Selective Modification of Fatty Acid Synthesis Pathway by Expression of an Acetyl-CoA Carboxylase-Specific Ribozyme Gene

The study of cellular function of a particular gene can be advanced by either specifically eliminating or blocking the function of its gene product. Although antisense RNA has frequently been used for this purpose, the hammerhead ribozyme has recently drawn a great deal of attention due to its potential utilization as a therapeutic agent (1 ). It was first recognized as a sequence motif responsible for self-cleavage in satellite RNAs of certain viruses (2 ,3 ) and further developed as a ribozyme that can act as an endoribonuclease to cleave the RNA substrate in a sequence-specific manner (4 ),5 .