Hovlinc
| Hovlinc | |
|---|---|
 Consensus secondary structure and sequence conservation of Hovlinc ribozyme (hominin vlincRNA-located) | |
| Identifiers | |
| Symbol | Hovlinc |
| Rfam | RF04188 |
| Other data | |
| RNA type | Gene; Ribozyme |
| Domain(s) | Hominidae |
| GO | GO:0003824 |
| SO | SO:0000374 |
| PDB structures | PDBe |
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Hovlinc is a self-cleaving ribozyme found in a very long noncoding RNA (vlincRNA) in hominins like humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas[1]. The word "hovlinc" comes from "hominin vlincRNA-located" RNA. Self-cleavage activity of Hovlinc has been proven in humans (genus Homo), chimpanzees and bonobos (genus Pan), but absent in gorillas (genus Gorilla).
Background
There are few cases of ribozymes in human, these include Mammalian CPEB3 ribozyme, Hammerhead ribozyme (HH9 and HH10[2]) and one B2 SINE ribozyme[3]. Hovlinc is a fourth case of a human ribozyme. It is a non-coding RNA (ncRNA) of about 168 nucleotides, it presumably acquires self-cleaving activity about 10 to 13 million of years ago, which is also the time register for the last common ancestor of humans, gorillas, and chimpanzees. Hovlinc presents catalytic activity in hominids but not in gorillas were a mutation (G79A substitution) abolish the self-cleavage activity.
Hovlinc is a very structured RNA that contains four stem loops joined in a central loop, it also features large pseudoknots of 5 and 4 nucleotides that help to come near the second and fourth helices, which helps the RNA to get the more compacted structure that allows catalytic activity.
This RNA raises several questions to be solved, about what is the biological function that Hovlinc is carried out in the human and how evolution still be directing RNAs to become catalytic molecules among others.
References
- ^ Chen, Yue; Qi, Fei; Gao, Fan; Cao, Huifen; Xu, Dongyang; Salehi-Ashtiani, Kourosh; Kapranov, Philipp (2021). "Hovlinc is a recently evolved class of ribozyme found in human lncRNA". Nature Chemical Biology. 17 (5): 601–607. doi:10.1038/s41589-021-00763-0. ISSN 1552-4469. PMID 33753927.
- ^ de la Peña, Marcos; García‐Robles, Inmaculada (2010-09-01). "Intronic hammerhead ribozymes are ultraconserved in the human genome". EMBO reports. 11 (9): 711–716. doi:10.1038/embor.2010.100. ISSN 1469-221X. PMC 2933863. PMID 20651741.
- ^ Hernandez, Alfredo J.; Zovoilis, Athanasios; Cifuentes-Rojas, Catherine; Han, Lu; Bujisic, Bojan; Lee, Jeannie T. (2020-01-07). "B2 and ALU retrotransposons are self-cleaving ribozymes whose activity is enhanced by EZH2". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117 (1): 415–425. doi:10.1073/pnas.1917190117. PMC 6955291. PMID 31871160.