Abstract
Avocado sunblotch viroid (ASBV) is a 247-nucleotide, single-stranded, circular RNA1. It is considered to replicate via a rolling-circle mechanism2–4 in which circular, monomeric plus and minus RNAs act as templates for the synthesis of longer-than-unit-length precursor RNAs. Processing of these RNAs in vivo may occur by a self-cleavage reaction, as indicated by ability of dimeric, linear plus and minus ASBV RNAs to specifically self-cleave in vitro with the excision of a monomeric RNA with 5′-hydroxyl and 2′,3′-cyclic phosphodiester termini4. A similar self-cleavage reaction has also been reported to occur in an RNA transcript containing a dimeric copy of a tandemly repeated, 330-base-pair sequence of the newt genome5. Based on comparisons with self-cleaving plant viral satellite RNAs6,7, hammerhead-shaped active structures, each containing one self-cleavage site, were proposed for the plus and minus ASBV RNAs4 and the newt RNA5, but the stability of these hammerheads has been questioned4,8. Here, more stable active structures that contain two self-cleavage sites are proposed and data supporting these models are presented.
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Forster, A., Davies, C., Sheldon, C. et al. Self-cleaving viroid and newt RNAs may only be active as dimers. Nature 334, 265–267 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1038/334265a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/334265a0
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