… In a seminal study, Murray and co-workers showed that the hammerhead, hairpin, and
VS ribozymes are catalytic in the absence of divalent ions, as long as high concentrations of …

… ribozyme that involves general acid–base catalysis by the combination of the nucleobases of
… are rather limited, being restricted to the nucleobases and water coordinated to metal ions. …

… ribozymes can accelerate biological reactions is by adopting folds that favorably perturb
nucleobase ionization… N1 imino group of a hairpin ribozyme in distinct conformational states. A …

… We provide an overview of ribozyme studies involving nucleobase catalysis and the …
nucleobases in RNA catalysis. We begin by considering roles for ionized bases in RNA catalysis…

… Thus, in contrast to models that invoke unique roles for metal ions in ribozyme chemical …
in the VS ribozyme can be explained solely by the effect of the ions on nucleobase pK a . The …

… We demonstrated catalytic activity in a VS ribozyme, in which a … of the nucleobase of G8 in
hairpin ribozyme catalysis using … will be fully folded in the presence of 10 mM Mg 2+ ions as …

… nucleobases, hydrated metal ions and the 2′-hydroxyl group. Nucleobase-mediated
general acid–base catalysis is very common in the nucleolytic ribozymes, but is not universal, as …

… ions can be dispensed with for several of the ribozymes. For example, in hammerhead
ribozyme HH16.1, divalent metal ions … of metal ion suggests a nucleobase-catalyzed acid-base …

… The main players are the RNA nucleobases and bound metal ions. Although most ribozymes
carry out … Until 20 years ago it was firmly believed that proteins were the only catalytic …

… to the highly impaired A756G ribozyme, and we conclude that the nucleobase of A756 is
the … Thus, the rate of cleavage by ribozyme molecules that are in the correct ionization state …