PPR proteins shed a new light on RNase P biology

Autor: Géraldine Bonnard, Franziska Pinker, Bernard Gutmann, Philippe Giegé, Peter Gegenheimer, Claude Sauter, Kamel Hammani, Anthony Gobert
Rok vydání: 2013
Předmět:
Zdroj: RNA Biology
ISSN: 1555-8584
1547-6286
DOI: 10.4161/rna.25273
Popis: A fast growing number of studies identify pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins as major players in gene expression processes. Among them, a subset of PPR proteins called PRORP possesses RNase P activity in several eukaryotes, both in nuclei and organelles. RNase P is the endonucleolytic activity that removes 5′ leader sequences from tRNA precursors and is thus essential for translation. Before the characterization of PRORP, RNase P enzymes were thought to occur universally as ribonucleoproteins, although some evidence implied that some eukaryotes or cellular compartments did not use RNA for RNase P activity. The characterization of PRORP reveals a two-domain enzyme, with an N-terminal domain containing multiple PPR motifs and assumed to achieve target specificity and a C-terminal domain holding catalytic activity. The nature of PRORP interactions with tRNAs suggests that ribonucleoprotein and protein-only RNase P enzymes share a similar substrate binding process.
Databáze: OpenAIRE