Authors: Zi-Xian Liu, Shouyue Zhang, Han-Zhou Zhu, Zhi-Hang Chen, Yun Yang, Long-Qi Li, Yuan Lei, Yun Liu, Dan-Yuan Li, Ao Sun, Cheng-Ping Li, Shun-Qing Tan, Gao-Li Wang, Jie-Yi Shen, Shuai Jin, Caixia Gao, Jun-Jie Gogo Liu
Published: 2024-02-01
Source: Full article
Ribozymes are catalytic RNAs with diverse functions including self-splicing and polymerization. This work aims to discover natural ribozymes that behave as hydrolytic and sequence-specific DNA endonucleases, which could be repurposed as DNA manipulation tools. Focused on bacterial group II-C introns, we found that many systems without intron-encoded protein propagate multiple copies in their resident genomes. These introns, named HYdrolytic Endonucleolytic Ribozymes (HYERs), cleaved RNA, single-stranded DNA, bubbled double-stranded DNA (dsDNA), and plasmids in vitro. HYER1 generated dsDNA breaks in the mammalian genome. Cryo–electron microscopy analysis revealed a homodimer structure for HYER1, where each monomer contains a Mg