On Facts and Artefacts: The Difficulty to Evaluate an Artificial Nuclease

✍ Scribed by Stefan Pitsch; Ute Scheffer; Markus Hey; Andreas Strick; Michael W. Göbel

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: German
• Weight: 233 KB
• Volume: 86
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0018-019X
• DOI: 10.1002/hlca.200390316

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

A number of promising synthetic catalysts for the hydrolytic degradation of RNA have been developed in recent years. Some of them show remarkable selectivity for pyrimidine nucleotides. The general problem of all these studies is to distinguish between real effects and artefacts caused by traces of contaminating natural ribonucleases. We show that methods representing the current state of the art (diethylpyrocarbonate treatment, sterilization, ultrafiltration, etc.) do not sufficiently protect against severe artefacts. However, an incorruptible assay could be found by comparing the cleavage of RNA and its mirror image. Enantiomeric RNA is completely resistant to enzymatic degradation, whereas achiral nonpeptide catalysts, by fundamental laws of symmetry, cannot distinguish between enantiomers and will induce exactly the same cleavage pattern with both substrates.