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The Crystal Structure of an RNA Ligating Ribozyme and its
Implications for the RNA World
The discovery 25 years ago that RNA can be enzymatic permits us
to speculate that pre-biotic self-replicating molecules may have
been RNAs. This is known as the "RNA World" hypothesis. As a first
step to understanding what properties of ribozymes are of
fundamental importance to a plausible RNA World evolutionary
scenerio, and how RNA catalysts evolve in three-dimensional space,
we have solved the structure of an RNA Ligase
Ribozyme that catalyzes the assembly of RNA from a
nucleotide-5'-triphosphate fragment.
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