Probing the active site of a diels-alderase ribozyme by photoaffinity cross-linking.

Richard Wombacher, Andres Jäschke

Index: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130(27) , 8594-5, (2008)

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Abstract

The active site of a Diels-Alderase ribozyme is located in solution by photoaffinity cross-linking using a productlike azidobenzyl probe. Two key nucleotides are identified that contact the Diels-Alder product in a conformation-dependent fashion. The design of such probes does not require knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of the ribozyme, and the technique yields both static and dynamic structural information. This work establishes photoaffinity cross-linking as an empirical approach that is applied here for the first time to an artificial ribozyme.