Later, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, Altman started the work that led to the discovery of RNase P and the enzymatic properties of the RNA subunit of that enzyme.
RNase P |
The 6S RNA binds to RNA polymerase and regulates transcription, tmRNA has functions in protein synthesis, including the recycling of stalled ribosomes, 4.5S RNA regulates signal recognition particle (SRP), which is required for the secretion of proteins and RNase P is involved in maturing tRNAs.
The first ribozymes were discovered in the 1980s by Thomas R. Cech, who was studying RNA splicing in the ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila and Sidney Altman, who was working on the bacterial RNase P complex.
Sidney Altman and Thomas Cech first discovered catalytic RNA molecules, RNase P and group II intron ribozymes, in 1989 and won the Nobel Prize for their discovery.
At about the same time, Sidney Altman, a professor at Yale University, was studying the way tRNA molecules are processed in the cell when he and his colleagues isolated an enzyme called RNase-P, which is responsible for conversion of a precursor tRNA into the active tRNA.