Sequence-function relationships provide new insight into the cleavage site selectivity of the 8–17 RNA-cleaving deoxyribozyme

Many sequence variations of the 8-17 RNA-cleaving deoxyribozyme have been isolated through in vitro selection. In an effort to understand how these sequence variations affect cleavage site selectivity, we systematically mutated the catalytic core of 8-17 and measured the cleavage activity of each mutant deoxyribozyme against all 16 possible chimeric (RNA/DNA) dinucleotide junctions. We observed sequence-function relationships that suggest how …