SNRPs - Biology Forum

last updated by

MrMistery 17 years, 11 months ago

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- December 16, 2006 at 6:23 am #6566
  Vibrio
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  I am just wondering about this. My high school teacher said that they are enzymes that get rid of introns. Then my professor uses different initials and says it is a particle. So, which is it? Enzymes, an enzyme or some particle. Personally, I think it makes most sense if it/they were enzymes since enzymes break things apart.
- December 16, 2006 at 5:44 pm #63010
  MrMistery
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  SNRPs are ribonucleic particles, part of the spliceosome. They are composed of proteins and a type o RNA, called small nuclear RNA(snRNA) that is about 100-200 nucleotides long. There are 5 types of snRNA from what i remember: U1,U2,U4,U5,U6.
  SNRPs are indeed involved in the splicing of some introns, namely the category III introns located in the eukaryotic nucleus(there are other introns that do not need SNRPs for splicing). The leading hypothesis is that the snRNA actually acts like a ribozyme, catalysing the chemical reactions(transesterification reactions), while the proteins simply stabilise the structure of the spliceosome and the snRNA.
  Is that enough? Things are complicated..
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