Endowing ribonuclease a with sequence specificity

BIOL 122

Rex Watkins, rwwatkins@wisc.edu, Department of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 433 Babcock Drive, Madison, WI 53706 and Ronald T Raines, raines@biochem.wisc.edu, Departments of Biochemistry and Chemistry, University of Wisonsin-Madison, 433 Babcock Drive, Madison, WI 53706.
Some ribonuclease A variants are cytotoxic, degrading cytosolic RNA by crossing a cell's lipid bilayer and evading a cytosolic inhibitor protein, ribonuclease inhibitor. While these variants show pronounced selectivity toward cancerous cells, they are not very sequence-specific, cleaving the phosphodiester backbone of RNA preferentially on the 3' side of pyrimidine residues. Here, we report our progress toward endowing ribonuclease A with sequence specificity as a method to knockdown gene expression in cancerous cells.

 

Poster Session
8:00 PM-10:00 PM, Monday, August 20, 2007 BCEC -- Exhibit Hall - B2, Poster

Division of Biological Chemistry

The 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007