The Protein Man's Blog | A Discussion of Protein Research

What’s the difference between DNA and mRNA vaccines and how do they work? Are they better than traditional vaccines? With all the exciting life-saving possibilities these modern technologies offer, it’s time to take a closer look.

In eukaryotic cells, RNA processing occurs in the nucleus and the functional mRNA is transported to the cytoplasm. As soon as the mRNA transcript is synthesized from RNA polymerase II, RNA binding proteins (RBPs) attach to the mRNA transcript to prevent it from degradation during processing and exporting it from the nucleus. RBPs play an important role in RNA stability, maturation, transport, and localization. This process results in the formation of stable mature mRNA (lasts for several hours) than that in prokaryotes (5 seconds). 

Proteinase K is a serine protease, the presence of a catalytic triad characterizes serine proteases, the catalytic triad is a cluster of three amino acids that make the catalytic center and consists of serine, aspartic acid, and histidine amino acids, which can often vary but all of these enzymes have a nucleophile serine and the same catalytic mechanism. Proteinase K has a catalytic triad consisting of Ser 224, His 69, and Asp 39. The substrate recognition sites are made up of peptide chains, 99-104 and 132-136.