Abstact

Very recent studies showed that mammalian telomeres were transcribed into telomeric-repeat-containing RNAs and suggested that these RNA molecules were biologically important. Here we report on a structural study of RNA G-quadruplexes formed by human telomeric RNA sequences in K(+) solution. Our data indicated that these sequences formed propeller-type parallel-stranded RNA G-quadruplexes. We have determined the NMR-based solution structure of a dimeric propeller-type RNA G-quadruplex formed by the 12-nt human telomeric RNA sequence r(UAGGGUUAGGGU). We also observed the stacking of two such propeller-type G-quadruplex blocks for the 10-nt human telomeric RNA sequence r(GGGUUAGGGU) and a higher-order G-quadruplex structure for the 9-nt human telomeric RNA sequence r(GGGUUAGGG). Based on these findings we proposed how higher-order structures might be formed by long telomeric RNA.