Design and optimization of effector-activated ribozyme ligases

A selected ribozyme ligase, L1, has been engineered to respond to small organic effectors. Residues important for ribozyme catalysis were mapped to a compact core structure. Aptamers that bound adenosine and theophylline were appended to the core structure, and the resultant aptazymes proved to be responsive to their cognate effectors. Rational sequence substitutions in the joining region between the aptamer and the ribozyme yielded aptazymes whose activities were enhanced from 800–1600-fold in the presence of 1 mM ATP or theophylline, respectively. However, when an anti-flavin aptamer was appended to the core ribozyme structure flavin-responsivity was minimal. The joining region between the aptamer and the ribozyme core was randomized and a series of negative and positive selection steps yielded aptazymes that were activated by up to 260-fold in the presence of 100 µM FMN. The selected joining regions proved to be ‘communication modules’ that could be used to join other aptamers to the ribozyme core to form aptazymes. These results show that ribozyme ligases can be readily engineered to function as allosteric enzymes, and reveal that many of the techniques and principles previously demonstrated during the development of hammerhead aptazymes may be generalizable.