"Intracellular Cleavage of Hepatitis C Virus RNA and Inhibition of Viral Protein Translation by Hammerhead Ribozymes."

According to the authors' abstract of an article published in Journal of Clinical Investigation, "To determine the effects of hammerhead ribozymes against hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA on viral protein translation, a luciferase reporter gene vector, pCMV/T7-NCRC Delta-luc was constructed containing the 5'-noncoding region (5'-NCR) and part of the core region of HCV. Four ribozymes, Rz1-Rz4, were designed to cleave at nucleotide positions 136-160, 313-337, 496-520, and 373-388, respectively. Each ribozyme cleaved the target RNA at expected positions under cell-free conditions, Rz2 and Rz4 significantly suppressed translation of NCRC Delta-luc RNA by 71 and 49%, respectively. Translation of...

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