北海道支部について

“Structure and RNA engineering of a small nucleolytic ribozyme””

Prof. Pascale Legault

Université de Montreal, Canada

２０１５年７月２３日（木）１５：００-１６：００

北海道大学理学部６号館６-２０４-０２室（多目的演習室）

（札幌市北区北１０条西８丁目）

北海道大学大学院総合化学院，フロンティア化学教育研究センター，

日本生化学会北海道支部，日本化学会北海道支部

Despite the increased awareness of the importance of RNA in biology,

structural information is needed on many RNA molecules to improve

our understanding of their function and better exploit their potential

for biomedical applications. The overall goal of my laboratory is to

correlate RNA structure with function in order to help develop RNA-based

therapeutics and diagnostic agents. For this research seminar,

I will first give an overview of the research projects in my laboratory

and then focus on our most recent results pertaining to the structural,

biophysical and engineering studies of the Neurospora VS ribozyme.

The VS ribozyme is a natural RNA enzyme that provides an ideal

system for structure-function study of RNA. In addition, it has the unique

ability among small nucleolytic ribozymes to cleave a stem-loop substrate,

and thus has the potential to be engineered to cleave other stem-loops

as part of folded RNAs. Although this ribozyme has been known for

over 25 years and studied extensively by biochemical and biophysical

methods, investigation of its complete high-resolution structure has been

challenging. Our laboratory has successfully used a divide-and-conquer

approach for structural characterization, which consists of determining

NMR structures of individual subdomains with the ultimate goal of building

a structure of the full VS ribozyme based on the structures of these

individual subdomains. I will present a summary of our research progress

and the advantages of NMR spectroscopy in the characterization of

the high-resolution structure and dynamics of the VS ribozyme.

In addition, I will describe our progress on the engineering of VS-derived

ribozymes for specific cleavage of non-natural substrates. Our structural

and engineering studies impact not only on our understanding of the

VS ribozyme and its potential use for biomedical and biotechnological 

applications, but also help delineate fundamental principles of

RNA structure and engineering.

　坂口和靖　　　

　　北海道大学大学院理学研究院化学部門生物化学研究室

　　　　（札幌市北区北１０条西８丁目） 　　　

　　TEL: 011-706-2698, 　FAX:011-706-4683

　　e-mail:kazuyasu@sci.hokudai.ac.jp