Cover image

Structure of a group II intron ribonucleoprotein in the pre-ligation state (PDB id: 8T2R; Xu L, Liu T, Chung K, Pyle AM. 2023. Structural insights into intron catalysis and dynamics during splicing. Nature 624: 682–688). The pre-ligation complex of the Agathobacter rectalis group II intron reverse transcriptase/maturase with intron and 5′-exon RNAs makes it possible to construct a picture of the splicing active site. The intron is depicted by a green ribbon, with bases and Watson-Crick base pairs represented as color-coded blocks: A/A-U in red, C/C-G in yellow, G/G-C in green, U/U-A in cyan; the 5′-exon is shown by white spheres and the protein by a gold ribbon. Cover image provided by X3DNA-DSSR, an NIGMS National Resource for structural bioinformatics of nucleic acids (R24GM153869; skmatics.x3dna.org). Image generated using DSSR and PyMOL (Lu XJ. 2020. Nucleic Acids Res 48: e74).