Hello!

 

I have been trying to find a ribozyme which can cleave peptide bonds but have had no luck. Do any of you know whether one of these has been artificially produced? Is there any reason why it would be impossible to make one? I would like to make some proteases capable of breaking a specific peptide bond, and I was thinking that it could perhaps be easier to evolve one from RNA than from a protein, but I am not familiar enough with the field to know whether this is viable or not.

See references 32 and 26 in this publication for ribozymes creating amid bonds (which might help for the correspnding hydrolysis):

http://bartellab.wi.mit.edu/publication_reprints/Bartel_Trends99.pdf

 

 

Because it is highly hydrophilic RNA cannot form precise hydrophobic cavets besides plat ones to bind aromatic rings. So cleavage at hydrophobic amino acids (besides Phe) probably will not work.