Figure 3 - full size

Figure 3.
Figure 3: RNA degradation by RNase II.
Figure 3 : RNA degradation by RNase II. Unfortunately we are unable to provide accessible alternative text for this. If you require assistance to access this image, or to obtain a text description, please contact npg@nature.com-
a, Stereo view of RNase II D209N mutant active site; bonds are shown as sticks (oxygen in red, nitrogen in blue, phosphorus in orange), waters as red spheres, Mg as a green sphere and its coordination as dashed orange lines, and hydrogen bonds as dashed green lines, superposed with sigma-A corrected Fourier synthesis electron density map (brown mesh) contoured at 1 . Additionally, N1 and N6 of nucleotide 13 are in the vicinity of the carboxylate oxygens of Glu 542, at 3.2 Å (hydrogen bond as dashed green lines) and at 4.3 Å (distance as dotted orange line), respectively. b, Magnified view of the Mg ion and its coordinating environment (distances in Å) superposed with the positive 3 sigma-A corrected Fourier difference map (green mesh) calculated with the Mg and coordinating waters omitted from the model. c, Stereo view of the superposition of the RNase II D209N mutant (yellow) and RNase H (grey) with magnesium coordinating spheres (opposite view to Fig. 3a). RNase H displays two magnesium ions ligated by Glu 109, D132N, Glu 188 and Asp 192 that correspond in RNase II to Asp 201, Asp 210, D209N and Asp 207, respectively. d, Proposed catalytic mechanism for RNase II, showing the postulated second Mg (Mg II) and the attacking hydroxyl group (grey). e, Model for RNA degradation by RNase II. ssRNA (red) is threaded into the catalytic cavity and clamped between Tyr 253 and Phe 358. The additional stabilization of RNA inside the cavity drives the RNA translocation after each cleavage, up to a final four-nucleotide fragment.