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Summary: sion. Perhaps harder to explain is why an
active self-cleaving ribozyme sequence ex-
ists within an intron.
The similarity between the CPEB3 and
HDV ribozymes is unlikely to be coinciden-
tal. Could it be that, long after proteins had
become the dominant biological catalysts,
HDV chose to adopt a ribozyme from the
cellular genome?
The two papers will stimulate more stud-
ies about the mechanism of self-cleaving
ribozyme activity and how they control gene
expression. Origin-of-life remnants or not,
self-cleaving ribozymes serve diverse and
highly specific functions in today's protein-
rich cellular world. Given the apparent ver-
satility of self-cleaving ribozymes, future
studies are likely to reveal further roles for
such ribozymes.
References
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