Table 2.

Structure-activity correlation of various RNase A molecules for hydrolysis of double stranded RNA (dsRNA)

RNase A species	Distance between active sites (Å)	Specific activity on poly(A)-poly(U) (activity/mg)	Specific activity on viral dsRNA (activity/nmol)
Monomer	N/A	2.7 ± 0.5	0.44 ± 0.02
Minor dimer	39.6	4.5 ± 0.8	1.43 ± 0.19
Major dimer	38.7	30 ± 3	1.37 ± 0.19
Major trimer	39.6 and 38.7	32 ± 6	5.00 ± 0.24
Minor trimer	28.8	61 ± 5	5.52 ± 0.27

Notice that the activity increases as the distance between the active sites decreases. Activity data on viral dsRNA are from Gotte et al (1999).