Importance of specific purine-pyrimidine amino and hydroxyl groups for efficient cleavage by a hammerhead ribozyme

Subsequent of the discovery that RNA can have site specific cleavage activity, there has been a great deal of interest in the design and testing of trans-acting catalytic RNAs as therapeutic agents. We have chemically synthesized and experimentally analyzed chimeric DNA-RNA ribozymes in which the catalytic center remains as RNA.