Modeling of a possible evolutional process from a ribozyme to a catalytic RNP.

Abstract

A model process for molecular evolution from an RNA enzyme to a catalytic RNA-protein complex (RNP) is proposed. In the model, one RNA-RNA interaction in the enzyme is replaced by an RNA-protein interaction via an intermediary state where the original RNA-RNA and newly introduced RNA-protein interaction co-exist. To test the model, a catalytic RNP was designed and examined by employing the Tetrahymena ribozyme.