Hairpin ribozyme
![Secondary structure of a minimal hairpin ribozyme with substrate RNA bound. Circles represent individual nucleotides and lines indicate canonical (Watson-Crick) base pairs](/Images/godic/202501/16/Hairpin-ribozyme-sec-str-minimal-jpeg2256.jpg")
![Folding of the hairpin ribozyme in its native tertiary structure. The ribozyme sequence is shown in grey, whilst the substrate sequence is light red. The cleavage and ligation site (dark red) is between nucleotides A-1 and G+1. Important sequences within loops A and B are shown, with black dots indicating non-Watson-Crick interactions between nucleotides. The two catalytic nucleotides are shown in green, and the critical nucleotide C25, which forms a Watson-Crick base pair with G+1 at the reaction site, is shown in blue.[2]](/Images/godic/202501/16/Hairpin-ribozyme-tertiary-structure-v22256.jpg")
![A representation of the 3D structure of the hairpin ribozyme.[10]](/Images/godic/202501/16/Hairpin-ribozyme-crystal-structure-UR01092256.jpg")
The hairpin ribozyme is a small section of RNA that can act as a ribozyme. Like the hammerhead ribozyme it is found in RNA satellites of plant viruses. It was first identified in the minus strand of the tobacco ringspot virus (TRSV) satellite RNA where it catalyzes self-cleavage and joining (ligation) reactions to process the products of rolling circle virus replication into linear and circular satellite RNA molecules. The hairpin ribozyme is similar to the hammerhead ribozyme in that it does not require a metal ion for the reaction.