The curious case of protein splicing: Mechanistic insights suggested by protein semisynthesis

✍ Scribed by CARMICHAEL J.A. Wallace

• Book ID: 105356124
• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 980 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0961-8368
• DOI: 10.1002/pro.5560020501

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The gradual accumulation of examples of protein splicing, in which a nested intervening sequence is spliced out of the interior of a polyprotein precursor, suggests that this curious phenomenon might prove to have universal phylogenetic distribution and biological significance. The known examples are reviewed, with the aim of establishing underlying patterns, and a generalized mechanism of autocatalytic protein splicing is proposed. The testable consequences of such a proposal and the possible evolutionary origins of the phenomenon are discussed.