Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on December 17, 2007
Nucleic Acids Research 2008 36(3):963-969; doi:10.1093/nar/gkm1118
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2008, Vol. 36, No. 3 963-969
© 2007 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Creating a ribonuclease T-tat that preferentially recognizes and hydrolyzes HIV-1 TAR RNA in vitro and in vivo
Institute of Genome Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +02 2822 5485; Fax: +02 2826 4930; Email: alin{at}ym.edu.tw
Received October 30, 2007. Revised November 29, 2007. Accepted November 29, 2007.
A ribonuclease, RNase T-tat, specifically designed to hydrolyze the TAR RNA of HIV-1 virus has been engineered. The protein was made by domain swapping the TAT peptide at the loop 3 position of ribonuclease T1. The RNase T-tat maintains a guanine-specific RNA hydrolytic activity, and characteristically displayed a specific affinity for the TAR RNA of HIV-1. In the in vitro and in vivo assays, the RNase T-tat preferentially inhibited the expression of TAR-bearing mRNA through cis-TAR targeting, suggesting that RNase T-tat may be potentially useful for the disruption of the initial stage of the transcription process of HIV-1 virus.