OH of G8 has also been observed to be essential for catalysis; replacement of G8 with deoxyG8 greatly reduces the rate of catalysis, suggesting the 2'-OH is indeed crucial to the catalytic mechanism.

The close approach of the A9 and scissile phosphates requires the presence of a high concentration of positive charge. This is probably the source of the observation that divalent metal ions are required at low ionic strength, but can be dispensed with at higher concentrations of monovalent cations.

The reaction thus likely involves abstraction of the 2'-proton from C17, followed by nucleophilic attack upon the adjacent phosphate. As the bond between the scissile phosphorus and the 5'-O leaving group begins to break, a proton is supplied from the ribose of G8, which then likely reprotonates at the expense of a water molecule observed to hydrogen bond to it in the crystal structure.