Researchers have developed a ribozyme capable of transferring a single methyl group to an exactly defined nitrogen atom of the target RNA. The team from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg published their results in Nature.
The target RNA developed produces the methylated nucleoside 1-methyladenosine (m1A). The methyl group is transferred from a free methylated guanine nucleobase (O6-methylguanine, m6G) in a binding pocket of the ribozyme. "It is reasonable to assume that these cofactors could be evolutionary leftovers of earlier enzymatically active RNAs. Our discovery may therefore mimic a ribozyme that has possibly been lost in nature a long time ago," says lead researcher Claudia Höbartner.
"It starts from many different sequences of synthetic RNA, and is analogous to finding a needle in the haystack,” says co-author Mohammad Ghaem Maghami.
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The authors have also been able to show that MTR1 can install a single methyl group not only on synthetic RNA structures but also on natural RNA strands found in cells. The newly developed ribozyme MTR1 is expected to be a useful tool for a wide range of research areas in the future. "For example, it could help to better understand the interaction of methylation, structure, and function of RNA," concludes first author Carolin Scheitl.