The Gammaretrovirus core encapsidation signal is an
RNA element known to be essential for stable dimerisation and efficient
genome
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ...
packaging during
virus
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.
Since Dmitri Ivanovsk ...
assembly.
Dimerisation of the viral RNA genomes is proposed to act as an
RNA conformational switch which exposes conserved UCUG elements and enables efficient genome encapsidation.
The structure of this element is composed of three
stem-loop
Stem-loop intramolecular base pairing is a pattern that can occur in single-stranded RNA. The structure is also known as a hairpin or hairpin loop. It occurs when two regions of the same strand, usually complementary in nucleotide sequence wh ...
s. Two of the stem-loops called SL-C and SL-D form a single co-axial extend helix.
See also
*
Bacteriophage pRNA
References
External links
*
Cis-regulatory RNA elements
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