Pseudouridine synthases

Abstract

Pseudouridine synthases are the enzymes responsible for the most abundant posttranscriptional modification of cellular RNAs. These enzymes catalyze the site-specific isomerization of uridine residues that are already part of an RNA chain, and appear to employ both sequence and structural information to achieve site specificity. Crystallographic analyses have demonstrated that all pseudouridine synthases share a common core fold and active site structure and that this core is modified by peripheral domains, accessory proteins, and guide RNAs to give rise to remarkable substrate versatility.