Structure and Activity of Ribozymes

In Vitro Selection of Functional Oligonucleotides and the Origins of Biochemical Activity

“…Been and Cech (1988) achieved primer extension by a modified Tetrahymena group I intron; Doudna and Szostak (1989) successfully altered the group I intron to splice together strands of RNA on an exogenous template; Pace and co-workers used phylogenetic analysis to guide the creation of a minimized RNase P catalytic subunit (Waugh et al, 1989). Although those early engineering efforts were successful, it became clear that strategies based on laboratory evolution would be better suited to address questions about the range of functions that RNA can perform and the abundance of active sequences in collections of random sequences (Szostak, 1988;Joyce, 1989).…”