Catalytic nucleic acids that highlight surprising fundamental properties of DNA and RNA

我的研究项目的重点是探索RNA和DNA的化学催化作用，这两种“核酸”是所有生物共有的遗传物质。诺贝尔奖得主的发现揭示了这些生物聚合物，长期以来被认为仅仅是作为储存和表达遗传信息的媒介，也可以催化代谢反应。我自己的研究小组使用不同的方法来尝试和定义这些由RNA和DNA组成的酶（“核酶”和“DNAzymes”）确实可以催化什么反应。我们的目标有四个：测试强大的“RNA世界假说”的有效性，该假说认为，非常早期的生命形式使用核酸进行遗传和代谢目的；为了确定由这些生物聚合物制成的酶的功能如何，与蛋白质酶相对；生产用于临床、工业和生物医学研究的有用试剂；并认识到我们的催化rna和dna可能告诉我们它们在生物学中的可能作用。我的实验室使用了"

The thrust of my research program is to explore the universe of chemical catalysis available to RNA and DNA, the "nucleic acids" that are the shared genetic material of all living organisms. Nobel-winning discoveries have revealed that these biopolymers, thought for long to operate solely as agents for storing and expressing genetic information, can also catalyze metabolic reactions. My own research group uses varied methodologies to try and define what reactions such enzymes made out of RNA and DNA ("ribozymes" and "DNAzymes") can indeed catalyze. Our goals are fourfold: to test the validity of the powerful "RNA World Hypothesis", which posits that very early life forms used nucleic acids for both genetic and metabolic purposes; to define how well enzymes made from these biopolymers can function, vis-a-vis protein enzymes; to generate useful reagents for application in the clinic, in industry, and in biomedical research; and, to recognize what our catalytic RNAs and DNAs may be telling us about their possible roles in biology. My lab has used the methods of "