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Science 1 October 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5693, pp. 62 - 63
DOI: 10.1126/science.1104482
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Perspectives

STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY:
Evolution of RNA Architecture

Eric Westhof and Christian Massire

Crystal structures of different RNA molecules and of ribonucleoprotein particles such as the ribosome are casting new light on the intricacies of RNA structure, folding, and evolution. In their Perspective, Westhof and Massire discuss new work (Krasilnikov et al.) that highlights striking differences in the secondary structure of type A and type B RNAs of the bacterial endonuclease ribonuclease P, which nevertheless do the same job.

E. Westhof is at the Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire du CNRS, Université Louis Pasteur, F-67084 Strasbourg, France. E-mail: e.westhof{at}ibmc.u-strasbg.fr C. Massire is at Ibis Therapeutics, Carlsbad, CA 92008, USA. E-mail: cmassire{at}isisph.com

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Evidence for a Gram-positive, Eubacterial Root of the Tree of Life.
R. G. Skophammer, J. A. Servin, C. W. Herbold, and J. A. Lake (2007)
Mol. Biol. Evol. 24, 1761-1768
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Modular evolution and increase of functional complexity in replicating RNA molecules.
S. C. Manrubia and C. Briones (2007)
RNA 13, 97-107
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Natural selection is not required to explain universal compositional patterns in rRNA secondary structure categories.
S. SMIT, M. YARUS, and R. KNIGHT (2006)
RNA 12, 1-14
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Constraining ribosomal RNA conformational space.
P. Favaretto, A. Bhutkar, and T. F. Smith (2005)
Nucleic Acids Res. 33, 5106-5111
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Recurrent structural RNA motifs, Isostericity Matrices and sequence alignments.
A. Lescoute, N. B. Leontis, C. Massire, and E. Westhof (2005)
Nucleic Acids Res. 33, 2395-2409
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Ribozyme motif structure mapped using random recombination and selection.
Q. S. WANG and P. J. UNRAU (2005)
RNA 11, 404-411
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