具有RNA切割活性且不依赖金属离子的修饰核酶筛选
In vitro selection of modified ribozymes with metal-independent RNA-cleaving activity
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摘要: 核酶和脱氧核酶因其催化活性高度依赖金属离子, 限制了其在核酸药物领域的应用, 因此开发不依赖金属离子的修饰核酶成为研究热点。本研究测试了野生型Tgo DNA聚合酶同时识别两种糖环修饰的2'-氟代阿拉伯糖核苷酸和两种碱基修饰的脱氧核糖核苷酸的活性和忠实性, 构建了含有这4种修饰核苷酸的修饰文库, 利用指数富集配体的系统进化(systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment, SELEX) 技术筛选出具有RNA切割活性的修饰核酶。与传统方法不同, 本研究以修饰文库为模板直接进行PCR扩增, 减少逆转录反应步骤, 简化了筛选流程。本研究以全RNA底物为靶标进行筛选, 通过对测序结果的同源性分析和二级结构预测, 验证了富集序列中拷贝数前20序列的切割活性。结果表明, 修饰核酶R4-11具有RNA切割活性, 并鉴定了其选择性切割位于rC-rA之间的磷酸二酯键。本研究为修饰核酶的筛选提供了模式和平台, 并为沉默疾病相关mRNA的靶向治疗提供了新型工具。Abstract: Ribozymes and DNAzymes are limited in their applications as nucleic acid therapeutics due to their strong dependence on metal ions. Therefore, the development of novel metal-independent ribozymes has become a key research focus. This study evaluated the fidelity of wild-type Tgo DNA polymerase in simultaneously incorporating sugar backbone-modified 2'-deoxy-2'-fluoroarabinonucleic acid (FANA) along with base-modified DNA, constructed a modified nucleotide library containing four modified nucleotides, and employed systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX) technology to select ribozymes with RNA cleavage activity. Unlike conventional methods for selecting modified functional nucleic acids, the modified library here was directly used as templates for PCR amplification, eliminating the reverse transcription step which copies the modified phenotypic functional sequence into unmodified cDNA, and dramatically simplified the screening process. This study employed an RNA substrate region composed of 15 consecutive ribonucleosides for selection. Through sequence homology analysis and secondary structure prediction, we verified the cleavage activity of the top twenty abundant sequences obtained from sequencing the most active round 4 library. A sequence denoted R4-11 with considerably high RNA cleavage activity was successfully identified, and it preferentially cleaves the phosphodiester linkage between the rC-rA dinucleotide. This study provides a method for selecting ribozymes composed of diverse modified nucleotides and offers novel tools for disease-targeted therapy through mRNA silencing.
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