Fig. 1: The structures of a mini hammerhead ribozyme targeting the genomic RNA sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and the experimental setup for single-molecule studies.
From: A hammerhead ribozyme selects mechanically stable conformations for catalysis against viral RNA
a Schematic representation of the mini hammerhead ribozyme highlighting helices I–III and domains 1–2 (left), alongside the 3D structure obtained from molecular dynamics simulations (right, Supplementary Data 1). The green arrow marks the cleavage site. b A schematic illustration of the folding and unfolding experiment using single-molecule magnetic tweezers. A colored ribozyme strand is flanked by double stranded DNA in black. The ribozyme is fully unfolded at a high force, but it folds when the forces decrease. The conformational space of the ribozyme is depicted in an energy landscape. c Typical force-extension curves (solid lines) in 100 mM NaCl fitted with a Worm-Like-Chain model (blue dashed lines)30,53.
