Abstract
Certain fragments of M1 RNA, the catalytic subunit of RNase P from Escherichia coli, either have no enzymatic activity at all or have altered substrate specificity compared with that of the intact catalytic RNA. After simple mixing in vitro, many of these fragments of M1 RNA can reassociate with other fragments to form complexes that have enzymatic activity typical of wild-type M1 RNA. Furthermore, inactive M1 RNA molecules with internal deletions can be complemented in vitro by other inactive derivatives of M1 RNA that have nonoverlapping deletions. Thus, two inactive molecules of M1 RNA can interact to form an active RNA enzyme. Functional attributes can be assigned to various regions of M1 RNA when the reconstitution process is combined with assays for activity with different substrates.