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Unzippers, Resolvers and Sensors: A Structural and Functional Biochemistry Tale of RNA Helicases
The centrality of RNA within the biological world is an irrefutable fact that currently attracts increasing attention from the scientific community. The panoply of functional RNAs requires the existence of specific biological caretakers, RNA helicases, devoted to maintain the proper folding of those...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4346836/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25622248 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms16022269 |
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author | Leitão, Ana Lúcia Costa, Marina C. Enguita, Francisco J. |
author_facet | Leitão, Ana Lúcia Costa, Marina C. Enguita, Francisco J. |
author_sort | Leitão, Ana Lúcia |
collection | PubMed |
description | The centrality of RNA within the biological world is an irrefutable fact that currently attracts increasing attention from the scientific community. The panoply of functional RNAs requires the existence of specific biological caretakers, RNA helicases, devoted to maintain the proper folding of those molecules, resolving unstable structures. However, evolution has taken advantage of the specific position and characteristics of RNA helicases to develop new functions for these proteins, which are at the interface of the basic processes for transference of information from DNA to proteins. RNA helicases are involved in many biologically relevant processes, not only as RNA chaperones, but also as signal transducers, scaffolds of molecular complexes, and regulatory elements. Structural biology studies during the last decade, founded in X-ray crystallography, have characterized in detail several RNA-helicases. This comprehensive review summarizes the structural knowledge accumulated in the last two decades within this family of proteins, with special emphasis on the structure-function relationships of the most widely-studied families of RNA helicases: the DEAD-box, RIG-I-like and viral NS3 classes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4346836 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-43468362015-04-03 Unzippers, Resolvers and Sensors: A Structural and Functional Biochemistry Tale of RNA Helicases Leitão, Ana Lúcia Costa, Marina C. Enguita, Francisco J. Int J Mol Sci Review The centrality of RNA within the biological world is an irrefutable fact that currently attracts increasing attention from the scientific community. The panoply of functional RNAs requires the existence of specific biological caretakers, RNA helicases, devoted to maintain the proper folding of those molecules, resolving unstable structures. However, evolution has taken advantage of the specific position and characteristics of RNA helicases to develop new functions for these proteins, which are at the interface of the basic processes for transference of information from DNA to proteins. RNA helicases are involved in many biologically relevant processes, not only as RNA chaperones, but also as signal transducers, scaffolds of molecular complexes, and regulatory elements. Structural biology studies during the last decade, founded in X-ray crystallography, have characterized in detail several RNA-helicases. This comprehensive review summarizes the structural knowledge accumulated in the last two decades within this family of proteins, with special emphasis on the structure-function relationships of the most widely-studied families of RNA helicases: the DEAD-box, RIG-I-like and viral NS3 classes. MDPI 2015-01-22 /pmc/articles/PMC4346836/ /pubmed/25622248 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms16022269 Text en © 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Review Leitão, Ana Lúcia Costa, Marina C. Enguita, Francisco J. Unzippers, Resolvers and Sensors: A Structural and Functional Biochemistry Tale of RNA Helicases |
title | Unzippers, Resolvers and Sensors: A Structural and Functional Biochemistry Tale of RNA Helicases |
title_full | Unzippers, Resolvers and Sensors: A Structural and Functional Biochemistry Tale of RNA Helicases |
title_fullStr | Unzippers, Resolvers and Sensors: A Structural and Functional Biochemistry Tale of RNA Helicases |
title_full_unstemmed | Unzippers, Resolvers and Sensors: A Structural and Functional Biochemistry Tale of RNA Helicases |
title_short | Unzippers, Resolvers and Sensors: A Structural and Functional Biochemistry Tale of RNA Helicases |
title_sort | unzippers, resolvers and sensors: a structural and functional biochemistry tale of rna helicases |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4346836/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25622248 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms16022269 |
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