RNA molecules are essential cellular machines performing a wide variety of functions for which a specific three-dimensional structure is required. Over the last several years, the experimental determination of RNA structures through x-ray crystallography and NMR seems to have reached a plateau in the number of structures resolved each year, but as more and more RNA sequences are being discovere...

SUMMARY Chemical mapping experiments allow for nucleotide resolution assessment of RNA structure. We demonstrate that different strategies of integrating probing data with thermodynamics-based RNA secondary structure prediction algorithms can be implemented by means of soft constraints. This amounts to incorporating suitable pseudo-energies into the standard energy model for RNA secondary struc...

Based on the complete ensemble of hairpin conformations, a statistical mechanical model that combines the eigenvalue solutions of the rate matrix and the free-energy landscapes has been able to predict the temperature-dependent folding rate, kinetic intermediates, and folding pathways for hairpin-forming RNA sequences. At temperatures higher than a "glass transition" temperature, T(g), the eige...

RNA folding landscapes have been described alternately as simple and as complex. The limited diversity of RNA residues and the ability of RNA to form stable secondary structures prior to adoption of a tertiary structurewould appear to simplify folding relative to proteins. Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence for long-lived misfolded RNA states, and these observations have suggested rug...

Inverse protein folding concerns the identification of an amino acid sequence that folds to a given structure. Sequence design problems attempt to avoid the apparant difficulty of inverse protein folding by defining an energy that can be minimized to find protein-like sequences. We evaluate the practical relevance of two sequence design problems by analyzing their computational complexity. Vc' ...

BACKGROUND Metal ions play a critical role in the stabilization of RNA structures. Therefore, accurate prediction of the ion effects in RNA folding can have a far-reaching impact on our understanding of RNA structure and function. Multivalent ions, especially Mg²⁺, are essential for RNA tertiary structure formation. These ions can possibly become strongly correlated in the close vicinity of RNA...

RNA folding landscapes have been described alternately as simple and as complex. The limited diversity of RNA residues and the ability of RNA to form stable secondary structures prior to adoption of a tertiary structure would appear to simplify folding relative to proteins. Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence for long-lived misfolded RNA states, and these observations have suggested ru...

Because the chemical and biological properties of many RNAs are determined by their conformations, an RNA equivalent exists to the protein folding problem. The RNA folding problem has both a practical side and an academic side. If the practical problem were solved, it would be possible to predict the conformations of RNAs of known sequence. The academic problem has to do with determining what h...

Riboswitches are part of noncoding regions of messenger RNA (mRNA) that act as RNA sensors regulating gene expression of the downstream gene. Typically, one out of two distinct conformations is formed depending on ligand binding when the transcript leaves RNA polymerase (RNAP). Elongation of the RNA chain by RNAP, folding and binding all occurs simultaneously and interdependently on the seconds...

Ab initio RNA secondary structure predictions have long dismissed helices interior to loops, so-called pseudoknots, despite their structural importance. Here we report that many pseudoknots can be predicted through long-time-scale RNA-folding simulations, which follow the stochastic closing and opening of individual RNA helices. The numerical efficacy of these stochastic simulations relies on a...