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. 2009 Nov 17;38(3):e16. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkp1033

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Telomerase catalytic cycle and RNA secondary structure. (a) Cartoon showing a telomerase RNP bound to a DNA primer. Inset: the three general stages of the telomerase catalytic cycle, primer alignment, telomere repeat addition and translocation, are depicted. (b) The 159 nucleotide Tetrahymena thermophila telomerase RNA consists of several conserved structural elements important for enzyme assembly and catalysis. The TBE at the base of stemloop II (sII) serves as a high affinity binding site for TERT and helps to define the end of the RNA template (blue) used in the synthesis of telomeric DNA (32). The TRE functions to position the adjacent template sequence in the active site and is important for repeat addition processivity (33). Stemloop IIIa (sIIIa) and IIIb (sIIIb) together form a putative pseudoknot structure required for telomerase activity (14,22,34). The stemloop IV (sIV) is proposed to potentiate folding of the pseudoknot and plays critical role in enzyme assembly and activity (14,16).