Probing the mechanism of the cleavage reaction in catalytic RNAs (Research supported by HSFP)：

Cleavage reactions, facilitated by catalytic RNAs (ribozymes), are essential for RNA processing, i.e. self-splicing and genomic RNA processing of plant viroids/virusoids. In this project, we will capture the reactive intermediate spectroscopically and crystallographically, and present the complete reaction pathway of an RNA cleavage reaction in 3-dimensional (3D) real space.