Benjamin Chang
Twister ribozymes are a class of small self-cleaving RNA with unknown biological functions that are conserved across many organisms. I identified two examples at a splice junction where they can influence transcript maturation and their adjacent nucleotides can provide regulation for self-cleavage activity. Analysis of the self-cleavage rates of eight constructs with differing amounts of flanking sequences suggests a difference in activity between the spliced and unspliced versions.