The Beta-globin co-transcriptional cleavage ribozyme (CotC ribozyme) is an RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

 enzyme

Enzyme

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...

 known as a ribozyme

Ribozyme

A ribozyme is an RNA molecule with a well defined tertiary structure that enables it to catalyze a chemical reaction. Ribozyme means ribonucleic acid enzyme. It may also be called an RNA enzyme or catalytic RNA. Many natural ribozymes catalyze either the hydrolysis of one of their own...

.

Transcription

Transcription (genetics)

Transcription is the process of creating a complementary RNA copy of a sequence of DNA. Both RNA and DNA are nucleic acids, which use base pairs of nucleotides as a complementary language that can be converted back and forth from DNA to RNA by the action of the correct enzymes...

 termination of RNA polymerase II

RNA polymerase II

RNA polymerase II is an enzyme found in eukaryotic cells. It catalyzes the transcription of DNA to synthesize precursors of mRNA and most snRNA and microRNA. A 550 kDa complex of 12 subunits, RNAP II is the most studied type of RNA polymerase...

 transcripts is proposed to occur by a two stage process. The first stage involves pre-termination cleavage (PTC) of the nascent transcript downstream of the poly(A) site

Polyadenylation

Polyadenylation is the addition of a poly tail to an RNA molecule. The poly tail consists of multiple adenosine monophosphates; in other words, it is a stretch of RNA that has only adenine bases. In eukaryotes, polyadenylation is part of the process that produces mature messenger RNA for translation...

. This process is also referred to as co-transcriptional cleavage (CoTC). The CoTC process in the human beta-globin

Globin

Globins are a related family of proteins, which are thought to share a common ancestor. These proteins all incorporate the globin fold, a series of eight alpha helical segments. Two prominent members of this family include myoglobin and hemoglobin, which both bind the heme prosthetic group...

 gene has been shown to involve an RNA self-cleaving activity located in the 3' flanking region of the beta-globin gene. The CoTC core is highly conserved in the 3' UTR of other primate beta-globin genes

Gênes

Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...

. Functionally, this CoTC ribozyme resembles the 3' processive, self-cleaving ribozymes described for the protein-encoding genes from the myxomycetes Didymium iridis and Physarum polycephalum.

There has been no independent confirmation of these findings.