Publications by authors named "Marie Juille"
Article Synopsis
- Self-splicing ribozymes are RNA enzymes that can catalyze their own cleavage, playing important roles in viral replication and potentially representing early RNA systems crucial to the origins of life.
- Studying these ribozymes is challenging because the natural reactions happen quickly and are hard to observe experimentally, so molecular simulations are often used to explore their behavior and reaction pathways.
- In particular, research on the hairpin ribozyme reveals that commonly assumed active forms are actually rare and unstable, while a more stable structure could indicate a different catalytic mechanism that doesn’t require typical chemical activation.
The binding of divalent cations to the ubiquitous phosphate group is essential for a number of key biological processes, such as DNA compaction, RNA folding, or interactions of some proteins with membranes. Yet, probing their binding sites, modes, and associated binding free energy is a challenge for both experiments and simulations. In simulations, standard force fields strongly overestimate the interaction between phosphate groups and divalent cations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF