Determination of the Affinity of Eukaryotic DDX3 RNA Helicase to the Characteristic Elements of mRNA Secondary Structure.

Abstract

DDX3 RNA helicase is involved in many processes of RNA metabolism in eukaryotic cells. Many studies of DDX3 have shown that it is also involved in the translation initiation process, both cap-dependent and IRES-dependent. However, the specificity of the secondary structure of mRNA 5'-UTRs, which require DDX3 RNA helicase for effective translation, has not yet been determined. We performed a bioinformatic analysis of the 5'-UTR secondary structures in the pool of DDX3-dependent mRNAs in silico and predicted that the length of 5'-UTRs for such mRNAs is less than the average for the genome and that there are also characteristic hairpin structures in the region of the first 50 nucleotides from the 5'-end of the mRNA.