RNAse HI family that includes archaeal, some bacterial as well as plant RNase HI
Ribonuclease H (RNase H) is classified into two evolutionarily unrelated families, type 1 (prokaryotic RNase HI, eukaryotic RNase H1 and viral RNase H) and type 2 (prokaryotic RNase HII and HIII, and eukaryotic RNase H2). RNase H is an endonuclease that cleaves the RNA strand of an RNA/DNA hybrid in a sequence non-specific manner. RNase H is involved in DNA replication, repair and transcription. RNase H is widely present in various organisms, including bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes and most prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes contain multiple RNase H genes. Despite the lack of amino acid sequence homology, type 1 and type 2 RNase H share a main-chain fold and steric configurations of the four acidic active-site (DEDD) residues and have the same catalytic mechanism and functions in cells. One of the important functions of RNase H is to remove Okazaki fragments during DNA replication. Most archaeal genomes contain only type 2 RNase H (RNase HII); however, a few contain RNase HI as well. Although archaeal RNase HI sequences conserve the DEDD active-site motif, they lack other common features important for catalytic function, such as the basic protrusion region. Archaeal RNase HI homologs are more closely related to retroviral RNase HI than bacterial and eukaryotic type I RNase H in enzymatic properties.