Periodic cycles of RNA unwinding and pausing by hepatitis C virus NS3 helicase

Victor Serebrov and Anna Marie Pyle ()
Additional contact information
Victor Serebrov: Yale University
Anna Marie Pyle: Yale University

Nature, 2004, vol. 430, issue 6998, 476-480

Abstract: Abstract The NS3 helicase is essential for cytoplasmic RNA replication by the hepatitis C virus1,2,3,4, and it is a representative member of helicase superfamily 2 (SF2). NS3 is an important model system for understanding unwinding activities of DExH/D proteins5,6,7, and it has been the subject of extensive structural and mutational analyses8,9,10,11. Despite intense interest in NS3, the molecular and kinetic mechanisms for RNA unwinding by this helicase have remained obscure. We have developed a combinatorial, time-resolved approach for monitoring the microscopic behaviour of a helicase at each nucleotide of a duplex substrate. By applying this analysis to NS3, we have independently established the ‘physical’ and ‘kinetic’ step size for unwinding of RNA (18 base pairs, in each case), which we relate to the stoichiometry of the functional, translocating species. Having obtained microscopic unwinding rate constants at each position along the duplex, we demonstrate that NS3 unwinds RNA through a highly coordinated cycle of fast ripping and local pausing that occurs with regular spacing along the duplex substrate, much like the stepping behaviour of cytoskeletal motor proteins12.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02704 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:430:y:2004:i:6998:d:10.1038_nature02704

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02704

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().