PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Christin Voigt
AU  - Mateusz Dobrychłop
AU  - Elisabeth Kruse
AU  - Anna Czerwoniec
AU  - Joanna M. Kasprzak
AU  - Patrycia Bytner
AU  - Janusz M. Bujnicki
AU  - H. Ulrich Göringer
TI  - Surface-driven RNA-refolding by the OB-fold proteins of the <em>Trypanosoma brucei</em> editosome
AID  - 10.1101/099705
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 099705
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/11/099705.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/11/099705.full
AB  - RNA editing in African trypanosomes represents an RNA-processing reaction that generates functional mitochondrial transcripts from sequence-deficient pre-mRNAs. The reaction is catalyzed by a macromolecular protein complex known as the editosome. Editosomes have been demonstrated to execute RNA-chaperone activity to overcome the highly folded nature of pre-edited substrate mRNAs. The molecular basis of this activity is unknown. Here we test five OB-fold proteins of the editosome as potential candidates. We show that the different proteins interact by hetero-oligomerization and we demonstrate that all proteins execute RNA-chaperone activity. Activity differences correlate with the surface areas of the proteins and map predominantly to the intrinsically disordered subdomains of the polypeptides. To provide a structural context for our findings we present a coarse-grained model of the editosome. The model suggests that an inner core of catalytically active editosome components is separated from an outer shell of IDP-domains that act as RNA-remodeling sites.