Secondary Structure for RNA Aptamers Binding to Guanine-Rich Sequence in the 5'-UTR RNA of N-Ras Oncogene

RNA molecules which bind to the G-rich sequence in the 5'-UTR RNA which plays an important role in expression of N-ras, were selected. The secondary structures of five selected RNA aptamers including primer sequence were found by the CLC RNA workbench ver. 4.2 program (www.clcbio.com) and investigated with RNA structural probes such as RNase T1 which has specificity for a G in single-stranded region, RNase V1 specific for double strand and nuclease S1 specific for single strand. The generalized secondary structure model was proposed and characterized. It was composed of a central long double strand region flanked by single strand region at both end sides. The double strand region had an internal single-strand region and bulges. The single strand loop in the right side was composed of four or five nucleotides.